Therapeutic Horse Riding

LJ started therapeutic horse riding today at Lift Me Up!

The flavor of the month for us is Therapeutic Horse Riding (also called Hippotherapy).

There are all sorts of clients at Lift Me Up! from wounded soldiers to people with Multiple Sclerosis.  See information about what it is touted to do for kiddos with cerebral palsy at this link NIH article here. LJ is kind of on the younger spectrum for their clients.  The goal for LJ is really just to encourage him to have fun with different kinds of therapy (plus its pretty empowering to be so high up on such a powerful, beautiful animal).  However, a huge perk of the therapy would be things like better core strength and balance, better rotation of his ankles and knees, utilizing both hands to grab hold of the handles, improved pelvic positioning and improved head control.

LJ got up twice on a gentle, old pony called Dakota.  His poor, sweet therapist Miss V got the crying treatment from LJ both times.  Though he was fine when he was just making friends with him, he did identify Dakota's ears, mouth and nose and he even tried to stroke his mane, the only thing on LJ's mind is food. He got up on Dakota two times but started to go into extension and the rest consisted of LJ telling anyone and everyone that he wanted to "go" and "eat" using his sign language. Meanwhile, Nate was terrorizing the poor barn kitties.  I think Noodles will start enjoying it more as the weeks go on and he gets more used to it.

So that's pretty much what we did this afternoon.  LJ's favorite food is peanut butter.  The below picture illustrates what will happen when you leave the 5 year old, bigger brother in charge for two seconds.  Nate's idea of feeding Noodles was not well conceived - hhmm, let LJ dip his whole hand into the sticky jar of peanut butter so that big brother didn't have to get his hands dirty dealing with a spoon.  I think I should go start the laundry now...and dismantle and clean the wheelchair...and give a bath to said baby brother. Oh yeah, after I change LJ's poopy dipe! Happy trails.