Latest / Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson / Urban Horses, Hidden Access & Equine Therapy in the City | Lucy Dillon of ChildVision Dublin | EAW 50

Transcript

Urban Horses, Hidden Access & Equine Therapy in the City | Lucy Dillon of ChildVision Dublin | EAW 50 · Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
• 0:02
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times best selling
• 0:05
  author of The Horse Boy, The Long Ride Home, and The Healing Land.
• 0:08
  Before I jump in with today's guest, I just want to say a huge
• 0:12
  thank you to you, our audience, for helping to make this happen.
• 0:15
  I have a request.
• 0:16
  If you like what we do, please like, subscribe, tell a friend.
• 0:22
  It really helps us get this work done.
• 0:24
  As you might know from my books, I'm an autism dad.
• 0:27
  And over the last 20 years, we've developed several
• 0:31
  equine assisted, neuroscience backed certification programs.
• 0:35
  If you'd like to find out more about them, go to newtrailslearning.
• 0:40
  com.
• 0:41
  So without further ado, let's meet today's guest.
• 0:44
  Welcome back.
• 0:45
  I've got Lucy Dillon.
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  Lucy Dillon, I've known for some time, and she runs the equine
• 0:51
  unit at Child Vision in Dublin.
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  And when I say in Dublin, I don't mean outside Dublin, I mean right in the
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  middle of Dublin place called Drum Condra.
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  So she's providing equine services to people of all kinds of special
• 1:07
  needs right there in the city center.
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  Populations who would not normally have access at all, and therefore, of course
• 1:16
  has to make it work, particularly for equine wellbeing in a way that many
• 1:23
  people who are running centers who have.
• 1:26
  The luxury of doing it from a place in the country do not have
• 1:29
  to strategize around quite so much.
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  And child vision, vision might give you a bit of a clue as to what
• 1:37
  many of the clients and service users are facing problems with
• 1:44
  and conditions affecting sight.
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  It used to be St.
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  Joseph's School for the Blind, but the services go way beyond that
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  and are being offered at scale.
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  So Lucy works her behind off and produces a service that I have been watching now
• 2:04
  for over a decade, well over a decade more like approaching 15 years and just
• 2:10
  kind of going from strength to strength.
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  So she's one of my heroes.
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  So Lucy, thanks for coming on.
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  Can you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and why you do it?
• 2:19
  Lucy Dillon: Okay, so yeah, I'm Lucy.
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  I, so I run the equine unit in Chart Vision.
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  I've been working there for nine and a half years, but I've been running
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  the unit for just over two years now.
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  We have 10 horses, 'cause I actually recently just purchased two more.
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  And we see roughly 150 kids a week.
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  And that would be a mixture of children from our internal services.
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  So like, Rupert says there we are, child Vision, which is the
• 2:45
  National Education Center for children with vision impairment.
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  So that's children from our preschool, our primary school, and then there
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  is an adult residential service.
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  So we see a couple of the young adults in that service as well.
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  And then we see external clients and the majority of those
• 3:02
  would be children with autism.
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  And then recently, more and more we're starting to see children who perhaps
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  maybe do have diagnosis as well, but would also fall into areas where,
• 3:12
  say, perhaps community groups where they are experiencing trauma, either
• 3:18
  through their, their living con living environment or their family environment.
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  And so we are often, that's sort of a service we're offering
• 3:25
  more and more now as well.
• 3:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Your background, your English obviously, and you
• 3:31
  are living there in Ireland.
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  How did that happen and what was your horsey background before you got
• 3:38
  into this whole therapeutic malarkey?
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  And why did you get into this therapeutic malarkey?
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  Because it's such hard work.
• 3:46
  Lucy Dillon: Yeah.
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  Although actually on that point, I always think that people
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  always say, oh, it's such public.
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  It's public, but it's actually really good fun as well.
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  That's, that's indeed.
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  People always say that to me.
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  Oh gosh, it must be so hard working with those children.
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  You're like, no, it's just really good fun.
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  Yeah.
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  You know, we have a laugh.
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  Yeah, no, so I, yeah, I'm obviously English.
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  I'm from just outside North London from a completely non horsey family.
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  Just really, really, you know, I was that little girl that loved
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  horsey books and, you know, looked up ponies and just wanted to ride.
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  And I probably had my first ride in lesson when I was, I
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  don't know, about eight or so.
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  A very big center, which is still there actually in North
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  London, called Trent Park, and I
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  Rupert Isaacson: rode at Trent Park too, being a fellow London North Londoner.
• 4:28
  Yeah.
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  Lucy Dillon: Very funny.
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  A friend, very good school friend of mine who's like completely non horsey.
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  Her daughter now rides at Trent Park and is like, she's just me at 13 years old.
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  Lives up there if, if she, if she can.
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  And then I progressed to a different place in Enfield, which is also in North London.
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  Quin, funnily enough, all my horses actually went.
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  I actually went further into London to do all that rather than out
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  into the huck cart for countryside.
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  And was just completely mad about them.
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  Had my own pony who was useless, but I adored him.
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  And and then when I was finishing school, I wanted to do a degree in
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  horses, which was a very new thing.
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  There was actually only two degrees in horses at that point, and neither
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  of them had actually finished.
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  I had had a full cycle of people doing them.
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  So, my parents were like, well, you know, you sure about this?
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  Maybe you should go and work for a year and actually make
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  sure you really wanna do this.
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  So I went and worked in a place in Hartfordshire as a working pupil
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  through a scheme that's long, long gone, which was called YTS in those days.
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  Rupert Isaacson: I remember YTS Youth Training Scheme.
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  Yes, yes.
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  Lucy Dillon: Yeah.
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  And I did my BHS exams.
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  Okay.
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  Lovely woman.
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  She was an examiner herself and the center did run some exams as well.
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  So it was a great experience and was then still completely convinced I wanted
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  to go to university and study horses.
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  And so I went to Warwick Agricultural College and did the BA in equine studies.
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  And that wasn't particularly a practical degree, it was like a
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  business, like people do business in French or business and something,
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  it was like business and horses.
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  But then I also, while I was there, I really sort of immersed myself in
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  the equine unit and sort of got to know, 'cause there's lots of practical
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  courses running there as well.
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  I got to know everybody in the unit and I worked there for a year
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  and a half in my placement year, which is like your third year.
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  And that involved you know, helping with the, helping obviously with the lessons
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  and the students and stuff like that.
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  But also they had a four stallion stud at that point as well.
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  So it was working on the stud as well and and then breaking the youngsters
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  and, and all that sort of thing.
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  So it was really good and, and the staff were really good there.
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  The training was really good.
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  There was some really good riders.
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  Most of the staff and then actually the woman I did my YTS with
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  trained with Jenny Lauriston Clark.
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  So it was all very sort of traditional based training that
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  I had through all that time.
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  Rupert Isaacson: For, for listeners and viewers that, dunno who Jenny Lar
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  and Clarke was or perhaps still is.
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  She was the lady who kind of put dressage on the map in the UK sort of in the
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  eighties, really seventies and eighties.
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  She was the sort of face of it for a long, long time.
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  Yeah.
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  So she was very knowledgeable.
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  Lucy Dillon: Yeah, I think she was the first Olympic like person to go to the
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  Olympics dress lodge in the UK with Dutch Gold and the Cabon Stud, which was
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  a famous stud in Hampshire, isn't it?
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  I think it was.
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  Yeah.
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  And yeah, so my time at college was great.
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  I really enjoyed it.
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  I really enjoyed college.
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  You know, it was great.
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  Crack at college is great crack and then I learned a huge amount about horses
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  and we had some fabulous horses in the college as well, which was great.
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  Like a lot of x three day event.
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  Horses, x dress horses for the students to ride.
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  And then when I finished college, I wanted to be a lecturer
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  in an agricultural college.
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  And I went to W Hampton and did a postgraduate teaching diploma and
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  taught in Northampton Agricultural College during the time I was doing it.
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  Rupert Isaacson: And you taught equine stuff?
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  Lucy Dillon: Equine stuff, yeah, yeah, like science and that sort of thing to
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  sort of, what was called then National Diploma Students and higher National
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  diploma students, which are less sort of, that's like, a level equivalent.
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  So sort of leaving school age type courses.
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  And then my.
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  Then boyfriend, now husband, he moved back.
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  He was working as a manager of a college, a thoroughbred
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  college, working in stud work.
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  But he took a job back in Ireland, in a stud farm near where he grew up.
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  So I followed him back home basically.
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  And we, I, I moved back.
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  I moved here, so that would be 27 years ago, next month.
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  And so I've lived here longer than I lived in England now.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Right?
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  Yeah.
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  Lucy Dillon: And then I did get it offered a job to, to continue lecturing.
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  But it was a long, long way away from where I'd moved to.
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  So I, I didn't do that.
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  And I started working for a family who ran a big ride in school and
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  an event yard called Kinsler's.
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  Really lovely family.
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  Again, really nice horses to ride.
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  Nice riders themselves.
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  And, I worked there for about nearly two years, and in that
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  time I got married and then I also had my first child in that time.
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  And I then stopped working when he was about three months old, just 'cause
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  of things that happened in my life.
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  And then I carried on teaching riding and riding for people and
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  teaching privately and teaching pony club and all that sort of thing.
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  Had two more children.
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  And then I found out about Child Vision through Terry Rosen,
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  who was the manager there.
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  She'd put an advert out looking for staff, and I just sort of thought,
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  oh, you know what, that sounds nice.
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  I'm, you know, I, I've been teaching kids for a long, long time.
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  I was a little bit frustrated in the job I was in.
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  It was a lovely, lovely yard, but it wasn't growing in the way that I, it
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  was sort of, I thought it was going to.
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  And so I applied for travel vision and kind of that's, that's it.
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  Then after that, I just really liked it once I started and went
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  from part-time to more part-time to full-time and now running it
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  Rupert Isaacson: now.
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  That all sounds very smooth.
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  When I first met you however many years ago that was, and I should, I should
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  by the way iterate here that Lucy has only gotten younger since I met her,
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  whereas I of course have gotten older.
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  But back when we first met, I remember we were doing a horse boy training at
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  Child Vision, and I don't think, it wasn't the first one I'd done that.
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  I think the first one I did was.
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  In June of 2013 or something, I remember a blizzard hit while we were doing
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  it outside there and I was thinking, God, how did these Irish do it?
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  And I thought I was hard coming from the uk and I watched you guys at Child
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  Vision over the years, despite the fact that you were attached to a very
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  large institution and school that was relatively well funded despite the fact
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  that you were there in the middle of Dublin where one does have access to
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  fundraising and that sort of thing.
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  Despite all of that, the equine unit, I have to say for a long,
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  long time, was somewhat marginalized despite the fact that you guys
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  were doing an amazing job there.
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  And so therefore the working conditions were tough.
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  And I remember doing.
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  Training after training there, sort of out in the rain in the, I'm watching
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  you guys just like battle through and produce a really sterling service,
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  like no matter the conditions.
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  And the fact that the horses also had to live, you know, basically mostly inside.
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  There wasn't really turnout when I first went to Child Vision.
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  There was, there was actually a small estate still attached to
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  it, but then that was all sold for housing and things shrank and shrank.
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  And then I watched you guys getting really clever about how to use the local
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  rugby field for trails and how to rotate your horses in and out from town to
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  country to ensure that they had their wellbeing and their turnout and so on.
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  And I watched you guys really.
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  Not just deliver this amazing service to up to 200 clients a
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  week, but really ensure that the standard remained incredibly high no
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  matter what you were dealing with.
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  Things are much better.
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  Now, I know that you, you guys have an indoor arena and so on.
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  Can you talk to us about, you know, you'd come out of agricultural colleges
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  where they have all the nice facilities.
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  You'd come out of those, you know, north London riding schools like Trent
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  Park, which have great facilities.
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  You'd come out of that nice event yard, and then you find yourself
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  in this kind of pioneer situation.
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  And Terry Brosnan, by the way, anyone listening, you need to go listen to the to
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  the podcast we did with Terry, who talks about having grown up in the troubles
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  and what she had to deal with just as a family, let alone, you know, but it, it
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  brings a certain resilience to the table.
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  Which I think is really important in what we do.
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  Talk to us about how you guys made it work there, because I was
• 13:01
  always really impressed with that.
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  Lucy Dillon: Well, I suppose I had been working in yards without indoors
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  for the last however many years.
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  I think bef when James was born, I worked for the Kinsler.
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  That was the last yard I worked in that had an indoor right
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  after it was all outdoor.
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  And so I was well used to the rain.
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  Especially for my own horses at home.
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  I, I just used, I just ride in the field at home.
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  And I suppose we just kind of got on with it really.
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  Because, you know, and you know, this is Ireland, you know, it's
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  gonna rain, you know, it's gonna be cold, you know, it's gonna be gray.
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  You know, it rained for 50 days, the first half, first 50 days of this year.
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  This year, although we had an indoor this year, it makes all the difference.
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  Yeah.
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  And then I suppose we just, we just got better and better at what we were doing.
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  You know, at the beginning we were just learning, you know, what we were doing.
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  But I do think there's a huge amount of skills if you've worked with horses for
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  a long time and you've trained horses and you, you know, I, I, I've broken a lot of
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  horses in my time and worked with young event horses and, and that's my thing.
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  That's what I love.
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  I'm not really a competition rider.
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  Never was.
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  I, I did a bit of competing on a horse I had, but I actually preferred
• 14:08
  more when I worked with the event horses, schooling them all, weak for
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  the other person to compete them.
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  I was lorry driver.
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  That was my job when I worked with the event horses.
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  And I suppose we just put all, a lot of effort into the horses.
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  And it was really nice to see these horses, particularly as some of them
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  were a bit older, once we started doing all the, the horse boy stuff with them,
• 14:29
  tra change and, and become happier and more physically able to do their jobs.
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  And then, I suppose we had a great team.
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  Myself and Terry are great friends as well as work colleagues.
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  Like we know we were right from the word go actually.
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  'cause like literally the week I started there, we realized that my daughter
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  and her twin daughters were starting school together, secondary school.
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  And they, they, they're still great friends as well.
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  So yeah, we just, I dunno, I suppose we just got on with it really.
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  I think it helps if you are very, and I'm really, this is one thing I'm really
• 15:02
  passionate actually about equine assist activities and all those things is if you
• 15:06
  are really confident in your horses and you know how to train your horses, you
• 15:11
  can be really confident in the rest of it.
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  And you can, and you can see it, you can see it in the
• 15:17
  horses that we have now as well.
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  And some of 'em are the same horses that we had eight, nine years ago.
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  And then we've got obviously got new ones over the years.
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  I suppose, yeah, we just kept going.
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  Really just kept doing it.
• 15:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 15:29
  It's it what you, you know, you had a lot of background and I remember when
• 15:33
  I first met you and Terry and you know, it was, it's always a great relief for
• 15:39
  me when I'm doing trainings, when all I need to do is sort of show the techniques
• 15:45
  for this particular subset population, in this case, autism or whatever.
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  And some equine techniques to people who already have this
• 15:53
  immensely solid equine background.
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  'cause I know that all they need to do is just take the tools and
• 15:58
  add them to the tools that they've already got and they'll be grand.
• 16:01
  One doesn't always have that luxury.
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  And when I met you and Terry, it was very obvious to me immediately, oh, these
• 16:08
  people have really massively solid skills.
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  I remember encountering, what was that lovely Dark Bay horse that you had again?
• 16:16
  That,
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  Lucy Dillon: well, my, that was before I worked there.
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  He met.
• 16:20
  Oh, Bruce.
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  Yeah.
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  The beautiful views.
• 16:22
  Bruce, that was all,
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  Rupert Isaacson: yeah,
• 16:23
  Lucy Dillon: he from Warwick Agricultural College.
• 16:26
  When I moved here, I bought him as a 5-year-old 'cause I loved
• 16:31
  his father so much and I knew he stamped all his youngsters.
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  And I'd broken, not him, but I'd broken several of his siblings and I, I went back
• 16:41
  to England about a month and a half after I moved here to sit my BHS stage four.
• 16:47
  And then I went to, and I went up to college and was like, you
• 16:49
  know, I'm kind of half looking for a horse and can I try Bruce?
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  I don't, you know, see what he's like.
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  And he, 'cause he had been sold to the States and then,
• 16:55
  and then it fallen through.
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  So he was still there.
