Latest / Inchstones with Sarah | Autism Advocacy & Caregiver Stories / Horses, Autism, and the Healing Power of Nature | Dana Spett of Pony Power Therapies

Transcript

Horses, Autism, and the Healing Power of Nature | Dana Spett of Pony Power Therapies · Inchstones with Sarah | Autism Advocacy & Caregiver Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the latest episode of the Inchstones podcast. As you know, I love nothing more than illuminating the stories of mothers and caregivers of children with profound autism, as well as the community members, therapists, clinicians, anyone in the community that augments and helps support the scaffolding of the lives of children with disabilities. And today is no different. I have Dana Spett here with me. She is the founder of Pony Power Therapies and is located here in New Jersey where I am. But Pony Power, their, their overall mission is very simple. It's connecting people with disabilities and life challenges to the wonders of horses and equine therapy and farming in nature. And I can't think of a better platform to support and to illuminate today here on Inchton's. Dana, thank you so much for being here today.
• 0:52
  Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me.
• 0:55
  Speaker A: Tell me, if you can, the origin story of Pony Power Therapies.
• 0:59
  Speaker B: Absolutely. And I think it all resonates because I'm also the mama of the muse of Pony Power is. I'll predate that a bit. My own journey is I had the privilege of being in the company of horses at age 5, which I didn't realize how defining that would be until many, many years later. I'm a social worker by profession. I have an MSW and have since also earned a doctorate in social work. So having the social work background and the equine experience coupled together with my most important job, which is being a parent of three amazing humans, my middle human presented with some minor sensory disorder symptoms early on and just being in the field of social work and school based social work and kind of reading signs early on got quickly into therapy which was to try to get ahead of of what I knew was coming down the pike. And the therapies were fantastic and did what they needed to do, but they really reached a plateau. And when a three or four year old was considered for medication to treat behaviors. I'm not anti medication but I didn't feel right in my core. And as a social worker in school based programming I always told moms and dads to trust their gut. So my gut was saying no, not yet. And I explored other opportunities and one that came across my radar was therapeutic or adaptive horseback riding. So for me it was kind of a no brainer, like right horses, nature. So I explored that. I got certified myself and started a very small program for Pony Power 26 years ago with one horse that was donated from the community and four clients, one of them being my own daughter and it just took off. So I was able to slowly transition away from child study team coordinator for school in special ed schools and move into a full time role growing and nurturing and really raising my fourth child. Which was pony power therapies, huh? Yes.
• 2:53
  Speaker A: You know, you hit on something that I have to go back to because it's the, it's one of the core pillars of my work. I believe that maternal instinct is data. I believe that mothers and caregivers specifically are primarily wired to understand and be the experts of their child, whether they are typically developing or neurodivergent. And I'm so happy that you spoke to that on your own journey because I don't think that we illuminate or give enough airtime to that maternal instinct as a driving force behind love. And it's this unconscious tapping in. And I, and I'm so glad that you shared that because I think like you said, you had this, had this experience at 5 with horses and then having your, your, your atypical child and watching them develop and the choices that are being thrown your way. It sounds like pony power therapy is almost, maybe part of it was baked into that deep inner knowledge that you
• 3:46
  Speaker B: knew it was fortuitous I would pull on the string that you just mentioned. I rely a lot on indigenous social work practice as a social work clinician and I am on faculty at three different schools of social work. And we discount the wisdom of our indigenous cultures where we all come from. And we didn't need self help books and we didn't need experts and we didn't have the bureaucracies that put obstacles up rather than sought creative opportunities or different pathways. And that's really where we lean in. And trusting your gut, again, that was of course we should trust our gut. We have it from a strengths based perspective. As a social work practitioner and lecturer, I can't change anyone other than help them identify their strengths and their weaknesses or their deficits and help them find new networks and new pathways. That's the role of a social works. I'm actually gonna just advocate. Our work is not equine therapy. It's equine assist social work or equine assisted services. Because our humility requires us to really be specific about the language and what we're offering. And I think by default it gives back some power to those that we're interacting with where they again, the folks who land on our farm or folks who land in our classroom are seeking knowledge. And the best role I can play is helping them unlock their own Power. And that's, that's really what mamas do, right? We're looking for our children to be their best version of themselves. However, that may be so really interesting journey. And for whatever reason, my path has taken me this way and I'm incredibly grateful for that.
