Today’s 7 Questions is with Louise Leigh, who works for a small charity based in Bristol, providing therapeutic horse riding to people with disabilities. Louise is a woman on a mission, and that mission is to win £25,000 for her charity, so of course, with our tens of readers from all over the globe, where better than Newnibbles to promote her cause?
1. What is your favourite part of your job?
The people. I’m terrified of the horses. They’re really big and they
have danger at both ends. Plus they smell a bit funny. But they help our clients have an amazing time, going out into the woods, getting physically stronger and learning so much and generally hanging out somewhere where nobody looks at them funny or ignores them or patronises them.
2. Why should people vote, and how can they do it?
Here’s the deal: in Bristol, pretty much everyone rates their quality of life as being at least 6-7/10. But people with disabilities rate theirs at just 4/10. Some of that is about living standards, poverty and so forth. But quite a lot of it is just about not being able to stretch themselves, not getting outside enough, feeling that they’re never achieving anything at school or college and some of it is just not having any fun. When you spend time at the Avon Riding Centre, you see only smiles. So for an hour a week, our riders rate their lives at 10/10. That’s pretty important!
You can vote by clicking here:
https://community-fund.aviva.co.uk/voting/project/view/16-1674
You register, verify an email in your inbox and Pop whizz bang you’ve voted. It’s 90 seconds of your life and you could give a properly life-changing amount to the Avon Riding Centre for the Disabled.
3. Does pet couture apply to horses? Where do you stand on this contentious issue?
Horses are the originators of pet couture! They have all that cool leather gear to wear and smart blankets in various fleecy fabrics that they can wear in the winter. Where horses go, other animals follow. Never dress up a cat. Never. It’s humiliating. Would you dress up a lion? Don’t do that. Dogs love it, though*, especially those outfits that make their fore legs look like human legs and the front of them look like a person and they have a hat.
*they don’t. Don’t dress animals. Except chinchillas.
4. What are the benefits of horse riding?
Where do I start?
- Physical: It’s incredible for your core strength and the strength of your bum and thigh muscles. But it’s not weight-bearing, so you can do it even if your body doesn’t work as well as it could. Lots of our rid
ers have the sensory problems associated with autism. Riding is amazing because it gives vestibular and proprioceptory stimulation, which helps with that. For some riders, whose bodies are in spasm, just the warmth and movement of the horse’s body is enough to help them relax. - Psychological: It’s a great way to get outside into nature, which is massively important and can be harder for people with disabilities. Getting to sit up high is pretty special if you’re in a wheelchair. Many of our riders compete at regional and national level, which is a huge boost. And even if you’re not doing that, just being in charge of these big animals (of which some people are rather terrified, actually) is massively beneficial.
5. Who is your favourite horse?
Don’t ask me that! I hate having to choose favourites. OOoh, but Roddy… or Bunty… or Frankie… or Harry… or Tic Tac.. or Spike.. .or Warrior… or Leaf… or Albert… and then there’s Bella and Barney… and I like oh for goodness sake!
6. What could £25,000 buy, apart from serious quantities of oats?
So, as you can gather, even though I find them terrifying, our horses are pretty special. And some of them are getting very long in the tooth (that expression actually comes from horses, whose teeth just grow and grow all their lives and that’s how you can tell they are old). Anyway, where was I – yes, long in the tooth. And as they go to the stables in the sky, we need to replace them with the right horses.
We need a real variety. From ponies like Charlie and Choco who are pretty much bombproof, to horses that can work with adults with MS and respond to the lightest of touches, we need as much variety in our horses as we have in our riders. So we can’t get just any old horse and expect it to do the workload we’re asking for. Once we get our sticky mitts on them, it can take a year to train them to be as brilliant and fabulous as we need them to be. Often we find ourselves competing with private individuals with deep pockets for the most suitable horses. So, £25k would buy 3 horses of the type we need. AND it would pay for us to keep them and train them for the year it takes to get them up to standard.
Our waiting list is 18 months long, with around 100 disabled people waiting for equine therapy. 3 horses would allow us to get 36 of those riders into our system and getting all those marvellous benefits I talked about up there.
7. What is your motto?
My personal motto: “Don’t fish for dace in a bucket of bream” When I say it, I stroke my beard and look wise. I also like: “Socks in shoes, pants in pocket.” That’s the best advice I have for people in swimming changing rooms, and I want it to be my epitaph.
The centre’s motto: Therapy, Achievement, Fun!