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  And and I sat up on him.
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  He was a fight.
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  He was just turning five.
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  And I was like, oh yeah, you just feel like St.
• 17:03
  George, I, I'm gonna bring this horse home.
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  And I did.
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  I had 20 years.
• 17:07
  Gotta love him.
• 17:09
  He was,
• 17:10
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah, when I encountered that horse with you and
• 17:12
  I sat on that horse I took that horse for a trail ride and I was like.
• 17:16
  Whoever produced this horse knows what they're doing.
• 17:19
  I remember there was this magic moment where I just adjusted my seat and brought
• 17:28
  my lower legs back just a little bit, just as a, I don't know, curiosity.
• 17:33
  And he went into this perfect PFA, like this perfect PF and I'm like,
• 17:37
  whoever produced this horse, and I think it's that Lucy lady has done
• 17:41
  such an incredible job with this horse.
• 17:44
  I will, I have complete trust in anything horsey that's
• 17:48
  coming from this, this human.
• 17:50
  And that, of course has been born out.
• 17:52
  And as you said, I like that you made that point.
• 17:55
  If you have trust in your horses, if you have that confidence in your
• 17:58
  horses, it gives you the confidence to go out into unknown situations.
• 18:05
  You know, in the old days we were doing that as cavalry, weren't we?
• 18:08
  And we were going out there to do that.
• 18:10
  Sadly to do harm to our fellow man and now we do it to heal our fellow man.
• 18:14
  But we still go out into the unknown.
• 18:16
  You though did not, you had this, all this solid horse background, but you
• 18:21
  didn't have really a background in working with special needs and you
• 18:25
  know, I know the extreme nature of many of the, particularly the kids that
• 18:31
  were coming out of the Child Vision school, 'cause they weren't just coming
• 18:34
  with blindness or visual impairment.
• 18:36
  They were coming often with severe autism.
• 18:38
  They were coming sometimes with really severe medical conditions and
• 18:40
  feeding tubes and things like this.
• 18:42
  That was all at that stage outside your Ken, and this is really technical stuff.
• 18:46
  Talk to us about the learning curve you went through with that, because I know you
• 18:48
  said, oh, we just got on with it really.
• 18:50
  But that's a, a way of glossing over actually a really step-by-step learning
• 18:55
  curve that I think a lot of people who are just kind of getting into this field
• 18:59
  could really benefit from your wisdom.
• 19:01
  How did you.
• 19:02
  Go from not knowing much about that, but having these solid horse skills and a big
• 19:06
  heart to really learning how to work with this type of technical medical stuff.
• 19:15
  Lucy Dillon: Well, child Vision itself obviously has a two therapists who
• 19:19
  work with the children, so there was always lots of advice and, you know,
• 19:23
  if you had a question, there was always someone to ask how to support somebody.
• 19:28
  And then I suppose I just started reading about it.
• 19:31
  I started Googling, I started watching stuff about therapeutic riding and
• 19:35
  then I that, and then like that, you know, doing the horse boy training and,
• 19:39
  and sort of, I, I just basically read everything I could find and all the
• 19:45
  different things and sort of, and made my own decisions about which things I
• 19:48
  felt maybe looked the right way to go.
• 19:52
  And then I think as well as a horse riding instructor, you're already very good at
• 19:59
  judging a child's emotions because you're not, you know, quite often when you're
• 20:03
  teaching riding one, you've got several of them in front of you, but you're not
• 20:06
  close enough to sort of whispered someone.
• 20:09
  You are right.
• 20:10
  You're right.
• 20:10
  That you've gotta watch their, their body language and, and stuff see that.
• 20:14
  So you're quite good at that, even without realizing it.
• 20:18
  You, you are, I suppose, and then, and then talking to parents as well.
• 20:22
  And, you know, I I, I always ask parents, they're the experts.
• 20:26
  And I suppose, yeah, we just, we all kind of learn together.
• 20:29
  I and I do, when I look back, I think sometimes in the beginning
• 20:32
  maybe I was a bit too sort of behavior led not understanding sort
• 20:37
  of sensory issues quite as well.
• 20:39
  And, and.
• 20:41
  Whereas now I know for a fact now that we are very, and I hope
• 20:45
  now I can relay this to my team.
• 20:46
  As, as you know, I've had a lot of new staff in the last two years.
• 20:50
  This just sort of follow the child.
• 20:52
  And that is actually, you know, it's, it's the, it's the horse boy thing,
• 20:56
  followed the child, but then it's actually a child vision ethos as well.
• 21:01
  It is very much follow the child, be child led and, and lots of
• 21:06
  organizations say they are child led, but child vision actually really is.
• 21:10
  It's very, and interesting enough on the Last Horse Boy training we were
• 21:13
  doing there a month or so ago a lady came to the training and she has a
• 21:17
  significant vision of impair and she's most amazing artist actually look her up.
• 21:21
  Clara Ryder, she does these.
• 21:23
  Clara
• 21:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Ryder, is that Ryder with an I or a y?
• 21:27
  Okay, right now are they talking
• 21:30
  Lucy Dillon: of horses?
• 21:30
  They are stunning.
• 21:31
  Her paintings and she, we were just talking about she wants to volunteer and,
• 21:36
  and I think she's got so much to offer us all in, in, not just in the equine
• 21:40
  unit, but everybody because, you know, she's a young adult who has a significant
• 21:44
  visual impairment and is living her life.
• 21:46
  You know, she's an artist.
• 21:47
  But she was saying about she, what she loves about child vision.
• 21:50
  She wasn't engaged with child vision as a child.
• 21:52
  It wasn't the service she was engaged with that it's so, see, the person first
• 21:58
  don't see the visual impairment first.
• 22:00
  And, and I think perhaps that helped myself and Terry as well,
• 22:04
  because that is the general feeling you get in chart vision.
• 22:07
  And people are treated like,
• 22:10
  Rupert Isaacson: go ahead.
• 22:11
  Sorry, I, I interrupted you.
• 22:12
  Please finish your thought.
• 22:13
  Lucy Dillon: No, that was it.
• 22:14
  Just like, you know, quite often people, particularly people with
• 22:17
  vision impairment, can be treated as if they have an intellectual disability.
• 22:22
  And they don't, they have impairment.
• 22:24
  And whereas in television it's not like that.
• 22:26
  And I remember when I first started working there, like you sort of,
• 22:28
  you'd be like, oh, you know, you might say something to, and it's
• 22:31
  amazing how much in language we use the word, see, can you see this?
• 22:35
  And, and, and like, oh, you look great today and, and look at you on the horse.
• 22:39
  And then you're like, do I say that?
• 22:41
  But actually, yes, you should, because that's language and that's
• 22:45
  the way people use language.
• 22:46
  And that's one thing that's really nice about Child Vision is everybody's treated
• 22:51
  just as, as, as the person that they are.
• 22:55
  Rupert Isaacson: As you say, a lot of a lot of places like to
• 22:59
  think of themselves as child led.
• 23:02
  The ethos of Follow the Child as someone who's had to go through
• 23:06
  that learning curve yourself.
• 23:08
  And let's face it, your average horsey person, male or female.
• 23:15
  We tend to, we're a bossy bunch.
• 23:17
  We're an opinionated bunch, and we sort of have to be a bit
• 23:20
  to do the job that we do it.
• 23:21
  It's part of it because we have to lead, we're in dangerous situations.
• 23:26
  It's, it's built into the culture.
• 23:28
  So I often find that it can be quite a tricky thing to help people
• 23:33
  to understand really how to do it.
• 23:35
  Some people have it as an innate knack, but not everybody.
• 23:40
  What for you, really talk us about your, basically what, your learning curve about
• 23:45
  how you went from not knowing much about that to where you are now, and then what's
• 23:51
  your advice to people and why, why does it really work, do you think, to rather
• 23:57
  than just sort of top down instruction?
• 24:01
  Lucy Dillon: It's all to do with safety.
• 24:06
  Okay.
• 24:06
  I, that's what I personally, that's what I think.
• 24:09
  If, if someone doesn't feel safe, they're not.
• 24:12
  Going to engage with you.
• 24:14
  You know, that applies to all of us, you know?
• 24:17
  If you don't trust someone
• 24:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 24:19
  Or
• 24:20
  Lucy Dillon: particularly like their views or, or feel that they're
• 24:23
  sort of not actually listening to you, you don't trust them.
• 24:27
  And so if you, if you, if a child doesn't trust you, be it
• 24:30
  consciously or subconsciously that you're not gonna get anywhere.
• 24:35
  So you've got to have trust.
• 24:36
  So like, and it, so it works.
• 24:38
  And, and I must admit, when I first started, you know, it was
• 24:41
  sort of like, yeah, the whole lane was get the kid on the horse.
• 24:44
  That's what we do.
• 24:44
  But it's get the kid on.
• 24:46
  Whereas now it's, yeah, whatever, you know, if they
• 24:48
  wanna get on, they wanna get on.
• 24:49
  If they wanna get off, they wanna get off.
• 24:51
  And, and I think possibly when we first started, like you say about
• 24:55
  our environment, when we first started, it was more difficult.
• 24:58
  We were living in a building site, you know, it was, there was you
• 25:02
  know, there was loud noises going on.
• 25:04
  Things they, they finished one building site and then they started on another
• 25:06
  one, the other side of the yard.
• 25:08
  And so like that even leading the horses from the stable to the arena, you had to
• 25:14
  be a bit more controlling with the kids because it wasn't such a safe environment.
• 25:18
  But I do feel particularly in the last I think kind of when we came
• 25:22
  back after COVID more myself and Terry, I think we both kind of
• 25:28
  just were more, this is our unit.
• 25:31
  I, on a side note, I actually took all the horses home for COVID and and that
• 25:37
  was, it was actually a great opportunity to really, really work on all the horse
• 25:40
  boy stuff with them because basically you rode them and, and lunged them and in
• 25:44
  hand with them every day for three months.
• 25:47
  And so it got really, and I, and I do feel that got me really,
• 25:50
  really connected with the horses.
• 25:52
  Now we've got different ones as well since then, and a couple of those have retired
• 25:56
  since then, but they live with me anyway, so that I'm still connected with them.
• 26:00
  There's one of'em I think live forever and she's gonna be one.
• 26:03
  The Guinness Book of Records, you mean she
• 26:05
  Rupert Isaacson: Oh, is that, is that
• 26:06
  Lucy Dillon: echo the gray man?
• 26:07
  Rupert Isaacson: Echo,
• 26:08
  Lucy Dillon: yeah.
• 26:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Oh yeah.
• 26:10
  An amazing horse.
• 26:10
  An amazing horse.
• 26:11
  You must be 40 by now or so.
• 26:14
  Lucy Dillon: 33.
• 26:14
  Well,
• 26:16
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 26:16
  Yeah.
• 26:16
  Wow.
• 26:18
  Lucy Dillon: Yeah.
• 26:18
  Rupert Isaacson: That's a testament to your equine wellbeing, I can tell you.
• 26:20
  Yeah.
• 26:21
  Lucy Dillon: And I think that was the time that really convinced me about the
• 26:23
  training of the horses and how, 'cause she was, you know, she was a, what, a 26, 20
• 26:28
  7-year-old horse that we were doing this with, and it completely transformed her.
• 26:33
  But with, with regards to the kids, I think it becomes very clear once
• 26:38
  you start being child led, you can see the parents change towards you.
• 26:43
  You can see the environment change towards you, and you
• 26:48
  see the kid change towards you.
• 26:50
  One of the first kids that I work with.
• 26:53
  Like completely by myself.
• 26:54
  'cause we did have an occupational therapist who was working with us in
• 26:56
  the yard and leading and giving and you know, we learned loads from her loads
• 27:00
  about sensory processing and about just the d child development as well,
• 27:05
  which was really interesting to learn.
• 27:07
  You know, what, what should the child be doing at two, what
• 27:09
  should they be doing at three?
• 27:10
  So you can make comparisons and you can see that following of development
• 27:13
  as well and the development of speech and the development of motor skills
• 27:17
  and, and all that sort of thing.
• 27:19
  And I find that really interesting.
• 27:20
  I, I quite like science and that sort of thing.
• 27:23
  But I, one of the first kids I worked with, like just on my own, this kid
• 27:27
  and, and, and I, he, he just turned up one day and I was the only, I
• 27:31
  was the only member of staff there.
• 27:33
  Nobody told me he was coming.
• 27:36
  A bit of lack of communication.
• 27:37
  So he just arrived and he hadn't had an assessment or anything and which
• 27:41
  was how we'd previously done it.
• 27:42
  So it was like, oh, well, we'll just go up to the arena and see what happens here.
• 27:46
  And he was a child who had, he was about seven or eight,
• 27:50
  seven, quite big for his age.
• 27:52
  Really, really sensory.
• 27:54
  His father had taken time off work to support him more.
• 27:59
  'cause there was a lot of disruptive behavior, a lot of biting,
• 28:02
  kicking and stuff like that.
• 28:04
  And it was, we just went up to the arena and I don't forget, it was so funny.
• 28:08
  He went and the first thing he did was he ran, we used like big
• 28:11
  steps for mounting the horses.
• 28:13
  And Fred, one of our horses just stand there.
• 28:15
  The first thing he did was he ran up the steps and he bit Fred on the neck.
• 28:19
  And, and Fred just sort of turned around and looked at him like, what you that for?
• 28:23
  And I was just like, yeah, whatever.
• 28:25
  And and he ran back down.
• 28:26
  He was running around the arena and, and I could see the dad, 'cause the
• 28:29
  dad was like, you know, the first thing his response was, and he looked at me
• 28:33
  to see what was my response gonna be.
• 28:35
  And I was like, don't worry, he's fine.
• 28:37
  He will come back, he'll come back.
• 28:38
  We'll let him come back.
• 28:40
  And, and as you well know, our arena in that day, those
• 28:42
  days it wasn't quite as safe.
• 28:45
  It was quite near the road and the car park and, and people could
• 28:48
  look over the fence and watch you.
• 28:50
  That's one thing I really don't miss in our new building is
• 28:53
  being by the general public.
• 28:55
  And so, yeah, and then eventually he came back to the horse and then
• 28:58
  we were like, do you wanna get on?
• 29:00
  And we did, and we went for a bit of a walk around the field and he, he
• 29:05
  kept Headbut the horse and his dad was sort of saying, you know, this is, it.
• 29:10
  It's, it's just sort of that overwhelming feel feeling of this.
• 29:15
  And Fred actually kind of led the session really, because every time he headbutted
• 29:18
  Fred on the neck, Fred just stopped.
• 29:21
  And then, and then we were like, well, he'll go again if you stop.
• 29:24
  And so we walked again and then he'd headbut Fred again, and Fred would stop.
• 29:28
  And then we were like, do you wanna get off?
• 29:29
  And he was like that.
• 29:30
  And it was just the first, probably one of the first sessions where
• 29:33
  it was completely led by him.
• 29:35
  I didn't put any 'cause because I had had no time to prepare or
• 29:39
  think about what I was gonna do.
• 29:40
  We were just winging it basically.
• 29:42
  And and it went really, really well.
• 29:44
  And he came for a good few years, that kid.
• 29:47
  And then they, and it just worked really well.
• 29:49
  And then they got an assistance dog and that worked really well.
• 29:51
  'cause he'd already had the experience with the horses.
• 29:53
  And yeah, I, I suppose that was probably one of the first sessions that made
• 29:57
  me think, actually I need to just follow my instinct doing this now
• 30:03
  rather than what I think I should do.
• 30:05
  I should just follow my instinct.
• 30:08
  Rupert Isaacson: Previously.
• 30:09
  If you had been in a previous incarnation of yourself trying to
• 30:14
  follow what you thought you should do, what would you have thought you
• 30:18
  should have done in that situation?
• 30:21
  Lucy Dillon: Probably try to get him on the horse quicker and get
• 30:25
  him to hold the rope and stuff.
• 30:27
  I, I like to think I was always, even as a horse riding instructor I was
• 30:32
  always quite relaxed with the kids.
• 30:35
  I, we were talking about teaching Pony camp, actually
• 30:37
  pony club there a while ago.
• 30:38
  'Cause my business makes you feel old, doesn't it?
• 30:40
  My new member of staff would've been a child at Pony Club when
• 30:42
  I used to teach Pony Club.
• 30:45
  I was, I always used to sort of, and even in Pony club, I wasn't
• 30:49
  that one that was like, come on, everybody's tech needs to be spotless.
