By Savannah’s family
Savannah, is 16! She was diagnosed with CDLS around 1.5 when we attended the Dallas CDLS conference. We had no idea what to expect. She has 4 older siblings (all are a total of 5 years apart, so very close in age). They all have pushed her and included her in everything over the years. We truly believe that has been a source of so many accomplishments for her.
Four years ago we found a fantastic school for her called Chase’s Place.
It is designed for kids who are moderately to severely impacted by their disability- only to give them the opportunity to thrive in their abilities! Every year the kids, families and staff are invited to a camp on a private ranch. It’s a generous gift from this family who cater our experience to our kids’ needs. Adaptable bicycles, adaptable archery, stocked fishing pond and every family gets a golf cart for the time there to easily travel among the property.
One day, Camp Able of Buffalo Gap, Texas, brings its amazing staff and therapy horse to the ranch’s arena.
It is amazing to see the staff and the ranch staff work together to help each student have a chance to ride a horse.
Last year Savannah wouldn’t even touch the helmet or stay in the arena. She does not like anything on her head and was very afraid of the horses. This year, as soon as school started in August, the staff and occupational therapist started working with the students on being comfortable with the helmet, eventually getting it in each of them. If I recall, Savannah kept it on for about 90 seconds at school, which was huge! They also worked on them getting on a suspended stationary log in our motor room. This helped them learn how to get on the horse.
I wasn’t expecting her to ride but then a friend, Myles got on. And she was saying “Myles, Myles.” So the OT came and said let’s go ahead and try the helmet so we did and she kept it on! We were shocked! We started walking over. She got on. She rode 2 times around the arena. She does this intense head flip all the time especially when nervous. You cannot forget seeing her do it after meeting her.
When she finished on ‘Freckles’ the horse, there was not a dry eye!
All the various staff, school, ranch and Camp Able were so choked up. And the head of Camp Able and his staff ate lunch with us later and he said- did you see she didn’t have a single head flip?
It was amazing and she was so proud of herself and her friends. We are hoping to start riding as some therapy soon! She does hard things!
She’s amazing.
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