Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
Here on Equine Assisted World.
We look at the cutting edge and the best practices currently being developed and,
established in the equine assisted field.
This can be psychological, this can be neuropsych, this can be
physical, this can be all of the conditions that human beings have.
These lovely equines, these beautiful horses that we work with, help us with.
Thank you for being part of the adventure and we hope you enjoy today's show.
In the following podcast, I had a long chat with my dear friend, Joel Dunlap
of Square Peg Foundation in California.
For those of you who don't know this amazing person, Joelle, um,
about 15 years ago, she founded.
An organization dedicated to the people that don't fit into mainstream society
and how to help them learn skills and learn to thrive using horses.
She was really one of the first people to pioneer this work.
Now she works in the fields of autism, trauma, neuropsych, other
types of mental health, and she has two facilities, one in half Moon
Bay, just south of San Francisco.
And one in Sonoma, just east of San Francisco in the wine country, and
she works all over the world and educates people all over the world.
In this amazing work, she combines neuroscience with really
good classical horse training.
She provides, employment for people with neuropsychiatric , conditions,
and she provides basically happiness and joy and the tools to thrive.
So without further ado, let's find out how Joel Dunlap does this.
Joell Dunlap: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
This is the first one, really?
Ah, yeah.
Cool.
Yeah, I have been wanting to do this for the longest time
and um, that's why I'm excited.
Um, for about the last four or five years, I've just, I think along with everyone
else who's working in the field, has watched it suddenly go from a rather
tight, , perhaps overregulated perhaps.
Somewhat limited, uh, field and, and a rather factional field to
suddenly a really wide open field.
And I think what I and many like us have noticed is that a lot of people
who were quietly working away for more than years, I'd say decades, um, their.
Has now proved itself and people are now doing studies into them.
It's reaching academia and so much of what was on the hippie
margins has now in about the last five years come to the mainstream.
But it's still a somewhat confusing world in that, well, there seems
to be the equine-assisted thing.
There seems to be the, , neuropsych thing.
There seems to be the, , physical disabilities thing and.
many others.
And these seem to be existing still to some degree in their own, , galaxies.
, but there are a growing number of people out there who see the bigger picture.
Mm-hmm.
. And, , as we are realizing now, so many people have multiple diagnoses.
So many people, , they might have something physical, but they've got
something neuropsychological going on.
They could have trauma and something physical.
Perhaps they've come back from a war zone and they're injured.
They could have many multiple layers to a lesser or greater degree.
And, , suddenly the, the technologies available seem to me to be
rising, to meet this challenge.
And I would say that of the people that I have been watching over
the past, more than a decade, , be just consistently effective.
Would be Joelle Dunlap of Square Peg Foundation in California.
So Joelle, I've got you finally in front of me.
I'm sitting in Germany, you're sitting there.
Um, I want you to tell us who you are and what you do, and then I want to ask
you a bunch of questions so that the listeners can get an insight into the
multifaceted world that you work in.
and perhaps get some ideas about how they might explore this world as well.
So who are you, Joel ? Uh, I am the co-founder and executive
director of Square Peg Foundation.
We started in 2004, um, and we called it Square Peg because we wanted to.
, we saw a real gap between people who wouldn't thrive in a traditional
writing environment and people who also weren't going to fit in, um,
in what, at the time, in 2004, was a therapeutic writing environment.
And, um, we, we saw a, a.
A bunch of people, um, who weren't gonna be served well in either environment.
Um, and of course what found us in that space is autism, um,
over and over and over again.
Um, but our first partner when we started Square Peg was a family homeless shelter
in San Francisco, in the Tenderloin, in the roughest part of the city.
And they had a really beautiful.
Way of looking at the homeless issue.
Um, that they wanted to create an environment of family rituals and joy
and an experience through the eyes of the child so that the recidivism
in autism, or sorry, in, in, in homelessness, um, wasn't repeated
generation after generation after generat.
and that mentorship was so timely and so helpful to us because it helped us
understand the importance of environment, um, and the importance of changing
the way somebody saw themselves.
Um, and that was, that is a program called Raphael House Family Homeless Shelter.
And when you think of a homeless shelter, you don.
Think of hopefulness and you don't think of sweetness.
, and here's a place where the children, , they all, , read a bedtime
story and then lit a candle and then sang their ways back to their
rooms to go to bed and create these rituals, , of safety and of sweetness.
we learned a lot from them.