• 30:52
  Isn't the yard spotless and blah, blah, blah?
• 30:54
  So accordingly, I used to sometimes get the kids who weren't those type
• 30:57
  of kids and we'd have a bit of crack.
• 30:59
  And so I don't think, I was never really that super strict
• 31:03
  horse riding instructor anyway.
• 31:05
  My kids would probably say completely differently about, but
• 31:10
  I, I was never, I've never been that super strict horsey person.
• 31:15
  And I do think most, and it's funny when we talk to run instructors who are
• 31:21
  looking into going into this and we talk to them about their own places and their
• 31:25
  own horses and we talk about the Yes.
• 31:28
  Environment, like the horse boy Yes.
• 31:29
  Environment that, you know, if the kid wants to run up and, and the
• 31:32
  ham touching them, they all love the horse of tails, don't they?
• 31:36
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 31:36
  Lucy Dillon: You know.
• 31:37
  Start touching the horse's tail.
• 31:38
  It's fine.
• 31:39
  And I always say to people, you know, think about your riding school ponies.
• 31:42
  Would you really be worried about someone doing that with them?
• 31:45
  Because actually they, they, they're not, they're probably not in your
• 31:48
  riding school if you're worried about 'em doing that sort of thing, are you?
• 31:50
  And then most of them are like, well, yeah, actually, you know, and, and think
• 31:54
  about, I always say this to people as well, think about your own pony you
• 31:56
  had when you were a kid, you had a yes environment around that pony, didn't you?
• 32:01
  Who climbed up on their pony in the field?
• 32:02
  Who, who, you know, sat down in the stable underneath their pony, while ate
• 32:05
  hay and laid down on the floor and stuff?
• 32:09
  So I, I don't think I've ever been that sort of BHS woman.
• 32:13
  Maybe that's 'cause I didn't come through the sort of pony pump and
• 32:16
  the, as a child, I dunno, I'm done.
• 32:20
  Maybe I'm just lazy.
• 32:24
  Rupert Isaacson: The, the follow the child thing of course goes
• 32:26
  much deeper than that though.
• 32:27
  Like when.
• 32:28
  I'm doing it for example, because, you know, I, I was taught
• 32:31
  that really by Temple Grandin.
• 32:34
  Okay.
• 32:34
  I had a sort of my temperament, like yours is more that way anyway.
• 32:38
  But, you know, she was the one who really explained to me, Rupert, if
• 32:41
  you're going to reach somebody who doesn't really want to communicate,
• 32:45
  I autom, you know, self ism, then you have to really meet them where they are.
• 32:51
  You gotta find out what interests them and really follow those obsessional interests.
• 32:55
  And of course, in my early days with horse boy, with my son, I mean,
• 32:58
  I had, I could do that because I had the, the leisure to do that.
• 33:02
  And then of course as we began to build new trails, the ranch we had the luxury
• 33:09
  of working usually with very, very small groups or one-to-one or so on.
• 33:15
  You guys didn't have that luxury.
• 33:17
  And there was a necessity of delivering services to many, many kids.
• 33:23
  Often at the same time.
• 33:25
  And I was often impressed at how you guys managed to take
• 33:28
  the, follow the child ethos into that more institutional setting.
• 33:33
  Can you tell us, I, I think it's really useful for a lot of people who are
• 33:38
  going to this as a career now, and you yourself are now teaching people how
• 33:41
  to do this as a career when someone is gonna follow the child in that way.
• 33:46
  But yeah, they don't have the luxury of maybe one-to-one, they don't
• 33:51
  have the luxury of a lot of time.
• 33:55
  How, how, how are we gonna do that?
• 34:00
  Lucy Dillon: I suppose, I think one thing we always make really clear to parents
• 34:04
  or, or the caregiver or whoever comes with a child is, you know, yes, the get
• 34:11
  on the horse, it's a bonus, but that's not the B end or an end all of this.
• 34:17
  And I think that's a really important thing to.
• 34:19
  Get into your head.
• 34:21
  Even just being with a horse can help.
• 34:25
  And so we, it is hard sometimes in, you know, we run on half an hour slots.
• 34:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 34:32
  Lucy Dillon: Now we run them on 45 minute slots, but they're half an hour sessions.
• 34:36
  But to allow part, partly the fact that we're, 'cause we're in the city center,
• 34:39
  it allows people to like, get stuck in traffic and not have a freak out
• 34:41
  that they're gonna be 10 minutes late.
• 34:43
  But I, I dunno really, I suppose just, I just think the whole environment
• 34:50
  now creates that environment anyway.
• 34:54
  And that probably possibly helps, I think we see, follow the child
• 34:57
  bit most with the school groups.
• 34:59
  So we see a huge number of school groups.
• 35:02
  The end of this academic year, I have seen 27 different school classes.
• 35:06
  So that's six kids for six weeks and they come for like an hour.
• 35:09
  To be honest, most of the time we don't fill the full hour.
• 35:12
  'cause that's a lot.
• 35:13
  Most of these kids are, they're primary school age, so that, that's a long
• 35:16
  time for a primary school kid to focus.
• 35:20
  Yeah.
• 35:21
  And so with the school groups we have, there'd be six kids and there'd
• 35:24
  be generally three instructors, if not four, there in the group.
• 35:30
  And so you have an idea of what you're gonna do with the group, but we,
• 35:35
  it's very much, and even in the old yard, we used to do this, you could
• 35:38
  shut the gate at the top of the yard.
• 35:40
  If a group came in, you could shut.
• 35:42
  We had like a little picket fence you could kind of shut
• 35:44
  and the yard was closed in then.
• 35:46
  And you make your environment safe and they'll come in and you can then just
• 35:50
  say to the SNAs and the teacher relax.
• 35:53
  They can't go anywhere.
• 35:54
  Doesn't matter what they do with the horses.
• 35:57
  These horses are not, these horses are trained for their job, you know, because
• 36:00
  particularly actually being in the city center, a lot of people's perception
• 36:03
  of horses is, is quite different.
• 36:06
  So you sort of see the teachers and stuff like panicking as the kids
• 36:09
  will come running in at a hundred miles an hour into the horses.
• 36:12
  So you, you've set it up then with the teachers and the SNAs.
• 36:16
  And now actually what I do is I, I actually send them all the information
• 36:19
  before they come and there's information about the problem and the solution, the
• 36:24
  cortisol and, and the oxytocin and I, and there's information about what's
• 36:28
  expected from them and they get there.
• 36:30
  Hopefully they read it.
• 36:31
  I don't know if they do, but I send it anyway.
• 36:34
  And so the school groups come in and they come in.
• 36:36
  They're like a whirlwind when they come in, these kids.
• 36:39
  But we actually almost, you don't encourage it, but
• 36:41
  we do almost encourage it.
• 36:43
  And then you, you just, that when a kid comes in and they know they're
• 36:48
  allowed to come in and run up the hay, which they all absolutely love.
• 36:51
  It was gas when we moved into the new building.
• 36:54
  We have a community group that come every week.
• 36:56
  And these, this will be a parents group of parents, children of
• 37:00
  autism, huge community group.
• 37:01
  There's, there's about 40 families in it and it's in ringed, which would be
• 37:04
  right in the city center of Dublin.
• 37:06
  And they came in and one of the first things they said to me when they came
• 37:09
  into the new state was, where's the hey?
• 37:11
  I was like, it's there behind you.
• 37:13
  I was, thank God, because that's all they like doing is climbing up the hay.
• 37:16
  So we create this environment where the kids can just kind of, you know, just
• 37:21
  run around and be, and it's just have fun and then you can very quickly see,
• 37:27
  well, which is your kid that, you know, you need to get on that horse and give
• 37:30
  loads of movement to, which is your kid.
• 37:31
  You're gonna actually, let's get this one up last.
• 37:34
  'cause he needs to watch everybody else get on first.
• 37:37
  And, and then, or even one who actually, do you know what, maybe one
• 37:40
  instructor might just take that kid off by themselves 'cause this is a bit
• 37:44
  overwhelming what's going on around here.
• 37:45
  They might be better just going off by themselves and
• 37:48
  doing something really quiet.
• 37:49
  And so that's how I, I suppose that kind of sums up child led that even if
• 37:54
  they're coming in a group of six, you're still looking at them all individually.
• 37:58
  And some will, so for example we had a school group on Thursday and now
• 38:03
  actually only three of them came.
• 38:04
  And two of them were really keen on what we were doing.
• 38:06
  We were finding we'd found the horse's names on our trail, like a piece
• 38:10
  of paper with the horse's name on.
• 38:12
  And then we were going back to the arena 'cause it was raining.
• 38:14
  And on the arena side was the letters and they had to find the letters to spell it.
• 38:18
  Now, one of the little ones, it was obviously he wasn't gonna want to do
• 38:22
  that, so, but he was loving himself outside there, so they just stayed
• 38:25
  outside while the others came back in.
• 38:27
  So I suppose that kind of means being child led, not having an agenda.
• 38:31
  Having an agenda, but not sticking to it.
• 38:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
• 38:35
  I think that's, we, we have to sort of have these plans to go in feeling
• 38:39
  regulated ourselves, knowing that we're gonna go into a dysregulated
• 38:42
  environment, but we are ready to abandon that plan at the drop of a hat to
• 38:47
  just follow what that kid wants to do.
• 38:50
  And I, I do definitely see that some people adapt to that really naturally.
• 38:54
  Other people struggle with it and need to go through kind of a, a
• 38:58
  learning curve, but if one doesn't do it, it's just not gonna work.
• 39:03
  Particularly with people that don't follow cognitively, don't
• 39:05
  yet follow top down instruction.
• 39:07
  You know, you can, it's like if I don't learn Chinese, you can yell
• 39:11
  at me in Chinese, but I'm still not gonna understand Chinese.
• 39:13
  And, and yelling loud is not gonna make me understand it anymore.
• 39:16
  You said earlier though, also having confidence in your horse and some
• 39:21
  of that is of course, training.
• 39:23
  But a lot of it is the wellbeing of the horse.
• 39:25
  And when I first.
• 39:27
  Was doing trainings and even actually before I was doing trainings and the horse
• 39:32
  boy had just been published and I was going round doing a lot of fundraisers
• 39:36
  for a lot of therapeutic riding places.
• 39:39
  And I realized quite quickly that a lot of the horses didn't have much wellbeing.
• 39:44
  That they were quiet but stiff, so not so happy.
• 39:50
  And I remember thinking, how can this horse who doesn't really
• 39:55
  have wellbeing, give wellbeing when it doesn't have it to give?
• 39:59
  And by then of course, I knew about the necessity of oxytocin and of horse
• 40:04
  going in sort of soft collection so that the hips can rock and the kid
• 40:08
  so that they will get the oxytocin, communication hormone and speak.
• 40:11
  That had been explained to me by then.
• 40:13
  So I knew that no horse is gonna be able to do that unless they also have
• 40:17
  a kind of wellbeing in their body.
• 40:19
  So you walked into the situation there, you and Terry.
• 40:23
  At Child Vision and you had to create this equine wellbeing, and you had
• 40:28
  to do it in a way that wasn't optimal in terms of the environment because
• 40:34
  you're in the middle of a city.
• 40:36
  So you had limited options there.
• 40:38
  You guys are, were very quickly one of the gold standards, in my
• 40:43
  opinion, for equine wellbeing.
• 40:45
  How, and you now show other people how to do it.
• 40:48
  This is super important for people that are gonna go into the industry.
• 40:52
  Talk to us about equine wellbeing, what it means for you, mental, physical emotional.
• 40:56
  What do you do to ensure that?
• 40:59
  And particularly what do you do to ensure that when you are in the middle
• 41:02
  of the city, can you talk to us?
• 41:04
  Yeah.
• 41:05
  Lucy Dillon: I, I think when you make your horses feel good
• 41:11
  about themselves physically
• 41:13
  Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm.
• 41:14
  Lucy Dillon: Feel good, you know, it's the same with us, isn't it?
• 41:16
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 41:17
  Lucy Dillon: Feel good.
• 41:18
  If you physically feel good, you mentally feel that, you know, that's,
• 41:21
  and I'm, I'm probably even more,
• 41:23
  Rupert Isaacson: it has to start in the body.
• 41:24
  I agree.
• 41:25
  Lucy Dillon: Yeah.
• 41:25
  And I think probably even more so for, for a horse.
• 41:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 41:29
  Lucy Dillon: And I know, and I am really aware of our environment.
• 41:32
  And so like that, the new building has been fantastic 'cause it's all super
• 41:36
  duper and the horses can all talk to each other over the walls of their stables.
• 41:40
  Or the one thing we've realized now is when you give one horse a
• 41:43
  treat, everybody else can see it.
• 41:44
  So, so we're cutting down on the treats at the moment.
• 41:49
  But yeah, they, they, and, and actually even the old stables, the way the stables,
• 41:54
  'cause they were very old buildings, very beautiful like, old coach house.
• 41:58
  Yeah.
• 41:58
  And, and the stables, they were all very beautiful looking weren't they?
• 42:01
  And everything.
• 42:02
  Yeah.
• 42:02
  From visual impairment point of view, they were really not very good.
• 42:05
  But even there, even in those stables, each horse could
• 42:08
  actually touch its name, but.
• 42:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
• 42:11
  Lucy Dillon: Which was important.
• 42:13
  I think even like, I, I'm a great advocate of the riding school pony and, and pe.
• 42:19
  Their riding school ponies get so much stick and people who have
• 42:22
  them get so much stick for, not like, oh, the riding school pony.
• 42:25
  Wanna look after 'em.
• 42:25
  I wouldn't give my horse to a riding school.
• 42:27
  I gave my pony to a riding school.
• 42:29
  I have a little pony.
• 42:29
  Depends
• 42:30
  Rupert Isaacson: on the riding school.
• 42:31
  Depends on the riding school.
• 42:32
  Yeah.
• 42:32
  Yeah,
• 42:32
  Lucy Dillon: yeah.
• 42:33
  But I gave my pony to a fabulous woman up in me.
• 42:35
  In You've met Rita and Marita her daughter.
• 42:38
  Yeah.
• 42:39
  And 'cause crunchy.
• 42:40
  He's been up there for three years because I know she looks after them really well.
• 42:43
  Yes, they work hard, but they look after them really well.
• 42:47
  They have great crack with them.
• 42:48
  They have great variety in their life and they live in gangs.
• 42:52
  And actually that's what horses want to do is live in gangs.
• 42:56
  That's one of the biggest things with horses.
• 42:58
  So for our horses in Child Vision, I think the way we made them happier
• 43:03
  was, the big thing was make them feel really good in their body.
• 43:06
  And you see it now with who's, well bull, who's still in the
• 43:10
  service, who's a fabulous horse.
• 43:12
  He'll be 24 this year.
• 43:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 43:14
  Lucy Dillon: And he gets lunch three times a week and he loves it.
• 43:18
  Like he's waiting for you to tell him to do a walk counter.
• 43:20
  Like sometimes he'll just do it anyway.
• 43:22
  And you're like, no, I didn't actually ask you to do that.
• 43:23
  But and, but even and, and Ian hand work and, and they, I, I, I dunno.
• 43:31
  I suppose if you look after your horses nicely and you have consistency with
• 43:38
  them, consistency in their handling, consistency in their routines, you
• 43:42
  make them, you train them in such a way that they feel good about
• 43:45
  themselves, you feed them properly so they have the energy to do their job.
• 43:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 43:50
  And they are sociable with each other.
• 43:52
  That's the big thing.
• 43:53
  So I think the thing with our horses, yes, they are in the city center.
• 43:56
  Yes.
• 43:56
  They don't have turnout.
• 43:58
  So we have like, the way the new stables have been designed,
• 44:00
  we have a little playpen for them that's, it's not that big.
• 44:04
  It sort of wraps around the back of the stables, but they also, then it links
• 44:07
  to some of the stables have windows that we can open, and then if someone's in
• 44:10
  the playpen, they can actually put their head in the window and talk to three
• 44:12
  or four of them through the window.
• 44:14
  But they don't have big turnout, so they, so they have to, we rent land
• 44:18
  and they go on holiday four times a year to just have a week of nobody.
• 44:22
  So they're going to Easter again.
• 44:23
  They were out at Christmas.
• 44:24
  But they're very tight little herd.
