Caleb, turning on the Bubble Machine Every Wednesday Caleb and his mom get in the car at their home south of Atlanta, Georgia, and drive 75 miles to McKenna Farms, in Dallas, Georgia. There, Caleb, a sweet eleven-year-old with dark red hair and freckles, spends an hour in hippotherapy.   Then they drive the 75 miles home.   It’s a long trip that uses a lot of gas money. It’s also a trip that makes a world of difference for Caleb and his family, starting with that two-to-three hour trip home through Atlanta traffic. Like many children with autism, Caleb bangs his head because the sensory receptors in his brain are unable to filter incoming sensory information, and he is overwhelmed. Head banging is a way to stop the overload. When he is not consistently in hippotherapy   his head banging becomes much worse . That happened this winter, once when his grandmother was in the hospital in critical condition and again when his therapist was ill . It's both fr...

Not this . . .     But this! Over the past few years I’ve talked about hippotherapy hundreds of times. Sometimes I even sound like I know what I’m talking about.   But the truth is, until Jacob started hippotherapy at McKenna Farms, I’d never heard the word.   Even though hippotherapy has been around for fifty years, many of us have no idea what it is. So let’s start there. Hippotherapy is speech, physical, or occupational therapy delivered while the patient rides a horse. The beauty of the horse as a therapy tool is that the horse’s gait mimics the movement of the human pelvis while walking. Physicians and therapists these days are better informed, and, when warranted, recommend equine therapy as a more useful and productive method for many children who’ve spent way too many hours and days in medical facilities’ sterile settings. When a child loves what they're doing Behavioral and mental health as well as physical health ca...

   Isabella, kissing Gus   “How’s Isabella?” I ask her mom, Linda.   I met and talked with Linda and Isabella a few months ago, just after Jacob’s Fund began sponsoring Isabella’s therapeutic riding.   I remembered Isabella as a quiet little girl who clearly loved her therapy horse, Gus. “She’s progressing as a normal kid, very outgoing, she speaks her mind and has lots of common sense.   She’s healthy and happy,” Linda says of her daughter. I feel like cheering.   Isabella is autistic and struggles with a language disorder.   Speaks her mind?   Outgoing?   You go, girl! Linda goes on to give me some examples.   At school recently, she cut her head, just a small cut, fixed with a Band-Aid, but it bled.   Isabella blotted some of the blood on the paper she was working on.   Her teacher was momentarily startled until Isabella spoke in a dramatic voice, “I am signing my paper in blood for you.”  ...

Jonah at hippotherapy One of the things I like most about being the regular blogger for Jacob’s Fund is that I get to tell you about the sweet, funny, courageous kids whose hippotherapy and therapeutic riding costs Jacob’s Fund scholarships. One of the things I find hardest is condensing their stories into some paragraphs that convey their glorious selves so that you can get to know them.   I know you want to know what their conditions and diagnoses are and how you’re helping them through your support of Jacob’s Fund.   But there’s so much more to these children. Take Jonah, for instance.   Cassie at McKenna Farms had warned me before my visit with Jonah and his mom:   “He’s a cutie!”   And, oh my gosh! Is he ever! Jonah was born with multiple heart defects, like Jacob.   At least one of those defects is the same as one of Jacob’s, hypoplastic left heart syndrome , a relatively rare birth defect in which the left ventricle...