So, , so here we are in 2023.
In 2018, um, we opened up our first satellite organization.
So here we are.
We'd been operating for 16 years and, , loved what we were doing.
, Didn't know how it would scale.
You know, this is Silicon Valley and everybody wants to talk
about scalability of operations.
, , and we didn't plan it this way, the story that I'll share because I think it's,
it's interesting just in talking about.
How things grow naturally.
, we had a woman working for us, Becca Knff.
Um, very, very, very, very talented.
And , if I had a nickel, if you had a nickel for every resume of every
college girl coming out of college who says, you know, I wanna work for
a horse boy foundation, or I wanna work for square peg, , we could
probably buy a pretty fancy latte
But Becca sent that resume and showed up for her first day to
volunteer, and within an hour she was wearing a tutu and was back riding.
Um, and , we thought, okay, we have a keeper.
, so Becca also wanted to pursue, , excellence in being, , a
competition dressage writer.
So she worked for us.
four days a week, and then she commuted an hour and a half north,
um, up to Sonoma to ride with a, , a Grand Prix dressage trainer.
, a couple, well, actually three days a week.
She was working seven days a week.
And, , this woman was a, was a, a mentor to her personally and professionally.
And, , that woman, , Susan Palmer.
Went from diagnosis to gone from breast cancer in four months
for very brutal short months.
, and it was devastating Rebecca, , and for, , her barn community, , and
certainly for her family.
And so her widower came to Becca and said, look, , I need you to take over the barn.
I need you to.
Run the barn for me.
So she came to us crying and said, you know, I need to honor Susan and I need
to quit working for Cor Peg and I need to go and run Cadence Farm up in Sonoma.
And we gave her our blessing and hugs and a going away party and off she went.
And, , about six weeks later, she called me and said, , can we have dinner?
And I said, well, of course.
So she drives an hour and a half south and we order dinner and she starts crying.
She says, I don't wanna run a massage barn.
And I said, well, what do you wanna do?
She said, I, I won't square peg.
I need square peg in my life.
And I said, well, and this is a very Rupert esque, um, answer.
I said, well, let's just turn Cadence Farm into a Scorp satellite.
and she said, can we do that?
I said, I have no idea, but I have this napkin under my glass of wine and
I'm sure someone will lend us a pen.
And we started penciling out or panning out how it would work.
And that's, that's, that's how our, our satellite operation, , opened.
So we did prove that we could scale it and we did prove that we could
grow and that we could go into a new community and get the trust of the autism
community there and, and start services.
So, so, well, you've just said some things which, , for a lot of people
in the, uh, equine therapy world would seem to be completely dissonant things.
You said you've, in this last couple of minutes, you've said homelessness,
you've said, but family rituals of joy, safety, and sweetness.
You've said autism, you've said Grand Prix, dressage, . How do
all these things come together?
, pretty naturally, right?
, talk us through it.
Well, I think the important thing is, is, is joy and curiosity and exploration.
Um, the best of dressage is just that, right?
It's, it's partnership and it's, and it's joyfulness.
And if it's not joyfulness, you certainly see it and you feel it.
and that connection that we seek with the horse when we seek, , excellence
in, in horsemanship is always going to be about, about joy and curiosity
and communication and ritual, right?
Horses, they love a good ritual.
they love to know what's coming.
That's true.
They love that predictability and you certainly learn that
in, in the autism world.
If you can, if you can create.
a joyful place, but that it's so unpredictable sometimes
that's destabilizing.
and so bringing it back to beautiful ritual, , that, that feels like
home, that feels like safety.
Um, it all, it all fits in now for many people, , in the horse world, , who
look at dressage a little bit of.
They equate it with the word dressage.
, it's never good enough, you know, it's a bit snooty and so on.
How does dressage and autism slash special needs slash equine
assisted work come together?
What's the connection?
The first thing that comes to mind is rhythm, right?
If we look at the training scale, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm,
we are, we're born to a rhythm.
The music that we listen to is, you know, is directly connected to.
Heart rate.
A heart rate of when we feel good, a heart rate of when we feel
excited, um, and also our, our gait.
, we love rhythm.
We are creatures of rhythm and , and horses as well.
When they feel good, our creatures of rhythm.
When we are rhythmically moving again, we're creating that.
That, that joy and that predictability, you know, um, you don't have to be a
musician to be able to find the one.
Right.
The one is home in rhythm.