• 44:26
  I think that's another thing that's really important for horses is that they
• 44:29
  are, they have their gang just like us.
• 44:32
  You know?
• 44:33
  We need our gang.
• 44:34
  Like my, you know, I'm, I'm blessed.
• 44:35
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 44:36
  Stability, stability within the herd is a wonderful thing if one can have it.
• 44:39
  Yeah.
• 44:40
  Lucy Dillon: Yeah.
• 44:40
  And and they are, they're a really tight little gang now.
• 44:44
  I've just added two new into it, so I'm waiting till after they've had
• 44:49
  their Easter holidays before I start using those two in group sessions.
• 44:52
  Because they'll be in the gang properly by the time they've had
• 44:55
  a week in the field altogether.
• 44:57
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 44:57
  Lucy Dillon: They have met, they've all met each other, but they haven't, you
• 45:00
  know, bonded as the, the gang as such.
• 45:03
  So yeah, I suppose we just, and when I did notice that when I first started
• 45:07
  working at Child Vision, and Terry hadn't long started there either.
• 45:10
  Some of the horses weren't great.
• 45:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 45:13
  They weren't suited for that job.
• 45:14
  They didn't like the high volume of people coming up to 'em every day.
• 45:18
  They didn't like having another horse really close to them.
• 45:22
  And some, and that's, you know, that's horses.
• 45:24
  Some do just, some don't.
• 45:25
  You know, I may here at home and she just wants to do her job and
• 45:29
  then put me back in the field.
• 45:29
  Leave me alone please.
• 45:31
  She's not that fuss around, fuss around, fuss around type of horse.
• 45:35
  Whereas I have another pony who actually has now joined Child Vision.
• 45:38
  My daughter's pony 'cause she's at university.
• 45:41
  I knew one when she's got too busy to keep riding him.
• 45:44
  He was the one every time you went to the field, he's like,
• 45:45
  hello, can you bring me in please?
• 45:48
  So I knew he'd be brilliant for child vision.
• 45:49
  He loves it, all the attention and, and he loves the other horses and being
• 45:55
  close to other horses all the time.
• 45:57
  So yeah, I suppose you just, you've gotta have the right horses
• 46:00
  in there as well for the job.
• 46:02
  Rupert Isaacson: You do, but you, you've actually elucidated
• 46:04
  quite a good structure there.
• 46:06
  So you've said, okay, your horses get lunged.
• 46:08
  You know, so we know that's gonna help them feel good in the back because that's
• 46:12
  where the, that's where the monkeys are sitting is up there on that back.
• 46:16
  Yeah.
• 46:16
  And I remember bull, you know, you, you, you, he's one of my favorite horses,
• 46:20
  boy horses partly 'cause he's so pretty.
• 46:22
  'cause he's such a lovely pie ball SKU ball.
• 46:24
  But also, I remember watching you guys transform him from a horse with
• 46:30
  a very sore back and, and the attitude that would go with that to a horse
• 46:36
  that felt really good in his body and whose back issues were always
• 46:41
  just managed and assuaged and yogurt.
• 46:44
  And I really watched you guys do that.
• 46:46
  And, and you, you also talked about echo.
• 46:48
  You know, who.
• 46:49
  I first encountered in her mid late twenties and sort of went on
• 46:53
  to be this kind of super horse.
• 46:56
  'cause you effectively reverse aged her.
• 46:58
  So you lunge them, you work them in hand, you have an integrated herd.
• 47:02
  They can all touch each other.
• 47:03
  They have playpens and then you also rotate them out to the country regularly
• 47:09
  so that they can get a good break, eat grass in their herd, and then come back.
• 47:16
  I think it's really good for people to have an idea of
• 47:19
  that sort of structure, right?
• 47:20
  Because often within the horsey world there's, you know, a thousand conflicting
• 47:26
  opinions and people often aren't trained communicators, so they're often quite
• 47:30
  vague about what it is they're doing.
• 47:32
  And you have to, even my people who've mentored me, I've had to
• 47:35
  really watch them and kind of dissect and pick apart what they're doing.
• 47:40
  Because they often can't quite communicate their structure.
• 47:43
  But I, I know that you and Terry have these really good structures and it's
• 47:47
  useful for people who are going into the field with this because as you and
• 47:52
  I both know, you can't really, a horse can't really have a bad day when you've
• 47:57
  got a very vulnerable kid up there.
• 48:00
  It's a bit more like going into battle with your horse.
• 48:02
  It's for that hour.
• 48:04
  You and that horse have to be total colleagues.
• 48:08
  I like also what you just said about riding skills.
• 48:10
  I remember one time you had a go at me for saying, Rupert, you s slag off riding
• 48:13
  schools and you know, and I don't slag off riding schools, but what I do do
• 48:18
  is I point out that if they're not well run, horses do suffer and kids suffer.
• 48:24
  And I think we've all experienced that.
• 48:27
  And it used to be.
• 48:29
  I think it's getting a lot better now, but it used to be that that was a bit
• 48:33
  of an accepted norm when we were kids.
• 48:36
  So you noticed when you went to a really good writing school and
• 48:40
  there were all kinds of reasons for that, economically and so on.
• 48:43
  But things have gotten a lot better and perhaps they've gotten a lot better 'cause
• 48:45
  people like you were coming along and showing people how to make them better.
• 48:50
  We also know that riding schools are kind of in trouble.
• 48:52
  It's difficult.
• 48:53
  It's getting more and more difficult for people to make a living, running them.
• 48:57
  And if we don't have them, how are people gonna learn to ride?
• 49:02
  You have a kind of outreach to the community through child
• 49:07
  Vision, where to some degree you operate a little bit like that.
• 49:10
  You are showing people.
• 49:13
  How to ride and interact with horses.
• 49:15
  Do you feel that it's now time for the e for the therapeutic industry in, in
• 49:20
  a funny way to go back to the sort of sport industry and the riding school
• 49:25
  industry and, and say, actually, look, we've evolved technologies here for equine
• 49:32
  and human wellbeing that can benefit you all over there in the commercial sector.
• 49:38
  If you're in the equine assisted field, or if you're considering
• 49:41
  a career in the equine assisted field, you might want to consider
• 49:45
  taking one of our three neuroscience backed equine assisted programs.
• 49:50
  Horseboy method, now established for 20 years, is the original
• 49:56
  Equine assisted program specifically designed for autism, mentored by and
• 50:02
  developed in conjunction with Dr.
• 50:05
  Temple Grandin and many other neuroscientists.
• 50:08
  We work in the saddle with younger children.
• 50:12
  Helping them create oxytocin in their bodies and neuroplasticity in the brain.
• 50:17
  It works incredibly well.
• 50:19
  It's now in about 40 countries.
• 50:21
  Check it out.
• 50:23
  If you're working without horses, you might want to look at movement
• 50:27
  method, which gets a very, very similar effect, but can also be
• 50:30
  applied in schools, in homes.
• 50:32
  If you're working with families, you can give them really tangible exercises to do
• 50:37
  at home that will create neuroplasticity.
• 50:40
  when they're not with you.
• 50:42
  Finally, we have taquine equine integration.
• 50:46
  If you know anything about our programs, you know that we need a
• 50:48
  really high standard of horsemanship in order to create the oxytocin
• 50:52
  in the body of the person that we're working with, child or adult.
• 50:57
  So, this means we need to train a horse in collection, but this
• 51:00
  also has a really beneficial effect on the horse's well being.
• 51:05
  And it also ends your time conflict, where you're wondering, oh my gosh, how
• 51:09
  am I going to condition my horses and maintain them and give them what they
• 51:12
  need, as well as Serving my clients.
• 51:16
  Takine equine integration aimed at a more adult client base
• 51:21
  absolutely gives you this.
• 51:22
  Have you noticed a bit of an interplay now going on as we, as the horse industry
• 51:27
  evolves this way with the more sport oriented side, beginning to look now
• 51:33
  a bit more to the therapeutic side?
• 51:36
  What, what are you noticing?
• 51:37
  Lucy Dillon: I think so.
• 51:38
  I think that I think therapeutic writing is the good news story
• 51:42
  that the equine industry needs.
• 51:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 51:45
  Lucy Dillon: And, and actually I was just talking to someone yesterday about that.
• 51:49
  Now just to give a bit of background, our beautiful new indoor arena is
• 51:54
  in memory of a young man called Jack Bromhead, whose father is Henry
• 51:59
  De Bromhead, who's one of the most successful trainers in this country.
• 52:01
  And Jack was very tragically killed in an accident three and a half years ago,
• 52:06
  pony racing on the beach down in Kerry.
• 52:09
  And so family and friends of the de Bromhead raise the capital
• 52:14
  fund to build our center, and it's named the Jack de Bromhead Center.
• 52:19
  And one of the other things that we hope comes outta this tragic,
• 52:23
  tragic story is that we get a relationship with the racing industry.
• 52:29
  And it's, and it not getting a relationship with the industry, it's
• 52:32
  bringing this sector and what we do to the racing industry because
• 52:36
  Henry is such a high profile.
• 52:39
  Figure in Ireland, he, you know, and he's also, the, the goodwill
• 52:43
  towards that family is, is huge.
• 52:46
  He's, you know, they're a lovely, lovely family.
• 52:49
  And he, they get it as well.
• 52:51
  They really, this isn't just, they've just given the capital fund
• 52:56
  there, there isn't a reason behind.
• 52:58
  They've given the capital fund and equally, Henry and his wife,
• 53:02
  Heather and Amir and Georgia, there are other two children.
• 53:04
  And, but Henry and Heather in particular, they've come and they've seen what we
• 53:07
  do in Child Vision and they get it.
• 53:09
  They understand why we do it.
• 53:10
  If you listen to Henry being interviewed about the center, he can
• 53:14
  talk about econ assist activities.
• 53:16
  He talks about allocation in the city center and how it's so important
• 53:20
  for to be in the city center.
• 53:22
  And so I hope that, I think the industry as a whole is paying more attention to
• 53:28
  this section of the Indus of, of horses.
• 53:30
  I'm very passionate.
• 53:31
  I work with horses.
• 53:33
  That's what I do.
• 53:34
  I work with horses.
• 53:35
  I'm not a therapist.
• 53:37
  I don't wanna be a therapist.
• 53:38
  'cause actually this is something we say when we give training as well,
• 53:41
  it's almost a little bit more, you are less strained by not being a therapist.
• 53:47
  You can follow the child and you can do do crazy stuff with the
• 53:52
  kids because we're not therapists.
• 53:54
  But we, I do think we're, we are building relationships with Show Jumping Island.
• 53:59
  We're building relationships with horse racing island.
• 54:02
  And we are seeing, because there's an we, there is a lot that those
• 54:07
  industries can learn from us.
• 54:08
  And I think as more people start to run centers and more people get into this
• 54:12
  section of the industry, people who have been in other sections of the industry.
• 54:15
  So for example well myself and Terry and David Doyle there and and
• 54:20
  then like that, Sammy Uping, castle Leslie, I I've been talking to one
• 54:24
  of her instructors who wants to.
• 54:26
  You know, be had to develop her program up there eventually.
• 54:30
  These are all strong horse people who are doing this, whereas traditionally, perhaps
• 54:35
  maybe it'd come from the other side.
• 54:37
  And, and so then how do I just say this without sort of sounding a bit righteous,
• 54:44
  but I do think very much it needs to be horse people leading the therapeutic
• 54:49
  equine assisted activities section.
• 54:52
  So that we will get the respect from the rest of the industry.
• 54:56
  We need to change the view of, of what this, we are not just touchy
• 55:01
  feely patting ponies, you know?
• 55:03
  So I'm really strict about when people come down to visit us.
• 55:07
  I explain the science, I explain how we train the horses.
• 55:11
  I show them the horses.
• 55:14
  Because we are not this.
• 55:17
  So for example, yesterday actually we got a very kind, got a nice check from
• 55:21
  the Irish Thorough Breeders Association and it was kind of like the younger
• 55:24
  generation in the Irish thorough breeders to generation through TALs Island.
• 55:29
  And they came down to present the check and bolstered there looking fabulous,
• 55:33
  you know, while they presented the check.
• 55:34
  But meanwhile, the session that was going on in the arena at the time
• 55:37
  was three young lads with their youth workers, with Rachel and Ali.
• 55:41
  My two instructors, and these are lads who are at risk.
• 55:45
  So they, they, they don't have a diagnosis as such, but one of 'em does,
• 55:47
  but they don't have a diagnosis as such.
• 55:49
  But they're school avoiding their prime targets for the
• 55:54
  drug dealers to pick as runners.
• 55:56
  And and so this is an early intervention youth program.
• 56:00
  They all got, half two or three of them have got their own ponies on
• 56:04
  the housing estates in Darndale.
• 56:06
  Now, one of them, Jeanie showed us picture absolutely stunning horse.
• 56:09
  Yes, down there's absolutely stunning Palomino Co.
• 56:13
  And they're in the arena there and we are just trying to one, have
• 56:18
  a crack with them, let them drop the guard and be kids for an hour.
• 56:22
  Stop trying to be the hard boys all the time.
• 56:24
  The other thing is also then teach 'em a little bit how to handle the
• 56:27
  horses nicely and then, and then how to like, so Rachel was teaching them
• 56:31
  to long re and stuff so they can go back and do it with their own ponies.
• 56:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 56:35
  Lucy Dillon: They're in the arena.
• 56:36
  One of our ponies, Brad, is standing there at the mountain block.
• 56:39
  There's three kids all around him, and then they're doing this thing where
• 56:42
  one's getting on and the other one's leading the other one, and they're
• 56:44
  going as fast as they can to see if they can actually make each other fall off.
• 56:47
  That, that was the aim.
• 56:49
  And this leads into follow the child.
• 56:51
  That's, you know, that's as far as you can get from the strict riding
• 56:53
  instructor as you can get, isn't it?
• 56:55
  Actively trying to make the kid jump on the horse and they're running round and
• 57:00
  round and round, having so much crack and then they're all waving the whips.
• 57:04
  'cause what is it about young boys and whips like, they just, they
• 57:08
  just wanna crack 'em and wave them.
• 57:10
  And the, the three guys from thoroughbred Readers Association,
• 57:14
  like Jesus, look at that horse.
• 57:15
  He's just standing, France's just standing there in the middle of it all
• 57:18
  and they're like cracking whips all around him and he's just standing there.
• 57:21
  And that's again about the confidence thing.
• 57:22
  And I said, well, you know, I said, if you look really closely, you'll
• 57:24
  see Brad close his eyes in a minute.
• 57:26
  Because Brad, he does, Brad takes any opportunity for a little nap.
• 57:29
  So there's Brad, Brad's in the middle of it, all his eyes half closed.
• 57:32
  There's three lads running around him waving whips.
• 57:35
  And I think that's really important to show people like that.
• 57:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 57:39
  Lucy Dillon: That we, you know, these are really good horses.
• 57:42
  These aren't, we're not dragging horses around arenas and pat people on the back.
• 57:46
  Aren't you great sitting on the horse?
• 57:48
  It's actually full on wild session sort of thing.
• 57:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 57:54
  And the horsemanship that goes into that is Yes.
• 57:57
  Huge.
• 57:58
  Lucy Dillon: Yeah.
• 57:58
  The
• 57:58
  Rupert Isaacson: horse, you know, you guys, I think in Ireland are
• 58:02
  really at the cutting edge, you know?
• 58:05
  There's involvement from horse sport island.
• 58:08
  There's involvement from the Thoroughbred Association now
• 58:11
  it's coming into the other areas.
• 58:14
  Show jumping as you say.
• 58:15
  Because of course all these people are having to look for what's the aftercare,
• 58:19
  what's the second career for these horses?
• 58:22
  But also there's money coming from those sectors now into the therapy world.
• 58:26
  And this of course, was not.
• 58:27
  So when we were all beginning and I work a lot in the USA, the
• 58:32
  Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance there is getting more and more active.
• 58:36
  Some of the horse boy places like square peg in California definitely
• 58:40
  have that relationship with them.
• 58:42
  But your average place over there, and I think to a large
• 58:45
  degree in the UK as well, is very self-supporting and a bit isolated.
• 58:50
  And I, one of the things that really encourages me about Ireland is this
• 58:56
  embracing by the horse industry of the therapeutic side of things which I
• 59:01
  think will spill over to other countries because other countries do look to
• 59:07
  Ireland as a sort of horse authority.