• 5:18
  Speaker A: Talk to me about what you've seen through your own personal experience as a mother and also running pony power therapies. What do children with autism and these really complex needs, how do they often respond to horses in a way that surprises families?
• 5:33
  Speaker B: So, um, it's so curious because we're, because we're 26 years as a community based organization, we're getting to see kind of rhythms and developmental stages again, which speaks to my clinical training as a social worker and responding to the fact that things come and go. So if I were to give kind of a blanket statement and everyone's unique, so this is not, you know, it's more of a composite. I, we, we do look for everyone's unique experience, lived experience. But in early childhood, clients diagnosed with autism tend to be sensory seeking and coming to the farm. Love seeing that connection that doesn't privilege or require language and have that energy transaction. And as an organization, we prioritize what is the horse mirroring back with that client in the moment and my own and the clinician as well. And how do we figure out ways to regulate in time and space in that moment in time. So, so right out of the gate you might find relaxation. Because what we do learn from occupational therapists is that, for example, bouncing a kid with autism on a sensory ball is great and it helps the brain organize and then it helps with learning or focus or attention or relaxation. So you put someone on the back of a horse, it's like a physio ball, except it's real time, it's responding, the horse is moving through space. And I'll, I'll back up. Safety is everything. At Pony Power, there's a whole information that goes in before we actually put someone on horseback. Once you're on horseback, there's someone leading the horse or pony and then there's a sidewalker on one side and instructor on the other. So position and safety are number one. Cause that's what reduces all of our stress. But when a rider is sitting in the proper position on the back of a horse and the horse is moving in a forward rhythmic way, the input's the same as human gait. So you're getting by default both proprioceptive and vestibular input from the animal. But what it's also adding, because it's nature based is that you have all the sounds of nature and our brains are hardwired to receive nature sounds. It's visually stimulating because we choose to. Well, we were privileged again to be. I'm looking outside our window at the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains and so we border green acres. And so we really lean into quiet time on the back of a horse in nature because we really lean into attention restoration theory or what nature connectedness can do to the individual, especially those with disabilities. It's calming, it's not competing. So you have the movement, you have the horse reacting, you have it being very multidimensional and working on core, which is again we know from our therapists that that tends to be a weakness. So strengthening that core helps with everything with posture, with, with a vision. We're working on eye contact, but really client centered. What's interesting to them and that's the thread that we're gonna pull. It's also social and social in a way that doesn't require language, which we know with this population is wonderful. And I would argue in my own research and scholarship, as we're investigating, there's a whole pedagogy and beauty to silence. We learn from our clients with autism and you actually you're present for a lot more and you notice a lot more. So that's our perspective. So that's the riding. It could be a grooming session where you're learning how to approach a horse and join a horse and connect. We have garden assisted learning. So because we're a full system farm, we produce a thousand pounds of manure a day and we had a problem to solve. So we compost insight in place and we have an accessible food production garden. So really showing kind of that full circle life cycle, no waste in nature metaphor, beauty of the rhythm of a farm. And we know that repetition and routine and predictability and sensitivity to sound and sight and all of those sensory experiences really satisfy the needs of a sensory seeking individual. Which is beautiful.
