Cowboy boots and barbecue go together like square and dance. If you like good barbecue, blue grass music and horses, then mark your calendars for May 5.
Equestrian Zone Riding for a Reason’s fourth annual Boots and Benefactor’s BBQ is scheduled from 4-7 p.m. on May 5 at the Pope County Fairgrounds. For $35 per ticket, guests can enjoy the bluegrass sound of Mountain Boomers while eating a tasty barbecue dinner chuck wagon style and register to win door prize packages. Children 15 and under are admitted free.
“Forty percent of our annual buget is raised from this event,” founder and executive director Jodi Kusturin said. “We really depend on this fundraiser to provide services to our 63 clients.”
Equestrian Zone is a nonprofit dedicated to enriching the lives of individuals with special needs through equine-assisted therapies and activities that increase daily life skills and foster functional independence.
Hippotherapy is a form of physical, occupational and speech therapy in which specially trained therapists utilize the precise, rhythmical and repetitive movements of a horse as part of an integrated therapy treatment program to achieve functional outcomes in clients.
Hippotherapy has been used to treat patients with neurological or other disabilities, such as autism, cerebral palsy, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, head injury, stroke, spinal cord injury, behavioral and psychiatric disorders.
“We use the horse an exercise tool,” Kusturin said. “In a traditional exercise program, a person might use weights, a treadmill or a ball. The horse is our occupational tool.”
The horse’s gait is the most similar to that of humans. Kusturin said the horse creates motor memory and helps strengthen muscles in clients who don’t have that particular motor memory, such as walking.
“The most recent research showed that clients performed three to five thousand postural challenges in 45 minutes of hippotherapy,” Kusturin said. “Clients increase their core strength, which in turn increases their ability to do even the simplest of activities we take for granted, such as speaking.”
Kusturin first became interested in hippotherapy while volunteering in the 10th grade with Jackie Miller and Special Equestrians of Arkansas in Dover.
“My mom said she remembers me coming home and saying, ‘I’m going to get paid to do that one day. I want to work with kids with disabilities and get paid to for it,’” Kusturin said. “The Equestrian Zone has always been my dream and I’m still amazed it has happened so quickly.”
Kusturin attended the University of Central Arkansas after graduating from Russellville High School in 1996. She went on to obtain her Doctorate in physical therapy in 2002.
Kusturin began working with Dana Warren at Recovery Zone full-time and Hearts and Hooves in Little Rock once each week. Kusturin said Warren took an interest in her work with Hearts and Hooves and donated the land for Equestrian Zone to become a reality in Russellville in 2008.
“I just love watching the children come to life and actually see changes on and off the horses that impact their lives forever,” Kusturin said. “I’ve been a therapist for 12 years and I’ve never seen any other therapy motivate children more than hippotherapy.”
Kusturin said she has seen autistic children who have never shown emotion, give their first kiss to a horse and many clients whose first words came after a session.
There are currently 64 clients ranging in age from 21⁄2 years old to 60, but Kusturin said the majority are between 3-21.
“A one-hour session is divided between 30 minutes of riding and 30 minutes in the clinic,” Kusturin said. “Depending on the client’s needs, they might ride first and do therapy after or vice versa. We focus each session on that day’s needs. Sometimes we might even have a client do 15 minutes of clinic, ride for 30 and do 15 additional minutes of clinic to check for pre and post changes.”
Equestrian Zone operates 48 weeks year-round and offers hippotherapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech therapy. Riders pay $10 to ride, but Kusturin said 55 percent are on scholarships.
Lily Ice, mother of an autistic son, is the therapeutic riding instructor and barn manager.
“It’s been amazing on so many levels,” Ice said. “After my son began riding for only three weeks, he increased from two-word phrases to five and seven word phrases. That was more progress than he made in one and half years of speech therapy.”
Ice said she not only works with the kids, but also trains the horses to keep them fit.
“These guys really like their job,” Ice said. “It’s a job not just any horse can do. They have to like children and being ridden. I’ve seen Dan (a blind horse) stop while a child had an epileptic seizure atop him. Not every horse would react that way.”
Each of the eight therapeutic horses are specially trained, and Ice said each horse must have prior work experience.
Charlie Smith, 7, of Clarksville has received therapy at Equestrian Zone since he was 3. His parents said the improvements have been physical, cognitive and emotional.
“He couldn’t even sit up at the dinner table with us when he first came,” his mother, Amy Smith, said. “His speech was unintelligible and after only a few months he said his first sentence, “I love you mommy.””
Charlie has cerebral palsy and has been in therapy since birth. His parents were told Charlie would never walk.
“His doctors are amazed at his checkups every six months,” his father, Sonny Smith, said. “He hasn’t even used his walker at school this year. We know he wouldn’t have achieved so much progress so fast, if it wasn’t for Equestrian Zone.”
Charlie attends physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech, vision therapy along with hippotherapy each week. His mother described hippotherapy as an all-inclusive treatment that combines each therapy her son receives individually.
“They work on his spelling words and vision therapy while he rides the horse,” Amy Smith said. “Jodi is great. She tries to coordinate his treatment with what Charlie is already doing with his other therapist. He loves it, he wants to come everyday.”
Charlie has two sisters, one who is 14 and assists during his riding sessions and one who is 12 and counting down the days until she is 14 and old enough to volunteer.
Three clients will ride during the barbecue, displaying multiple posture changes and exhibiting how the program works.
(Source: couriernews.com)
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