• 59:10
  And whether they're doing that romantically or whether
• 59:13
  they're doing that practically.
• 59:15
  When you talk about, for example, the show jumpers, what, what, what are you
• 59:22
  seeing now coming in from these other parts of, say, the competition industry?
• 59:28
  Because they're the, they're, they're coming under fire, public, you know,
• 59:32
  from the public eye in the way that the racing industry has been for a long time.
• 59:36
  People are starting, you know, there's bad stuff has happened at the Olympics.
• 59:39
  We all know about it.
• 59:40
  You know, more and more the whole public license conversation gets going.
• 59:45
  Are you having to go and court them?
• 59:47
  Are they coming to talk to you?
• 59:49
  What are the conversations that are going on at the moment?
• 59:52
  Lucy Dillon: I think an awareness, I think the thing, I think the reason
• 59:54
  why Ireland probably is a bit more ahead than other countries at this
• 59:59
  is, is it's a very small country.
• 1:00:01
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:00:01
  Lucy Dillon: You know, it's a very, very small country.
• 1:00:04
  So everybody, has everybody knows everybody.
• 1:00:09
  I mean, I really noticed that when I first moved here.
• 1:00:12
  I, you know, I came from North London, like, you know, so, and you
• 1:00:16
  know, it is a very small country and, and there's certain circles
• 1:00:18
  that all move around together.
• 1:00:20
  And I, I suppose so then it's sort of people naturally reach
• 1:00:25
  out to each other for support.
• 1:00:27
  That's the way it works in this country.
• 1:00:30
  Mm.
• 1:00:30
  Who, you know.
• 1:00:31
  And and so then, so the more people get into therapeutic riding and particularly
• 1:00:35
  ones who have maybe previously been a, a competition rider in the past
• 1:00:41
  or knows or has worked with people it just brings everybody into it.
• 1:00:45
  I think also equally in Ireland, as a country, and I noticed this when I
• 1:00:51
  moved here, you know, 27 years ago.
• 1:00:54
  And I suppose other countries probably are the same now, but in those days even
• 1:00:57
  as well, disabilities are much more open.
• 1:01:01
  And and I think everybody I dunno what I'm trying to say here really, but I think
• 1:01:08
  especially in the horse industry, it is a very small industry.
• 1:01:12
  So I You have connections everywhere with people.
• 1:01:17
  Yeah.
• 1:01:18
  And so if I might meet someone and they're down the country and that they're, they've
• 1:01:22
  come to Child Vision and they're here for some corporate thing or something,
• 1:01:25
  and I'll say you know, well, you know, have you heard of Li Skin at Farm?
• 1:01:28
  And that, and they'll probably know someone who knows someone, or
• 1:01:33
  they know someone who attends it.
• 1:01:34
  They, it's, and I think that's probably gonna help with Ireland.
• 1:01:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:01:39
  Lucy Dillon: There is also a thing where in Ireland, everybody has to
• 1:01:43
  come together because if you don't come together, you're gonna be the odd one out.
• 1:01:48
  So come together.
• 1:01:50
  And the horse spot island have been very encouraging.
• 1:01:56
  Like I think they want to bring this section in.
• 1:01:59
  And again, as I just said earlier, I, as more and more strong equine places
• 1:02:07
  come along, the more they will listen.
• 1:02:10
  And then as, as we, I'm part of a like national network of people doing this.
• 1:02:15
  And you came to the thing, castle Leslie, where we would walk the HSE
• 1:02:19
  and the NHS and, and people like that.
• 1:02:21
  And, and we are, I'm lucky in the sense that I come from a large
• 1:02:24
  organization, so I have the backup of a large organization behind me to
• 1:02:28
  allow me to do that sort of thing.
• 1:02:29
  I'm, I'm, I'm not a sole practitioner.
• 1:02:32
  But there's very.
• 1:02:34
  I like to think now there's very little gatekeeping on what we do here.
• 1:02:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
• 1:02:38
  Lucy Dillon: I and this is one of the things we say at Child Vision.
• 1:02:41
  Anyone can come and visit us.
• 1:02:42
  Anybody can come and see what we do.
• 1:02:44
  Come and shadow us for the day.
• 1:02:46
  See what we do.
• 1:02:47
  'cause I could be doing, I could build a whole nother child vision
• 1:02:52
  in still on the north side.
• 1:02:54
  Actually, the north side of Dublin is, there's anyone who's not Irish.
• 1:02:58
  The north side of the dub are Dublin.
• 1:02:59
  And then the south side is the more Porsche side we are on the north side.
• 1:03:03
  That you could have a har, you could have a center like Ion doing
• 1:03:06
  Equis activities in every city.
• 1:03:09
  Rupert Isaacson: I agree.
• 1:03:10
  Lucy Dillon: And they'd still have waiting lists.
• 1:03:12
  Rupert Isaacson: I agree.
• 1:03:13
  Lucy Dillon: Because of what you do.
• 1:03:14
  And so we're, there's no gatekeeping on what we do.
• 1:03:17
  I'm not special.
• 1:03:18
  I'm, you know, anybody can do this.
• 1:03:20
  If, if you're learning and you wanna have a bit of crack, so I think
• 1:03:24
  hopefully the more we talk about it and the more I think as well, hopefully
• 1:03:27
  we make it accessible to people.
• 1:03:30
  'cause I think a lot of people don't get into it kind assisted activities
• 1:03:33
  'cause they think they might do it wrong.
• 1:03:35
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:03:37
  Lucy Dillon: And so like that a lot of riding schools are, are, are being asked
• 1:03:41
  to say, maybe take an autism class.
• 1:03:43
  And they're afraid to,
• 1:03:44
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 1:03:45
  Lucy Dillon: Afraid they're gonna do it wrong.
• 1:03:47
  And I, that's one thing we say when we give training, we sort
• 1:03:50
  of give two different types of training here at Child Fisher.
• 1:03:53
  But one of the things we say in both of those training is, you
• 1:03:57
  know, cut yourself some slack.
• 1:03:59
  Even if you do get it wrong, it's only come from a good place.
• 1:04:02
  It's not like you to to go out and do it wrong and make it,
• 1:04:06
  make a mess of it, you know?
• 1:04:07
  And several times, you know, more than several actually, to be honest, you know,
• 1:04:13
  I've had to sort of say to the parents, sorry, I think I might have just read.
• 1:04:16
  A child there too much, you know?
• 1:04:20
  And, but it's fine.
• 1:04:21
  And, and I think, I think that's something maybe that's actually you
• 1:04:24
  can come back to you say you know, what kind of help you be child led.
• 1:04:27
  I, well, my children might disagree with you, but I always felt growing up as a
• 1:04:32
  a when my children were growing up and parenting, you know, I of course I'm,
• 1:04:36
  you know, made huge mistakes as everybody does, but I was always quite quick to sort
• 1:04:41
  of apologize to them if they, if I did them, my, my, my parents were the same.
• 1:04:46
  They, they, you know, if they had made a wrong decision about something,
• 1:04:49
  they always apologized to me.
• 1:04:51
  That's
• 1:04:51
  Rupert Isaacson: interesting.
• 1:04:52
  That's unusual.
• 1:04:53
  Yeah.
• 1:04:53
  Lucy Dillon: My, my mom bless her, she, she's passed away a long time now.
• 1:04:56
  She she was, yeah, she was very forward thinking in her way.
• 1:05:01
  So, so consequently, we were very we always had a very honest
• 1:05:05
  relationship with our parents.
• 1:05:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:05:08
  My dad is my dad's fab.
• 1:05:09
  He is fab.
• 1:05:10
  You know, I'm very lucky.
• 1:05:11
  I have a really, really good What does
• 1:05:12
  Rupert Isaacson: your dad do?
• 1:05:13
  What, what did your parents do?
• 1:05:15
  Lucy Dillon: He was an accountant.
• 1:05:16
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:05:17
  Lucy Dillon: But his father was a milkman and he had a horse in Tottenham
• 1:05:20
  Rupert Isaacson: in London.
• 1:05:21
  Okay.
• 1:05:21
  Oh, so it did run in the family a bit?
• 1:05:22
  Lucy Dillon: No, not really.
• 1:05:24
  Although my mom, my mom did say, my mom always kind of said that
• 1:05:28
  if she'd have been born, she was born in North London as well.
• 1:05:30
  If she'd have been born in the countryside, maybe she
• 1:05:31
  would've been more into it.
• 1:05:33
  And when I was 16, they bought me a horse and the plan was that my mom took
• 1:05:37
  some lessons and she wanted to try and learn to ride it on the days where I
• 1:05:40
  wasn't allowed to go and see it, you know, the days I had to do my homework.
• 1:05:43
  And she did it a few times and then she fell off.
• 1:05:46
  And and then she was like, she used to just go and take
• 1:05:48
  it for a walk with the dogs.
• 1:05:52
  But yeah, they like there isn't really a horse connection for the family.
• 1:05:57
  But animals, we always had animals, you know, we always had dogs, we
• 1:06:00
  always had cats and stuff like that.
• 1:06:04
  Rupert Isaacson: You talk about the trainings, you're doing trainings and
• 1:06:07
  I know that you and Terry, obviously you teach Horse Boy and movement
• 1:06:11
  method, but you've, you guys have also developed your own course curriculum,
• 1:06:16
  which is a really interesting one.
• 1:06:18
  Which is for people wanting to enter the industry, the, the
• 1:06:23
  therapeutic end of the industry.
• 1:06:24
  Maybe people who are horse, young horse professionals coming out of
• 1:06:28
  agricultural college or having done their BHS exams and thinking, can
• 1:06:33
  I, can I make a living at this?
• 1:06:36
  Which is a new thing, right?
• 1:06:37
  Because up until recently the answer would've be no, you can't
• 1:06:40
  you, you're gonna beggar yourself doing the therapeutic thing.
• 1:06:42
  But recently this has changed and funding is available and more and
• 1:06:47
  more it's becoming a, a, a viable career and, you guys have developed a
• 1:06:51
  course which looks at a whole range of options for people wanting to enter.
• 1:06:57
  Talk to us about that.
• 1:06:58
  'cause that's quite pioneering and I think could be quite ground
• 1:07:02
  groundbreaking for other countries.
• 1:07:04
  Lucy Dillon: Yeah.
• 1:07:05
  So we, the course was developed
• 1:07:07
  Rupert Isaacson: what's it called by the way?
• 1:07:09
  Lucy Dillon: It's, well, it's changed its name now actually
• 1:07:11
  with the new certification.
• 1:07:12
  It's called Equine Assisted Activities Coaching Course.
• 1:07:16
  Okay.
• 1:07:16
  As opposed to therapeutic writing.
• 1:07:17
  'cause it's more than therapeutic writing.
• 1:07:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
• 1:07:19
  Lucy Dillon: And that's actually, we don't call the service therapeutic writing,
• 1:07:22
  we call it equine assisted activities.
• 1:07:23
  'cause that kind of 'cause it isn't just about writing.
• 1:07:27
  So the course, we, the course was written in 2020, really?
• 1:07:32
  2019.
• 1:07:33
  By myself, Terry Broin, who was the unit manager at the time Audrey Darby, who
• 1:07:37
  was the OT that worked here at the time.
• 1:07:39
  And Gerald, no, Neil, who is also retired from 12.
• 1:07:42
  I'm the only one remaining who's, who was like head of
• 1:07:46
  training and stuff in television.
• 1:07:48
  So she was the one who kind of took all our ideas and
• 1:07:50
  put it into a nice structure.
• 1:07:52
  And basically the course is to sort of, kind of summarize up in a course what
• 1:07:59
  myself and Terry did in the, the first few years when we worked here, which
• 1:08:03
  was, well, myself in particular, come in as a writing instructor and then
• 1:08:07
  become an EQU activities instructor.
• 1:08:10
  So when we were sort of planning what to put into the course, I
• 1:08:13
  kind of just sat down and thought, okay, what have I learned?
• 1:08:17
  In the last three years and just sort of wrote it all down.
• 1:08:20
  And then we sort of put structure onto it because like that, as I said earlier,
• 1:08:23
  there's a lot of transferable skills.
• 1:08:26
  You know, if, if you've, well, one, we don't teach people how to look
• 1:08:29
  after horses on the course because they're qualified riding instructors.
• 1:08:33
  They know how to look after horses.
• 1:08:34
  We don't teach them how to teach people because they have a qualification in that.
• 1:08:39
  So they've learned about teaching and they've had experience of teaching.
• 1:08:42
  But we teach them then how to apply those skills in a different way.
• 1:08:46
  And then we give them all the information, sort of general
• 1:08:49
  background information on disabilities.
• 1:08:51
  But when we give the background information on disabilities, it's not sort
• 1:08:54
  of like, well, this condition is this.
• 1:08:55
  It's, yes, it is.
• 1:08:57
  Like, you know, cerebral palsy is this, it's caused by this, et cetera, et cetera.
• 1:09:01
  But the way it could affect someone on a horse is this, this, this, this, this.
• 1:09:05
  And the way it could, you can benefit the person by putting them on the
• 1:09:08
  horse is this, this, this, this, this.
• 1:09:11
  So that's how the course is very much written.
• 1:09:13
  It's about how to deliver this type of program.
• 1:09:18
  So, but we do talk about doing, we do encourage everybody to then
• 1:09:21
  go and do the Horse Boy as well for the horse training side of it.
• 1:09:25
  But we talk about just running sessions and how to commun.
• 1:09:29
  The big section on the bit of actual running sessions is communication as well,
• 1:09:34
  and how to communicate with people and the different ways to communicate with people.
• 1:09:39
  Yeah, so it's, it's, it is, it is a good course.
• 1:09:42
  I, you know, I really like giving it to people because it's very we,
• 1:09:46
  we try and give it in such a way that's very backwards and forwards.
• 1:09:49
  You know, there's an awful lot of stories from us and stories from them
• 1:09:53
  making it very relatable to people.
• 1:09:57
  So yeah, it is, it's, it's a great course.
• 1:09:59
  I like it.
• 1:10:00
  Rupert Isaacson: So, who has taken this intro course to the
• 1:10:04
  industry that you've seen now go on and do some interesting stuff.
• 1:10:08
  Lucy Dillon: So, a lot of people actually, there's been a lot
• 1:10:11
  of people through the course.
• 1:10:13
  Yeah.
• 1:10:13
  A lot of people have opened up their own bus, like a new
• 1:10:17
  business doing therapeutic.
• 1:10:20
  And then other people who, it's a right, you know, it's a riding school and they've
• 1:10:24
  added it as a section of the riding school and a bit of overlap between
• 1:10:27
  people who have done horse boy as well.
• 1:10:30
  Between the two courses.
• 1:10:31
  'Cause one of the aims of the course is that it, it's very accessible.
• 1:10:35
  So actually Arrow, which is the Association of Irish writing
• 1:10:37
  establishments, that was the, the body that was involved in getting
• 1:10:41
  the funding to write the course.
• 1:10:43
  Initially there was a bursary there for qu people in arrow
• 1:10:47
  centers to take the course.
• 1:10:49
  'Cause that was the aim of the course, was to roll out these services more
• 1:10:52
  nationally through our centers.
• 1:10:55
  So Ara is a self regulatory body for the, the writing
• 1:11:00
  school industry in this country.
• 1:11:01
  And it's part of Four Spot Island.
• 1:11:03
  Right.
• 1:11:04
  So, so there's a number of writing schools have incorporated it into them, and then
• 1:11:08
  just people started their own business.
• 1:11:09
  So, for example, I know two people here in, in Meath, which is where
• 1:11:13
  I live, the county I live in, which is just north of Dublin.
• 1:11:16
  One is she was a show jumping coach for a long time and she now does this from her
• 1:11:20
  yard instead of producing show jumpers.
• 1:11:22
  She does therapeutic riding and absolutely loves it and was like,
• 1:11:24
  I'm never going back to show jumping.
• 1:11:27
  And, and another lady, she did have her own school and she closed it down
• 1:11:32
  when she got married and had kids and, and now is doing therapeutic.
• 1:11:35
  And, you know, and making a good business out of it.
• 1:11:37
  I think that's another thing we teach on the course as well, is we
• 1:11:40
  te we explain to people that you can make a business out of this.
• 1:11:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:11:45
  Lucy Dillon: Just because we are doing something for, for people with additional
• 1:11:51
  needs doesn't mean you can't charge them.