• 9:22
  Speaker A: It's so beautiful. You know, I know just as someone that's on social media for my own mission, so much that's talked about online in this space is about regulation and not just about the child, but the whole family and specifically the mother and how she is sort of the heart regulatory system of a family. And not to put the pressure on mothers and caregivers, but I think you speaking to the fact that when you are able to provide a natural regulatory experience, you know, I love that you just correlated, you Know that bouncing of the ball, I mean, I've got them in every room in my house. Well, not, not during the, not during the renovation, but you know, like. And you're absolutely right, like there's a synthetic way that we can produce that. And it's wonderful. And I'm so glad that science has come so far. But when you explain it like that, that gave me an aha moment right now. That is exactly what we're doing. And those that input. I have a photo for my daughter who they go to a special needs school and participate in an experience like this. The. The smile, the natural smile on my daughter is so different than the smile in a classroom for her. And I can't articulate that enough, is so obvious when you look at her smile on her face on the horse versus maybe in a sensory gym. It's just different. And I wish, I wish I could speak, you know, more prolifically than that. But I love that you're sharing that. Like, it is part of why we need to lean on nature to give them these things that we've been trying so hard, have such a chokehold on that it has to be done this certain way that when we release that and go out in nature and find, you know, your farm and places like this, it does something to the nervous system, not just to the child, but to everyone that participates in it.
• 11:10
  Speaker B: There's theory to support that. So again, that's what we're. I just finished Ramapo College has a school, a graduate school of social work. And it's down the road from us. And we've been working with them for a while now. And they allowed me this year to develop a curriculum to teach as an elective final semester master's level social work students. And we brought in equine and nature assisted social work as a way for somatic and experiential learning in clinical social work. And it was just an alternative tool to add to social workers toolkits about how is the traditional talk therapy working with your nonverbal autistic client? Yeah, and I don't mean it's like, tell me how. I really want to know how that's working.
• 11:50
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 11:51
  Speaker B: Because that was my first experience as a, as a social work intern was I was given, you know, adolescents in traditional talk therapy. And I was like, okay, none of us want to be here and we're getting nothing done and so we're wasting a whole lot of money. And we were attached to a gym. So we went out and we moved in the gym. And that Was kind of again not knowing at the time. But that was a pivotal moment where children, I would argue adults also don't have the words that really access what we're feeling. And it may be better to experience or to get that sense of regulation before they can even begin to unlock what they want to work on. That's really our inflection point here and I believe why we fit so well with our community, because we're staying very clearly in our lane. We're really almost that I hate the term, but like a social lubricant or that foundational component of getting people out, being in the company of others and being able to regulate. And until you have those conditions, and I would say those conditions kind of come and go, that's the polyvagal theory, kind of in real time. You don't have permission to treat, whether it's a child. And you also don't have an opportune experience to learn or to be receptive to learning. So kind of teaching. Our social work students at Ramapo lean into nature. And you may not have a farm to access, but we came up with all kinds of strategies of how you can bring a box of leaves or you can go on a nature walk wherever you are and find items. That's asset mapping for anything positive. And that is our common goal. So the other theory you lean on is the biophilia hypothesis, which basically suggests in a nutshell that humans have a biological imperative to connect to nature. And in the absence of nature, we suffer full stop. And so if we return to that, then we're all getting to that foundational level. It's an opportunity to connect with someone whether they're verbal or not, whether they are English speaking or not. If that's your language of choice, whether you have a diagnosis or a conviction, whatever it is, your, your labels go away because you connect on that very basic level. And there's something really powerful about that, that that's what we're leaning into. So not only are we privileging our clients form and mode of communication, regardless of their diagnosis or their label, our animals are considered in that same kind of Milly and then our environment. So we are regenerative. A farm that practices regenerative agricultural practices. So really carrying that through line between the human animal, the non human animal and the environment.
• 14:20
  Speaker A: Nature obviously is so healing. And the non verbal aspect of children like mine and a number of children I'm sure that you see at the farm speaks to the power of non verbal communication. I laugh, I took a Course like you were saying you were around horses at 5. I happened to take a course in nonverbal communication my senior year in college. Right. And I loved it. I found it so fascinating. And looking back, it's ironic, right? Because I was so interested in that. And I. And I wonder what we can do more to. To share and encourage parents who have children with more of the. On the profound side and really struggle to even get out of the house, to even participate in something that your farm might offer or. And to get out in nature, because I know that there's. What I find, and I hear so much, is this massive gap where the pain sets. And the pain is I can't even get out of the house safely to even experience something like this. I want to so badly. I know that I hear everything that is being told about the restorative nature of this that would help my child. Yet leaving the house feels so unsafe. Can you talk to me more about that and what, you know, that looks like when a family does get there and their child is very dysregulated and how. And how you might approach that from a new client?
• 15:33
  Speaker B: That's like one of the best questions I've ever been asked in an interview because. Exactly. And you just. You just kind of nailed it. So, again, just to reiterate, Pony power is neither diagnosis nor age specific. So our youngest client, not in the riding. We have a forest babies outdoor education program is a year and a half. And our eldest client today is 95. So we are full life spectrum. And when I said earlier that we kind of see our clients over 26 years now, and we're growing with our community, which is fun and exciting, and being a true community member, we find that we have clients that start with us in early childhood. They may leave during adolescence because maybe behaviors or maybe there's just other activities or. But then they come back to us post 21, because, you know, our client is hitting that Service cliff at 21. And as a social worker, justice and advocacy is a big component of our work. So we work really hard with Department of Developmental Disabilities. We're an approved site. Our services are paid for by, hopefully by entitlement money. And we're a safe space. So we're a fully dedicated center to the disability community. So it's okay, you know, again, our adults. How do you track for if joy. The expression of joy is an outburst. So here that's accepted and here is normalized. And I think we're reducing family stress because the family might come and say oh, I'm so sorry. They're yelling or the behavior like that's who we are, that's real life. So our horses are acclimated, you know, our clients are acclimated. There's no judgment. Our, our four employees are supported by about 150 active community volunteers who are all feeling and involving themselves and really understanding that a squeal is not necessarily a bad thing. It's joy. Or a squeal might indicate, I don't have the word. Something doesn't feel right. And then it's our job as care partners to figure out how to reduce that barrier, remove that stress, comfort, regulate. So that is our job and that happens all the time. We have group homes that come here. We have adult day programs that come here. We have clients who this is their only activity outside of the home or outside of day program. So figuring out ways to model for others in the community how you can accept folks and how you can model programs that might be a little less stressful for a parent or a care partner to get their loved one out of the house. Because we are full year and we tend to book by semester, we know there's an onboarding process and we have to present all of our sensory kind of experiences. We expect a sensory overload and we know that that takes time. We have to earn trust. So some clients fall right in session one, some could take 10 weeks. And again, no judgment. There's no prescription. It's we go, we're client centered and we'll go along with the client. I'll tell you, sorry, if we see signs of regulation, we'll continue. But if it's also not for everyone. So if it doesn't feel right, we might say, you know what, it's not right right now. We'll talk it through. If they want, client wants to bring in their behaviorist, we'll work with them. We're not going to offer a discipline plan or a behavioral plan. That's not our expertise. But we are here for the community and we have other, whether it's riding horse, assisted learning, garden assisted learning and other social skills like pre vocational training that we're working on now and, and job sampling. There is an array and I would argue that some farm, part of the farm will resonate with some part of a human.
• 19:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I again having two children with profound autism with the exact same diagnoses. Right. And a boy and a girl and they're not twins and they're two and
• 19:18
  Speaker B: a half years apart.
• 19:19
  Speaker A: My daughter has taken to this kind of experience quickly and without much dysregulation. My son is very much in the early stages of even wanting to get close to the animals. And he will ride on the back on a little seat that's being pulled, and he is so happy and he is so. You can see this exalted look on his face. And it is interesting to me that even within a family, even within siblings, just like any family, they're going to experience this differently. And I. And I. I'm so glad that you spoke to that from a. From parents that maybe only have one. And they think, well, why did that child take so easily to this? Or they're not, they're not, you know, showing some sort of outburst immediately, like. And then you have these again, the, the mothers and caregivers, this cycle of pain, fear, shame, grief, loss, all these things. It's interesting to note that it still can be joyful and positive when you slow down the process. And I know for me, again, I experience both. So I, So I get to have that comparison of one just taking off with this and the other. It's going to be a long road, but he's still really joyful, and it doesn't make it less, you know, you. You hit upon something. I have spoken on Capitol Hill to lawmakers, and I think about the policies around. We have a lot of. We have a lot of structure in this country for veterans, ptsd. And I think about that. I know that these kind of programs are set up for them as well. Do you believe that this is something that we can implement on a national level to help more and more families of children with diagnoses and neurodiversity on a scale that we do with, with helping veterans?