• 1:11:53
  And, and I think a lot of people took a take a bit of
• 1:11:56
  time to get around that idea.
• 1:11:58
  Because there is funding out there.
• 1:11:59
  So,
• 1:12:00
  Rupert Isaacson: and they didn't used to be, I mean, it used to be
• 1:12:02
  that if you did this, you did it as a volunteer and that was that.
• 1:12:06
  So people were in a bit of a poverty trap with it.
• 1:12:09
  Yeah.
• 1:12:09
  Or they just had their own resources.
• 1:12:11
  That has changed.
• 1:12:12
  Yeah.
• 1:12:13
  Lucy Dillon: Yeah.
• 1:12:14
  And then also one of the parts we do the, there's a section on the course about
• 1:12:18
  like the business side of it, and we talk about the different funding sources
• 1:12:22
  there, but also the funding that a person if you have a child with additional
• 1:12:26
  needs, the funding that you get as a parent to support that child as well.
• 1:12:31
  That and so people are looking for services for their children.
• 1:12:36
  And, you know, in the same way that as a parent you pay for your child
• 1:12:40
  to go swimming lessons, you pay for your child to go horse riding lessons
• 1:12:43
  you pay for your child to, you know, parents are looking to give their child.
• 1:12:48
  And what's so lovely about equine assisted activities is yes, it is therapeutic.
• 1:12:51
  And yes, it has wonderful benefits for them, but it's also fun.
• 1:12:56
  That's, you know, it's, it's a fun, enjoyable thing for your child to do.
• 1:13:01
  So yeah, the courses, it, it is, it's good.
• 1:13:03
  It's, it's it's led onto a lot of places, incorporating it into it.
• 1:13:07
  So I have at least to there are 10 centers previous, you know, writing
• 1:13:13
  centers who are now offering therapeutic as a big part of their service.
• 1:13:17
  And then there's many more who are offering it on a smaller scale.
• 1:13:21
  Rupert Isaacson: Do you see yourself taking that course, that intro level
• 1:13:24
  course out, perhaps internationally first?
• 1:13:27
  I think the obvious place would be to the UK and then
• 1:13:30
  beyond, because I think there's.
• 1:13:32
  Actually a need for people to, as you say, know that this exists as a
• 1:13:40
  career now, whereas perhaps it didn't so much before that there is funding.
• 1:13:44
  What are the funding sources?
• 1:13:46
  How can you structure a business around this that is actually going to give
• 1:13:51
  you and your family quality of life?
• 1:13:53
  So I think that's, there, there are a couple of problems in the horse
• 1:13:57
  industry for a lot of people that are coming in at grassroots level, which
• 1:14:00
  is that, you know, it made me chuckle when you were saying you, you learned
• 1:14:04
  the sort of business side of horses at college because of course there's that
• 1:14:09
  old saying, how's you make a million in horses by starting with 2 million?
• 1:14:14
  You know?
• 1:14:14
  And that the idea is that, you know, you lose money through horses.
• 1:14:17
  But I've actually found that that's not true.
• 1:14:20
  I've found that if you have a skillset that is for whatever reason in
• 1:14:26
  demand, it, it's not a poverty trap.
• 1:14:28
  And ironically for me with horse sport, you know, I started flat
• 1:14:34
  broke because my career had ended.
• 1:14:36
  My journalistic career had ended because of Rowans, my son's autism.
• 1:14:40
  I couldn't travel and I was a foreign correspondent.
• 1:14:43
  I was, you know, I was broke.
• 1:14:45
  And I never expected that the technologies that I learned to help my
• 1:14:50
  son would end up becoming the mainstay, mainstay of the family income and then
• 1:14:58
  end up being how he makes a living.
• 1:15:00
  'cause he now makes a living that way as well.
• 1:15:02
  He, he helps on trainings.
• 1:15:03
  He explained to people autism from the inside.
• 1:15:06
  And, and so it's, and it's become an economic platform for him.
• 1:15:11
  And then because of the way we had to train the horses, we ended up with, a
• 1:15:16
  whole secondary dressage career, which I never saw coming because of how we
• 1:15:21
  had to train the horses for horse boy.
• 1:15:22
  So now clients fly in from all over the world just to learn
• 1:15:25
  that with our horses and stuff.
• 1:15:27
  So I often am encouraging people to go out and learn the skillset, but
• 1:15:32
  I think that you guys have come at it really interestingly, from a much
• 1:15:36
  more structured way saying, look, here are the institutional structures.
• 1:15:40
  And if you're coming in, as you say, out of learning how to be a writing structure,
• 1:15:45
  and now you are wondering, how am I gonna find my place in this universe?
• 1:15:49
  And yes, there are people coming in with much more money behind them, and
• 1:15:52
  frankly, they will probably be the ones that dominate in the sports side because
• 1:15:56
  that's just how the economics of it go.
• 1:15:59
  Where are you gonna make your niche?
• 1:16:01
  So I think you're providing a real service, not just for the people
• 1:16:06
  that are gonna be the service users.
• 1:16:08
  Who need it, but the people who are gonna be the service providers as well.
• 1:16:13
  So do, how do you see Yeah.
• 1:16:15
  What you're doing there, developing and going out and broadening.
• 1:16:20
  Lucy Dillon: It would be great if we could broaden the course.
• 1:16:23
  It's all down to time.
• 1:16:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:16:25
  Lucy Dillon: Because, you know, if you went off and started giving the course
• 1:16:29
  all over the place, I, I wouldn't be getting to see kids every day.
• 1:16:34
  And I still really enjoy that side of the job.
• 1:16:36
  Like, you know, when, when I became the manager of the unit, I was
• 1:16:40
  like, yeah, but I'm still gonna see kids, you know, the majority of
• 1:16:43
  my week is doing that side of it.
• 1:16:46
  But I do, I think, but there are other courses coming along.
• 1:16:49
  And hopefully, you know, maybe in the future it might be part of the
• 1:16:52
  British School Society exams that this is a sort of way that could go or, or
• 1:16:58
  there could be a college course in it.
• 1:17:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:17:00
  Lucy Dillon: I think the co
• 1:17:01
  Rupert Isaacson: Are you working on that at all with any of
• 1:17:03
  the agricultural colleges?
• 1:17:05
  Lucy Dillon: Not with the agricultural colleges, no.
• 1:17:07
  'Cause at the moment, the, see, the way our course works is it's
• 1:17:11
  for people who, the people who have attended the course they've
• 1:17:15
  Rupert Isaacson: already graduated.
• 1:17:16
  Right.
• 1:17:17
  Lucy Dillon: They've, and they're already working, so they haven't got time to go
• 1:17:19
  and start a year long college course.
• 1:17:21
  Rupert Isaacson: Right, right.
• 1:17:23
  Lucy Dillon: It's five days really intense.
• 1:17:25
  And then, then there's sort of assessments and things to go with it.
• 1:17:29
  But again, it's all quite tight 'cause that's what people have time for.
• 1:17:33
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:17:34
  Lucy Dillon: You don't wanna put off the very people that you want to bring in.
• 1:17:38
  So the course is hopefully over the next month going to be certified
• 1:17:44
  by Lancia, which is a land-based agency, UK Irish land-based agency.
• 1:17:48
  So that means it's quality control checked, checked.
• 1:17:51
  We've been for all sorts of processes.
• 1:17:54
  To talk about the quality of the course and the content and the,
• 1:17:57
  the assessment types and things.
• 1:17:59
  And so hopefully maybe that might roll it out more in the future.
• 1:18:03
  It continues, you know, the, the demand is there for it.
• 1:18:07
  And maybe there is similar things happening in the uk.
• 1:18:11
  It's, and maybe it's something that one of the colleges in the
• 1:18:14
  UK might pick up as a thing.
• 1:18:16
  You know, and if anyone's listening, I'd be very happy to help.
• 1:18:19
  But
• 1:18:20
  Rupert Isaacson: well, people are, I know there's people who are involved at
• 1:18:23
  Har Pre and Capri and places like that.
• 1:18:25
  They'll definitely be watching this podcast, and I think we should, we
• 1:18:29
  should throw that challenge out there.
• 1:18:30
  It's like, this ought to be part of the curriculum somehow.
• 1:18:35
  And, and the curricular should offer the therapeutic angles, the equine
• 1:18:42
  assisted angles alongside the other things as people are going through
• 1:18:46
  those modules, because they're gonna have to go out into the.
• 1:18:50
  Industry.
• 1:18:51
  This is now, as you say, how the industry is developing to not put
• 1:18:55
  these things in at the college level.
• 1:18:57
  How does that serve the student?
• 1:19:00
  So maybe, maybe we should actually make a, a bit of a formal approach.
• 1:19:06
  Worst thing they can do is say no, and then we'll try again.
• 1:19:10
  Lucy Dillon: I majorly, you know, I, I did one of the first EQU degrees yeah.
• 1:19:14
  You know, my, one of that, that was, that's where we met at Coach College.
• 1:19:18
  He was one of the, he was one of the first equine graduates, that first 50 of
• 1:19:22
  them that did a degree in EQU studies.
• 1:19:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:19:25
  And it, it saddens me sometimes when you still hear other people in the
• 1:19:29
  industry criticize the colleges.
• 1:19:31
  Yeah.
• 1:19:31
  And because I think, you know, things have changed so much in 30 years.
• 1:19:35
  And you, you can't criticize the colleges and you can't criticize.
• 1:19:40
  Oh, young people don't, they don't wanna work in the industry and
• 1:19:43
  learn the hard way like I did.
• 1:19:44
  No, they don't actually, you know, because actually nobody wants to work.
• 1:19:48
  Like people worked in labor in physical jobs 30 years ago.
• 1:19:51
  Do they?
• 1:19:52
  You know, society,
• 1:19:55
  I, you know, I don't wanna wear, my grandfather was a milkman around
• 1:19:58
  London with a horse and cart.
• 1:19:59
  I don't wanna do this.
• 1:20:01
  Yeah.
• 1:20:02
  So I think you know, people have to be realistic about, it's not that
• 1:20:07
  young people are flaky, they're just a bit more informed and so is society.
• 1:20:11
  I
• 1:20:11
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 1:20:12
  Well, and also what we know is, you know, even if they go through college to learn
• 1:20:15
  this stuff, you're still going to have to run your program and that program
• 1:20:19
  will still demand a lot of physical and mental and emotional challenges from
• 1:20:25
  you that's gonna take care of itself.
• 1:20:27
  Yeah, if you're a horse nerd, and if you're on this podcast,
• 1:20:31
  I'm guessing you are, then you've probably also always wondered a little
• 1:20:36
  bit about the old master system.
• 1:20:39
  of dressage training.
• 1:20:40
  If you go and check out our Helios Harmony program, we outline there step by step
• 1:20:49
  exactly how to train your horse from the ground to become the dressage horse
• 1:20:55
  of your dreams in a way that absolutely serves the physical, mental and emotional
• 1:21:02
  well being of the horse and the rider.
• 1:21:05
  Intrigued?
• 1:21:05
  Like to know more?
• 1:21:07
  Go to our website, Helios Harmony.
• 1:21:12
  Check out the free introduction course.
• 1:21:14
  Take it from there.
• 1:21:15
  Lucy Dillon: I agree.
• 1:21:15
  There's an awful lot still in our industry of sort of, you know, you should work
• 1:21:19
  for nothing, just for the privilege with so and so or this sort of thing, and,
• 1:21:24
  and that just can't happen nowadays.
• 1:21:26
  Cost of living is completely different.
• 1:21:27
  Yeah.
• 1:21:27
  The, the, it, it just can't happen.
• 1:21:30
  But I, yeah, no, I do, I think, and I get, we have a lot of there's a year
• 1:21:34
  in Irish education called transition year, which is a year before you
• 1:21:37
  take your final two years of school.
• 1:21:39
  It's, it's optional.
• 1:21:40
  Some schools it's compulsory, some it's optional, and it's a year of sort of
• 1:21:43
  work experiences and trying new subjects and it's a really great year actually.
• 1:21:48
  Well, it depends what the kid makes of it.
• 1:21:50
  That year.
• 1:21:51
  And so we have a lot of transition year students come and volunteer with
• 1:21:54
  us in Child Vision and, you know, massively helps us support running
• 1:21:58
  the service because they, it is, you know, you rely on volunteers to
• 1:22:01
  run on, run this type of service.
• 1:22:03
  And we get a lot of transition year students because of our location, you
• 1:22:06
  know, they can actually get to us.
• 1:22:07
  Yeah.
• 1:22:08
  And it more and more in getting ones who come, not necessarily from local
• 1:22:13
  schools, but come a little bit of a distance and, and ones from local
• 1:22:15
  schools as well who have an interest in horses and they say, I want to
• 1:22:18
  be a therapeutic riding instructor.
• 1:22:21
  And I think that's great because that, you know, when I was 16,
• 1:22:24
  no, it wasn't even a thing.
• 1:22:26
  So I think that's, you know, I think that's great.
• 1:22:29
  And, and so then like that, I, I always say to them.
• 1:22:33
  Go to college and learn about horses or go and train and get your BHS
• 1:22:36
  exams and learn about horses properly, then start looking about being
• 1:22:40
  a therapeutic riding instructor.
• 1:22:41
  You've got to go and do the horse bit first.
• 1:22:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:22:44
  Yes.
• 1:22:45
  I so agree.
• 1:22:46
  I so agree.
• 1:22:47
  And it's interesting I think you've met, you've met Leanna Tank
• 1:22:51
  from Michigan, who is, I think she was there our last tribe day.
• 1:22:55
  She's an occupational therapist.
• 1:22:56
  She's an OT who works in the criminal justice system in with people, in
• 1:23:04
  some cases in secure units where they've been acquitted from reasons
• 1:23:08
  of insanity from having done things that are so heinous that they
• 1:23:12
  can't be allowed back into society.
• 1:23:15
  And she's using she, she's a very accomplished horse woman.
• 1:23:19
  So she's using also tacky and horse boy movement method in that, but she's
• 1:23:23
  using many other modalities as well.
• 1:23:26
  But she's.
• 1:23:28
  She's also a professor.
• 1:23:29
  She's an adjunct professor at a university there in Michigan teaching OTs.
• 1:23:35
  And she's the first to say when it comes to the equine being a therapist, is
• 1:23:46
  you are like third in the tier of importance in that unit.
• 1:23:50
  It's the people who are the horse professionals who have to lead and
• 1:23:55
  guide this because if you don't understand the animal, the environment
• 1:24:03
  that you are working with, no amount of theoretical expertise
• 1:24:11
  is going to be of any use at all.
• 1:24:15
  And I think you guys really.
• 1:24:18
  Exemplified that through quite a lot of the pioneering work at Child
• 1:24:22
  Vision, you know, because you were working with so many therapists and
• 1:24:27
  those therapists were coming out of
• 1:24:31
  a, a, a very established organization, had been St.
• 1:24:35
  Joseph's School to the bride, then it rebranded as Child Vision.
• 1:24:38
  There was a real kind of momentum to working in that
• 1:24:43
  institution as a therapist.
• 1:24:44
  You know, you guys came in as the equine unit somewhat on the side.
• 1:24:48
  So it was very natural, I think, for people to look at it a little bit as
• 1:24:52
  an add-on, when of course it wasn't.
• 1:24:54
  And then I noticed more and more that child, child vision when they were
• 1:24:58
  going out and doing their marketing stuff, would put the horse thing front.
• 1:25:03
  You know, that would be like the first thing on the leaflet.
• 1:25:05
  The first thing on the thing.
• 1:25:07
  It's like, why?
• 1:25:08
  Because it really works, but why does it really work?
• 1:25:11
  Because the people running it on the horse side, were rock solid.
• 1:25:15
  And, and so I I absolutely agree that it, it's, it, and you guys, I think
• 1:25:19
  have done a incredible service, I think you and Terry particularly within the
• 1:25:26
  therapeutic field to kind of legitimize the horse professional as absolutely
• 1:25:37
  central to this role who can then go cross fertilize from one therapy to another.
• 1:25:42
  So if you come in as an ot, you come as a physical therapist,
• 1:25:45
  you come in as an equine assisted psychotherapist or whatever.
• 1:25:48
  You, if you don't have that solid horse professional there, who
• 1:25:52
  actually understands more about.
• 1:25:54
  What you all do in your own little therapy silos that perhaps you may be even
• 1:26:00
  understand about each other because you're stuck in your a, BA silo or your OT silo.