• 21:00
  Speaker B: 100%. I think we suffer from a collective failure of imagination as a, as a, as a world. I mean, this is, you know, I. My data is more focused on the United States and specifically New Jersey, which is, again, it's the chicken and the egg. You know, why are the rates so high in New Jersey? Is it because people are moving here for services, or is there something inherently happening? I did sit on the Governor's Council for Autism Treatment for two years, and it was an interesting opportunity just to understand kind of what the. Our government, and this was a while back, how government was responding to autism treatment and research. Yeah, I think there's a collective failure of imagination. We know at early ages that we're going to have to think about employment differently, about housing differently, about socialization differently, about medical care differently, about transportation. Differently, end of life care, differently. And we're so far behind the eight ball. When I was back on the governor's council, I think it was an average of 20,000 individuals diagnosed with some form of intellectual or developmental disability yearly. Meaning there were an additional 20,000 entering the system at post 21. It's such a shock to the system from our experience of working in the community of how to navigate, you know, comprehensive services up till age 21 and then all of a sudden you're on your own self directed funds, your therapies may or may not be happening. You may or may not get into a group home if you didn't get onto a wait list early on. Oh no. Job opportunities, day habilitation programs that are better than just, you know, babysitting. These are, this is so one of, one of the opportunities that we found here at Pony Power is in farming and as a pre vocational training site or a job sampling site. So we have, we have a problem to solve. Right. We're, we're losing our farmers for a bunch of different reasons from policy, it's from just people not returning to farms. The need for farming in our food systems is key. It fits into all of the other pieces as well. And when it's a routine job, it's a way to, you can operationalize, you can put schedule boards up, you can train. It's so deeply sensory. So it satisfies that void that you may not be getting your traditional therapies all the time. And it's truly productive and purposeful in our community. And as a social worker, if you don't have purpose, you really are flailing. And so coming up with meaningful jobs for our community of adults with autism, we one opportunity is farming. So we have a small test site here and others are doing it as well, but kind of figuring out how to integrate into food systems and how to train. And there's lots of research to be shared about the return on investment for adults with disabilities. If the employer spends the time setting their facility up their systems up their onboarding, that that client is going to a be the most reliable client you have, take pride in the work that they're going to do. You'll have no turnover. So your return on investment is exponential. Again, failure of imagination. So there's so many opportunities for not discounting this historically underemployed or not employed population. And so that's what we're working on as well.
• 24:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, you hit on so many things. I think that there is a overlap. It's not just in the farming and nature based services or companies. I was speaking to a company that is based in Indiana. They're a stair manufacturing company and their entire pit crew that boxes up the products to be shipped to luxury homes wherever they are is all made up of neurodiverse individuals and they are the most reliable. And he said they are the most, they're the pulse of their entire organization. And I think that we need to be reminded about that Sense of purpose does not go away. Whether you are a non speaking autistic individual or you are the president of any organization or CEO. That sense of purpose is so deeply human. And you know, I think that you know how you're building this and what you're providing. I'm so thankful that you're here in New Jersey. I am so, so thankful. But I'm also just so thankful for the that you're expanding and reminding people that environment matters. Environment is so critical and all behavior is communication and when we change the environment it's amazing to see how these kids grow. Hearing you say that you are a provider in a space where that fear of leaving, the fear that comes from isolating so much and the fear of desiring to interact does take a lot of ignition energy from parents and caregivers. But to know that they're going to be met with a sense of deep understanding and real care, real heart centered care, I can't, I can't say and speak enough gratitude to that. Dana, thank you so much for what you guys do.
• 25:56
  Speaker B: Thank you.
• 25:58
  Speaker A: All right, well we will be sharing all about Pony power therapies, the farm, how you can get involved on the episode summary here. And again, remember to everyone here listening, one of the foundational things that we say here on Inch Jones is that you know your child best and when you can place your child and know deeply that an experience is going to enrich and expand them and also going to do the same for you too. Thank you Dr. Danis. Thank you so much for being here on Inchstones And until next time, everyone.