• 1:26:05
  Whatever that horse person who's working with all of you
• 1:26:08
  perhaps understands maybe more.
• 1:26:10
  And, and, and because they're exposed to you all and have to understand what you do
• 1:26:16
  and integrate that through the lens of the horse while keeping you and the child safe
• 1:26:20
  and served, it's a really complex role.
• 1:26:25
  What do you think I is the sort of,
• 1:26:32
  if you are, if you are going to give advice to, not, let's go outside of the
• 1:26:37
  equine, if you're gonna give it advice to therapists, OTs, psychotherapists,
• 1:26:42
  physical therapists, and so on, who want to come in and work in this sector,
• 1:26:48
  what do they need to know?
• 1:26:52
  Lucy Dillon: I think it depends what they want to do.
• 1:26:54
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:26:54
  See, there's a lot of difference between say a therapist comes and they want
• 1:27:00
  to work and incorporate hippotherapy, which is the general term, isn't it?
• 1:27:05
  For for the OT physio speech and language using a horse.
• 1:27:10
  If they want to set up a practice with one horse, possibly two horses,
• 1:27:16
  and it's maybe, you know, they have a personal connection to those two horses
• 1:27:21
  or they, then that's very different to someone who says, who comes from a
• 1:27:29
  one-horse background, who wants to start working with six kids and six horses.
• 1:27:32
  And there's a big difference in that because you can become the expert in those
• 1:27:38
  one and two horses and learn about those.
• 1:27:41
  One just like the individual horse owner.
• 1:27:44
  Is an expert in their own horse.
• 1:27:46
  Just like the parent is the expert in their own child, isn't it?
• 1:27:49
  It's the same thing.
• 1:27:50
  Yeah.
• 1:27:51
  And so I think, God, I don't wanna offend anyone here, but I think the
• 1:27:56
  thing to say to therapists and stuff is to appreciate your limitations
• 1:28:01
  when it comes to the horses.
• 1:28:03
  Equally as the way I appreciated my limitations when I started doing
• 1:28:06
  this as understanding children with vision impairment, understanding
• 1:28:13
  people, children with a physical issue, and now with experience, I've
• 1:28:17
  experienced more things, learned about more things and know more about it.
• 1:28:22
  I do think there is a big difference between working in an environment like
• 1:28:26
  ours with 10 horses, and you're seeing, I know, 25, 30 clients a day to working with
• 1:28:33
  two horses that you own, that you know.
• 1:28:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Sure.
• 1:28:38
  Lucy Dillon: You see them, you're seeing clients one at a time with those horses.
• 1:28:42
  It is a very different environment, isn't it?
• 1:28:44
  And there's space for everybody in this.
• 1:28:46
  Absolutely.
• 1:28:47
  So I suppose if someone is interested in it, I think the thing is, is you can't
• 1:28:53
  learn about horses in six months as well.
• 1:28:57
  It takes a long time.
• 1:28:59
  You know, it doesn't take a lifetime if you really fully immerse yourself into it.
• 1:29:03
  But there is a big difference, and I always say this, there's a big
• 1:29:06
  difference between people who have been with horses all their life.
• 1:29:09
  I've, I've had my own horse, then people who have actually
• 1:29:12
  commercially worked with them.
• 1:29:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:29:14
  Lucy Dillon: Because it's just different.
• 1:29:16
  It's different.
• 1:29:17
  Yeah.
• 1:29:17
  You know, I, I used, yeah, it's just different.
• 1:29:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:29:23
  It's understanding that you need to constantly broaden the skillset.
• 1:29:29
  I think that people who are.
• 1:29:31
  Able to work in the commercial sector who are really good at it.
• 1:29:35
  What they, what I always find with those people is that they're constantly
• 1:29:39
  going out to learn something new.
• 1:29:42
  They're constantly, the really good ones are always, and they're willing to
• 1:29:46
  completely change what they do if they find something better rather than just
• 1:29:51
  a set of opinions that they stick to.
• 1:29:53
  And I think that's true across, across any profession.
• 1:29:56
  Something that occurred to me as I was listening to you just now is we haven't
• 1:29:59
  covered, and I think we should cover this as we're sort of heading towards
• 1:30:02
  the two hour mark here, is you really, I know that within Child Vision you
• 1:30:06
  work with a very broad range of clients.
• 1:30:10
  However, you really have an expertise, I know on the autism side as well,
• 1:30:15
  but you really do have an expertise on the visual impairment side.
• 1:30:20
  If you had to, if you're running like a little seminar right now.
• 1:30:25
  And we are all sitting in front of you going, yes, Lucy,
• 1:30:28
  tell us what we need to know.
• 1:30:29
  What are the, what are the five, 10 most important things we need
• 1:30:33
  to be aware of and adapt ourselves to, and skills that we need to get?
• 1:30:37
  If we're going to work with people with visual impairment, what are they?
• 1:30:43
  Lucy Dillon: Gosh, I, I think probably the biggest one is don't underestimate them.
• 1:30:48
  People with visual impairment.
• 1:30:50
  Sometimes I think particularly in television, when you meet the children
• 1:30:53
  and the young adults that are in there and you meet them just, you know, face
• 1:30:58
  on and you meet them in the cafe and you meet them passing and you stop and you
• 1:31:01
  talk to them and you, if you actually read their visual impairment, you'd
• 1:31:05
  be like, wow, that person's amazing.
• 1:31:09
  You know, the way they're negotiating their environment.
• 1:31:11
  And then it's just being careful about things, you know, and that, again, that
• 1:31:15
  comes into, you know, talk to the parents.
• 1:31:18
  So have a, you know, be aware of what that person's vision is.
• 1:31:22
  But then this sounds, this is gonna make me sound a bit, well, hey,
• 1:31:26
  but but don't be too focused on it.
• 1:31:28
  So if the parent says, well, they have no vision at all in their right eye, well
• 1:31:31
  then just make sure you stand on the left.
• 1:31:33
  But don't be sort of worried about talking about something that's on the right side.
• 1:31:37
  'cause they can turn their head and, and be aware perhaps
• 1:31:41
  of, of balance a little bit.
• 1:31:45
  But again, you'll, you'll see it when you, when once you start doing it.
• 1:31:50
  Rupert Isaacson: What do we need to be aware of with balance that, that
• 1:31:53
  might not be so obvious for people?
• 1:31:55
  Lucy Dillon: Just for some thing.
• 1:31:56
  I'll tell you one thing that's a really important point.
• 1:31:58
  We make this with the children of vision impairment when they get off the horse.
• 1:32:03
  And they're gonna come to, we always get mount at steps on and off.
• 1:32:06
  And one, because it kind of frames the session as well, but also it's safer.
• 1:32:10
  And we have two sets of steps and the horse sort of parks in the middle of them.
• 1:32:14
  So if someone has vision impairment, do not move that horse until you've got down
• 1:32:18
  those steps because that movement behind them could be distracting and affect their
• 1:32:24
  balance as they're negotiating steps.
• 1:32:28
  So it's just talking a person through it.
• 1:32:30
  Ask a person with a vision impairment.
• 1:32:32
  Well, do you want to hold my hand?
• 1:32:33
  Do you want me to hold your elbow?
• 1:32:35
  Do you want to take my elbow?
• 1:32:37
  You know, how do you want me to support you?
• 1:32:40
  And and ask them, you know, when you get to the steps, do you want
• 1:32:42
  me to count you up the steps?
• 1:32:44
  Do you wanna feel the steps yourself?
• 1:32:46
  And that's, again, this is something we teach on the course is a little
• 1:32:49
  bit of patient handling as well.
• 1:32:51
  How to best support someone who's say maybe is not just
• 1:32:53
  visually impaired, but physically vulnerable, going up and down steps.
• 1:32:57
  You know, have a wide base pre present yourself.
• 1:32:59
  If they're coming down the step, say they're on the third step, we'll make
• 1:33:02
  sure you are on the second and even the first step with your two legs.
• 1:33:05
  So you are there and from a visual point of view, they can feel
• 1:33:08
  that you are lower than them.
• 1:33:09
  So they know they're going down, but you're also got a wide
• 1:33:12
  base and you know, you're not standing on the same step as them.
• 1:33:15
  'cause if they lose their balance and you are two feet on the same
• 1:33:17
  step as them, if all of you are going head first off the step.
• 1:33:20
  Whereas if you are two steps down with your legs apart on one on one
• 1:33:24
  step and one on the other, you are a secure balance for them to support off.
• 1:33:29
  But most children with visual impairment are amazing, the
• 1:33:33
  way they negotiate the world.
• 1:33:35
  The other thing about the, the most obvious one as well is if someone has a
• 1:33:38
  vision impairment, introduce yourself.
• 1:33:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:33:42
  Lucy Dillon: Yeah, I'm trying to think.
• 1:33:43
  So all these things that you kind of do in Televis without thinking about
• 1:33:46
  'em anymore, so introduce, you know.
• 1:33:48
  Hi Peter, it's Lucy.
• 1:33:50
  How are you today?
• 1:33:51
  And, or, and, and say goodbye as well.
• 1:33:53
  That's a really important thing.
• 1:33:55
  People with vision permanent will tell you that.
• 1:33:57
  Don't just talk to somebody and then walk away.
• 1:33:59
  'cause they might keep talking to you 'cause they don't know you've walked away.
• 1:34:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:34:03
  Lucy Dillon: And that's not very nice for someone, is it?
• 1:34:06
  So like that if you meet someone on campus walking through the camp, you know,
• 1:34:11
  walking through campus, you might sort of say, oh hey Joe, how are you today?
• 1:34:14
  And if you know that you might yeah.
• 1:34:17
  And they'll, Hey, you know, how are you today?
• 1:34:19
  It's Lucy.
• 1:34:20
  And they'll say, oh yeah, hello.
• 1:34:22
  And then, then you say, okay, see you then Joe.
• 1:34:23
  I've gotta go now so that they're not left talking to you.
• 1:34:26
  Okay.
• 1:34:29
  That's kind of it really.
• 1:34:31
  Rupert Isaacson: When
• 1:34:32
  Lucy Dillon: kids are quite with their visual impairments.
• 1:34:35
  'cause I think the thing you have to remember with a child with vision
• 1:34:37
  impairment, that's their vision.
• 1:34:41
  So they have grown up with that vision.
• 1:34:44
  That is their vision.
• 1:34:47
  So that's their Right,
• 1:34:49
  Rupert Isaacson: right.
• 1:34:49
  So they may not be viewing it as an impairment because it's the skillset
• 1:34:53
  they have and they're using it.
• 1:34:54
  Yes.
• 1:34:55
  And that leads me to the next question is how, what are you
• 1:34:58
  actually serving them with?
• 1:34:59
  Like, let's say someone is completely blind no amount of doing cool things on
• 1:35:04
  a horse is going to make that person see.
• 1:35:07
  So therefore, what are we looking for with visual impairment?
• 1:35:13
  Specifically when we're working with horses, for example, if, if, if you were
• 1:35:17
  to say that to me with autism, you know, what I would say is I would say, well, I'm
• 1:35:21
  looking for oxytocin for communication.
• 1:35:23
  I'm looking for novel movement moving problem solving, which
• 1:35:27
  vestibular system, which is BDNF, which is neuroplasticity and okay,
• 1:35:31
  you could say that about anybody.
• 1:35:33
  But given that I'm working with a cognitive issue here, I want
• 1:35:37
  to effectively grow a new brain.
• 1:35:38
  So I know that if I work in this way with a horse, I'm gonna
• 1:35:41
  sort of get towards that way.
• 1:35:43
  When you're working with visual impairment, and I know there's obviously
• 1:35:45
  a lot of co, I don't even like the word comorbidity, let's say co-diagnoses.
• 1:35:50
  So someone might have visual impairment and down syndrome or
• 1:35:52
  visual impairment and autism.
• 1:35:54
  Okay.
• 1:35:55
  But when it's specifically the visual side, what do you feel that the
• 1:36:00
  equine really brings to the table?
• 1:36:04
  Lucy Dillon: Well, all of what you said.
• 1:36:06
  Yeah.
• 1:36:07
  Vestibular system.
• 1:36:08
  So your attention learning focus.
• 1:36:11
  Also again about the oxytocin, because if you think about it we produce cortisol
• 1:36:18
  when our body feels under threat and we have a heightened sensory sensory system.
• 1:36:24
  So any sensory processing issue is gonna give you a heightened sensory system.
• 1:36:27
  Now, a vision impairment is the biggest sensory processing issue you
• 1:36:31
  can have, you know, 90% of our senses are interpreted through our vision.
• 1:36:36
  And then also the biggest thing is the confidence and the spilling of that
• 1:36:42
  confidence in other parts of your life.
• 1:36:44
  You know, they, they, they get up on a horse like, what is
• 1:36:48
  a horse in the first place?
• 1:36:51
  And now you're up, you are up in the air, and and you're moving.
• 1:36:55
  You are also sometimes moving faster than you would move by yourself.
• 1:36:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:37:00
  Lucy Dillon: Which is.
• 1:37:02
  The feeling, even just the feeling of that moving faster than you would maybe
• 1:37:07
  move by yourself spills into their confidence and their confidence in their
• 1:37:11
  body, their, their, all that perceptive input, the awareness in their body.
• 1:37:15
  Because again, as a child with a visual impairment, like, you know, if you
• 1:37:20
  think about it, development is slowed so much because of a visual impairment
• 1:37:24
  because site in causes development, you know, the first thing a baby does.
• 1:37:29
  Yeah.
• 1:37:29
  Rupert Isaacson: No, we are visual.
• 1:37:30
  We are visual creatures.
• 1:37:31
  We just are.
• 1:37:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:37:33
  Lucy Dillon: The first thing a baby does is reach.
• 1:37:35
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:37:36
  Lucy Dillon: And and if you don't have the vision impairment, if you have a
• 1:37:39
  vision impairment, you don't reach.
• 1:37:40
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:37:40
  You have a significant vision impairment, you're, you don't develop
• 1:37:43
  head and neck control as fast.
• 1:37:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:37:45
  Because.
• 1:37:46
  You don't raise your head.
• 1:37:48
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:37:48
  Lucy Dillon: That delays walking, that delays crawling, you know, and,
• 1:37:51
  and well, it delays crawling, it delays sitting and walking and, and
• 1:37:53
  all the steps that, you know, the developmental steps to get to that.
• 1:37:57
  So we can work on the physical things as well, particularly
• 1:37:59
  with some of our preschoolers.
• 1:38:01
  You're working on that physical, you know, it, it's, you know, it's one side of using
• 1:38:05
  the horse is the movement of the horse.
• 1:38:06
  Yes.
• 1:38:07
  For the oxytocin, but also from a physiotherapy point of view.
• 1:38:10
  That movement of the horse, that three dimensional movement is the
• 1:38:12
  same movement pattern as walking.
• 1:38:15
  Right?
• 1:38:15
  So you are reinforcing and developing muscle memory
• 1:38:17
  through those walking patterns.
• 1:38:18
  So we do a lot of work with the preschoolers in child vision,
• 1:38:22
  and a lot of them also would be wheelchair users still at that point.
• 1:38:25
  Now they may not necessarily always be a wheelchair user or they may
• 1:38:28
  be a wheelchair user, but who then have developed sitting balance
• 1:38:32
  or they develop the ability to stand for transfers and things.
• 1:38:35
  But at that stage, at two and a half, three and a half years old,
• 1:38:38
  they're still wheelchair users.
• 1:38:40
  And so we are working, building up that muscle and that core strength.
• 1:38:44
  And that's when we quite, that's when we ride with them
• 1:38:46
  and hold onto them from behind.
• 1:38:48
  And what's so nice about that is that you can give and take the support
• 1:38:51
  as and when it's needed and you can lean back and let them work on their
• 1:38:56
  head and neck control and stuff.
• 1:38:58
  So there is, it's a huge benefit from a vision and PenPoint
• 1:39:02
  and the kids love it as well.
• 1:39:04
  You know, I rode a horse, like, how cool is that?
• 1:39:08
  If you you know, they, they love it.
• 1:39:11
  Rupert Isaacson: This is, this is I think what's often just not talked
• 1:39:13
  about, but we all know it within the whole et equ thing is it's just
• 1:39:18
  really, really cool to be with horses.
• 1:39:20
  It just is.
• 1:39:21
  And where that's worked to our detriment I think in our field is people say,
• 1:39:26
  well, you're just playing with ponies.
• 1:39:29
  To which.
• 1:39:30
  I've now, you know, I used to be defensive about that.
• 1:39:33
  No, we're not.
• 1:39:33
  We're doing all this scientific now.
• 1:39:35
  I'm like, you're right, we are, because that is quality of life.
• 1:39:40
  Now I can show you the science of what goes on in your brain, in your body
• 1:39:43
  when you have that quality of life.
• 1:39:45
  And there's a reason why many of the world's greatest thinkers have always
• 1:39:50
  have also been horsemen, by the way.
• 1:39:52
  Interesting correlation there.
• 1:39:54
  Because the other thing, of course, that horses demand from
• 1:39:58
  us is emotional regulation.
• 1:40:00
  We have to control our emotions 'cause we get scared up there.
• 1:40:04
  We get excited up there.
• 1:40:05
  We get this up there, we got that, get that up.
• 1:40:07
  They're exactly like the kid that you talked about who's head butting
• 1:40:10
  the horse when it's happening.
• 1:40:11
  And then they start to see the cause and effect and they realize that they
• 1:40:14
  need to modify their behavior in a way that they haven't had to around humans.
• 1:40:19
  All of these things go on, but the element of play, of course, within neuroscience.
• 1:40:24
  We, there's now no argument among neuroscientists that play and learning
• 1:40:30
  are so integral that if you take the element of play out, your learning is
• 1:40:35
  so impaired, even with a neurotypical kid, that it's almost pointless.
• 1:40:42
  The neuroscience is clear on this, but I think what's not
• 1:40:45
  really talked about is the joy.
• 1:40:49
  And if one is coming out of a situation that is un joyful for
• 1:40:55
  whatever reason, you know, there's that cliche, but it's so true.
• 1:41:00
  Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy horses, which is
• 1:41:02
  pretty much the same thing.
• 1:41:05
  But there is something innately joyful about the human
• 1:41:08
  interaction with the horses.
• 1:41:09
  They're not what do you see, you, you work with quite a
• 1:41:13
  few of your people over years.
• 1:41:18
  How do you see that joy component?
• 1:41:22
  Really creating change.
• 1:41:26
  Lucy Dillon: I think it just spills into everything that a kid does.
• 1:41:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:41:33
  Lucy Dillon: And their overall confidence and then, and the joy the parents
• 1:41:38
  get from seeing their kid as well.
• 1:41:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:41:41
  Lucy Dillon: Is so lovely.
• 1:41:43
  I can think of one little girl who's who wasn't the pre school.
• 1:41:46
  She's in main, she's gone into mainstream school this year.
• 1:41:49
  And if anybody goes on the Child Vision website, there is the most beautiful
• 1:41:51
  video about her and Jessie, our Shetland pony, who Anya believes that Jessie
• 1:41:56
  came, especially for her, and she did come, especially for you to be honest.
• 1:42:00
  But she's still there.
• 1:42:00
  And the, the effect it had on her that she, she got the confidence
• 1:42:06
  to get on this pony 'cause it was a bit smaller than all the others.
• 1:42:09
  And how it just, then the confidence spiraled in everything from that.
• 1:42:14
  Speaking, being, interacting, everything.
• 1:42:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
• 1:42:19
  Lucy Dillon: and I suppose that's probably where you see it the most is,
• 1:42:25
  and then we see the way we work, our services, children come into the service.
• 1:42:29
  Royal children in revision impairment, they come into, if they're in the
• 1:42:34
  preschool and if they stay in the primary school, they can continue on.
• 1:42:36
  And then anybody with vision impairment is prioritized in our service.
• 1:42:40
  Anyone who applies, if they have a visual impairment, they are prioritized.
• 1:42:43
  But we see children, other children who come into the service, they, they'll
• 1:42:47
  come into the service, say maybe for six months or so, and then they go
• 1:42:50
  on to our return to service list.
• 1:42:51
  Otherwise, we'd never get through our waiting list.
• 1:42:53
  You know, we, we can't always got a waiting list.
• 1:42:56
  So we have a sort of rotational thing, which is again, partly why,
• 1:42:59
  who wants to train more people to do this so that then I can recommend
• 1:43:02
  other places for people to go to.
• 1:43:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:43:04
  Lucy Dillon: But you see them, you just see them grow and develop and, and, yeah.
• 1:43:09
  Just get really into it.
• 1:43:12
  Rupert Isaacson: No, I, I agree.
• 1:43:13
  It, it, it, it's, I think what's often forgotten when one's dealing
• 1:43:16
  with special needs people is because of the way economics has shifted and
• 1:43:19
  the way technology has shifted, that people who would've been written off
• 1:43:25
  as economic participants, let alone policy makers, let alone politicians,
• 1:43:31
  let alone professors or whatever, educators, people with particularly
• 1:43:37
  the cognitive impairments, would've been completely written off from that.
• 1:43:42
  And that has changed.
• 1:43:44
  And now we know that you can have autism and be a university professor.
• 1:43:47
  Look at Temple Grandin.
• 1:43:48
  Or you can, you know, I mean, we, we just know it's a, a very different field now.
• 1:43:53
  And as AI develops and so.
• 1:43:57
  What I feel that people like you are doing really, is you're actually
• 1:44:00
  training the leaders of tomorrow.
• 1:44:02
  This isn't just therapy, a pony ride for some poor little kid who's then gonna go
• 1:44:06
  live in a group home and have no life.
• 1:44:10
  These people could very well be sitting on the board of Child Vision, you know,
• 1:44:17
  25 years from now as lawyers or whatever.
• 1:44:20
  Because of the cognitive breakthroughs, development, confidence,
• 1:44:27
  happiness, joy, neuroplasticity,
• 1:44:35
  physical abilities, you can never separate those from mental abilities that they
• 1:44:42
  would've gotten from their years with you.
• 1:44:45
  And I think I, I, I do, yeah.
• 1:44:48
  This is just often I think under, not thought through, I think by, you
• 1:44:53
  know, yet it's, it's getting better.
• 1:44:54
  But yeah,
• 1:44:57
  Lucy Dillon: I think more and more you see it more and more, you know, sort of
• 1:45:00
  non-traditional and very fun activities for children with disabilities are
• 1:45:08
  being seen as not just fun activities.
• 1:45:12
  They're being actually identified for what they achieve.
• 1:45:16
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:45:16
  Lucy Dillon: Perhaps what it is it's that there, there is, whereas
• 1:45:21
  ly perhaps it was a separation between fun activities and therapies.
• 1:45:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
• 1:45:26
  Lucy Dillon: Now it's very blurred lines between the two and there is
• 1:45:29
  recognition of the value of the, the results of the fun activities.
• 1:45:35
  And you see, even in general education, you can see that change as well.
• 1:45:39
  A hundred
• 1:45:39
  Rupert Isaacson: percent.
• 1:45:39
  Lucy Dillon: So yeah, a
• 1:45:40
  Rupert Isaacson: hundred percent.
• 1:45:42
  You know?
• 1:45:42
  Yeah, just the, the other two languages that I speak French and German,
• 1:45:46
  or my German, it's not as good as it should be, but it's functional.
• 1:45:51
  I learned them on horseback.
• 1:45:53
  I learned them having the crack.
• 1:45:55
  I learned them doing things that I found intrinsically fun.
• 1:46:00
  I don't remember any Latin and Greek, which I did at school.
• 1:46:03
  Don't remember it.
• 1:46:04
  Nothing.
• 1:46:05
  Not, not, not a thing.
• 1:46:07
  There was no crack.
• 1:46:08
  There was no fun in it for me.
• 1:46:10
  The other two things I could do on horseback.
• 1:46:11
  So I then ended up in other countries doing them, exactly the same.
• 1:46:17
  So it is interesting.
• 1:46:18
  Of course, as you say now, within mainstream education, this is becoming
• 1:46:21
  something that people are looking at, but we're in, so are the early stages of it.
• 1:46:26
  And I, I don't know if yet the equine assisted people
• 1:46:31
  are getting the credit that.
• 1:46:33
  They deserve for the neuroplasticity, the brain development that they are
• 1:46:39
  giving through this joy and this fun.
• 1:46:42
  But with people like you doing your, your course, we have a
• 1:46:47
  sporting chance of getting that out there more into the mainstream.
• 1:46:51
  Of course, you are working with schools, so you are talking
• 1:46:53
  to young teachers about this.
• 1:46:55
  I wonder if people like you should actually be going into the not just
• 1:46:58
  the agricultural colleges where the people are doing the equine stuff,
• 1:47:01
  but the teacher training colleges.
• 1:47:02
  And I
• 1:47:03
  Lucy Dillon: would like to, the, the sort of, one of the biggest island
• 1:47:07
  primary school teach training colleges is literally gone off from our syndrome con.
• 1:47:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:47:10
  And I think now I feel more confident in my role.
• 1:47:13
  It is somewhere I'd like to reach out to, to talk about the method and
• 1:47:18
  'cause it's just so simple is not the right word, but it is simple.
• 1:47:24
  It's, it is
• 1:47:24
  Rupert Isaacson: what anything that is good and effective is simple actually.
• 1:47:28
  Yeah.
• 1:47:28
  Lucy Dillon: Yeah.
• 1:47:28
  It's not.
• 1:47:30
  Science.
• 1:47:30
  And I think perhaps sometimes people think it should be rocket science
• 1:47:34
  to make it effective, but it's not.
• 1:47:36
  Rupert Isaacson: No, no.
• 1:47:37
  I so agree.
• 1:47:38
  I, I do think you need to do that because the people who are going to go on and
• 1:47:43
  be the school principals 20 years from now are just, are in college right now.
• 1:47:48
  And yeah.
• 1:47:49
  If we want to see that change, they need people like you and many of the people
• 1:47:54
  who are watching and listening to this podcast to go in there and inform them.
• 1:47:59
  Yeah.
• 1:48:00
  So
• 1:48:00
  Lucy Dillon: sorry, I mean, I think perhaps you say
• 1:48:06
  Rupert Isaacson: you get, is your, is your dog telling you it's time?
• 1:48:08
  Lucy Dillon: Yes.
• 1:48:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, that they do that, don't they?
• 1:48:11
  Okay.
• 1:48:11
  Well that, that has brought us to about the two hour mark.
• 1:48:13
  So your dog is bang on.
• 1:48:15
  I would like you to go and make that approach then.
• 1:48:19
  That's my challenge to you, Lucy.
• 1:48:21
  And I will, I I will back it up obviously, and I'll get others to back it up.
• 1:48:26
  For example, as you know, we, we run now this neuroscience conference outta the
• 1:48:29
  University of Virginia every two years which is mostly aimed at pediatricians,
• 1:48:34
  but more and more it's also teachers coming in and educators, and we can
• 1:48:38
  bring some of these things to bear.
• 1:48:41
  So why don't you put together like a, a nuts and bolts presentation and
• 1:48:46
  we'll put together a little assault special Forces team to, to back you
• 1:48:53
  up and then just see, just start the conversation and see where it goes.
• 1:48:58
  Lucy Dillon: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:48:59
  I mean, we are, we are getting more and more involved in different would be
• 1:49:02
  the children's agency in this country.
• 1:49:04
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:49:04
  And we're getting funding through them for clients and stuff because it is, it's, you
• 1:49:08
  know, they are seeing the effects on the.
• 1:49:12
  Classes on the kids who are vulnerable.
• 1:49:15
  And, and so we are pushing that funding area all the time.
• 1:49:19
  And the health service executive, HSE here, they can't meet, you know,
• 1:49:24
  they're, they're under pressure as well.
• 1:49:25
  So we, we are offering an a nice solution.
• 1:49:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, no, I agree.
• 1:49:31
  Because oddly enough, people say horses are expensive, but
• 1:49:33
  we can do for much cheaper what
• 1:49:36
  Lucy Dillon: Yes.
• 1:49:37
  Rupert Isaacson: They try and fail to do with all kinds of
• 1:49:39
  other therapies and interventions.
• 1:49:41
  Yeah,
• 1:49:42
  Lucy Dillon: yeah, exactly.
• 1:49:43
  So, myself and, and again, this task force have that's one of our aims over
• 1:49:47
  the next couple of years is to get the HSE to sort of sit up and listen and, and
• 1:49:52
  it's cross border, so the NHS as well.
• 1:49:54
  Sort of sit up and listen to our results and we are, I'm trying to, not
• 1:49:58
  very well, but I, when I remember I'm trying to collect data from parents
• 1:50:02
  and schools and but I know that Terry, she's starting a PhD, isn't, she
• 1:50:06
  has a PhD student there in Stuart's.
• 1:50:07
  Yeah.
• 1:50:08
  So,
• 1:50:10
  Rupert Isaacson: and we've got, got ke ke Sullivan on the case from University of
• 1:50:13
  Bournemouth and Alex Alex Northover doing it through Manchester Met University.
• 1:50:18
  So we're on it.
• 1:50:19
  Yeah.
• 1:50:20
  But we need to get that data out there.
• 1:50:22
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:50:22
  Lucy Dillon: Yeah.
• 1:50:24
  Great.
• 1:50:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Alright, well listen, it's been brilliant as always.
• 1:50:28
  Thank you so much for giving us the time.
• 1:50:31
  Thank you.
• 1:50:31
  People will need to, want to get in touch with you.
• 1:50:33
  So tell them how they do that and how they also, if they want to come
• 1:50:36
  on that course that you're doing for the equine professionals going
• 1:50:39
  into the equine assisted field.
• 1:50:42
  Lucy Dillon: So if they follow Child Visions on Instagram mm-hmm.
• 1:50:47
  Coming off about the course, literally next week.
• 1:50:49
  The next one we're running at the end of April.
• 1:50:51
  And then also if someone wants to contact me, they can just email me.
• 1:50:55
  Lucy Dillon at Child Vision, ie.
• 1:50:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Lucy Dillon.
• 1:51:00
  That's with a y Lucy with a y Dylan, D-I-L-L-O-N.
• 1:51:04
  All lowercase, I presume at Child Vision.
• 1:51:08
  Lucy Dillon: Yeah.
• 1:51:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Ie.
• 1:51:10
  Lucy Dillon: Yeah,
• 1:51:11
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 1:51:11
  Island
• 1:51:12
  Lucy Dillon: on the Child Vision website.
• 1:51:13
  There's, there's the whole section about the Equine Assist activity service that
• 1:51:18
  Rupert Isaacson: great.
• 1:51:19
  And if they are wanting to do that course there, they're an
• 1:51:23
  equine professional wanting to go.
• 1:51:24
  Just give us the name of the course again.
• 1:51:26
  Lucy Dillon: It's called Equine Assist Activities Coaching Course,
• 1:51:30
  Rupert Isaacson: and it's now being accredited through lanre.
• 1:51:33
  So go and have a look at what Lanre is, lads, which is cross-border between
• 1:51:37
  the UK and Ireland accreditation.
• 1:51:40
  And if you're lucky, you will meet.
• 1:51:42
  The August and illustrious Lucy Dillon and her equally August and illustrious
• 1:51:48
  colleague Terry Brosnan at one of these courses to do, and, and lads do it
• 1:51:53
  because these people know their stuff.
• 1:51:55
  They've been at it for a long time.
• 1:51:57
  And frankly Lucy, you and Terry, you are the gold standard in this industry.
• 1:52:02
  You are.
• 1:52:04
  I should know 'cause I go around 40 countries and I am doing it all the time.
• 1:52:08
  There's lots of great people out there.
• 1:52:09
  You guys are up there in the gold standard and people need to come learn from you.
• 1:52:13
  Lucy Dillon: Great.
• 1:52:13
  Well, anyone's very welcome to come visit Child Vision at Anytime.
• 1:52:17
  Rupert Isaacson: Super great.
• 1:52:18
  Excuse for going Dublin.
• 1:52:19
  Lucy Dillon: Yep.
• 1:52:21
  All right then.
• 1:52:22
  Rupert Isaacson: Alright.
• 1:52:23
  Give my love to all.
• 1:52:24
  Okay.
• 1:52:24
  Lucy Dillon: Yeah.
• 1:52:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Cheers.
• 1:52:25
  Bye.
• 1:52:25
  Lucy Dillon: Bye.
• 1:52:26
  Rupert Isaacson: I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
• 1:52:30
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