And, , I think, you know what I'm seeing in dressage lately, and even in jumping.
is, um, people understanding rhythm and understanding biomechanics so much more.
They're understanding that when a horse is compressed in his neck and he's compressed
in his back, that it is dressage, right?
And we feel it and we see it.
Um, and, and the rhythm is the first thing that goes out the window.
So when, um, gosh, I, I, I can get lost in the woods on this.
Just trying to come back, lead us into the woods originally, lead us
into, no, lead us into the woods.
I love it.
So, , you know, finding, , finding that regulating rhythm, it feels good.
And, and why does the rhythm feel good?
Let me nail you on that one.
So let's, so we're assuming that we've got a horse that's not stress, that
we've got a horse that's relaxed.
And I'm gonna ask you how you achieve this, um, in a moment, but, , how
does this rhythm beyond a certain predictability, um, do good to a human?
The other night my husband and I went out to go see live music for
the first time in a long time.
, between, just the habits that we all built during the, the Covid shutdowns
and, and, and the fear of being in groups.
And, and we saw the Blind Boys of Alabama, um, which are three old men
singing spiritual music with a, with a, with a, with a a, a, a funky backbeat.
and it had been so long since I'd seen music with a group and you
realize that everybody's breathing and their foot tapping and their
head bobbing had all synced up.
and you think about any healing tradition, any tribal tradition, it's all based
around being in a circle and sinking up in rhythm, generally through song and dance
and drumming and whatever that takes.
And that's the best of who we are.
So why wouldn't we seek that?
For anybody who's feeling dysregulated, why wouldn't we go there first?
. And is that what you're trying to achieve with the horses?
And if so, how are you doing it?
Um, well that's, that's the ideal, right?
How are you getting the softness?
Like what?
Talk me through it.
Well, the softness, , there has to be some trust between the horse and the person.
And, , we we're all now learning, , how quick horses are to size this up of
whether or not we're we're trustworth.
. , and, so ideally, the person working with the horse, the horse knows well, but
that's not always, uh, totally possible.
, and spending a lot of time, whether you wanna call it training or working
with the horse and seeking that rhythm and, praising for that rhythm.
and how are you doing that?
Are you doing that from the saddle or are you doing that from the ground?
We spend a lot of time on the ground.
we spend a lot of time, and I'm sure we'll get into this, but you
know, it was, it was through you and IA that we were introduced
to the work of the Lenzo family.
and they moved us so far forward in the, in the, the, the in-hand work.
it so much can be accomplished from the ground and, and working on the
ground will make you a better writer.
And there's, there's, if I could, if I could bring one message, to the equine
group, , I'd like that to be known.
What you can do on the lunge, what you can do from the ground, and
giving the horse that visual feedback.
They're not as visual as we think they are.
, but they're, they're still quite visual.
And when we're on the horse, when we're riding, they don't get that, that
visual, feedback that they're gonna get if we have someone on the ground, whether
it's lunging or, or doing in-hand work.
Um, so you just, you mentioned the vales there, you mentioned in-hand work.
and I was gonna get to mentors in a minute, and you, you, you
talk about who your mentors, you.
So you've talked about Rafael House.
Mm-hmm.
you also, mentioned now the ERs who, for those people who are listening, the,
the ER family in Portugal, Luis Valer is probably, is regarded, I would say,
perhaps, I think you'd agree with this.
as probably the greatest living exponent of classical i Barack
dressage probably alive on the planet.
currently, it seems that there's a, a consensus among, among the
dressage community about this.
and I know him, obviously you do too.
And he, one of the things that comes across is he his humanity.
But of course, he doesn't really travel outside of Portugal much to teach.
So when you say the Lenza family, can you talk us through?
Who from that family has been training you and your team?
How have they been training you and how has that made a difference?
Mm gosh.
Uh, so Luis has three daughters, the youngest daughter,
Sophia, travels extensively.
I think she's in New Zealand as we speak.
I think she teaches in at least four and maybe five different languages.
I think she can teach in Polish as well.
Which is just amazing.
Um, and, uh, and then the and then her, her traveling partner
and co-train, uh, Gonzalo Leche.
Um, the two of them, uh, have been coming out.
I think the first time I met them was at your place in Elgan and.
I'm so bad at timelines.
That was probably what, eight, nine years ago?
It was the police do scene, I think.
I think when Ma, I think so.
still bellowed to Macedon across the AL'S swamps.
True.
I think it was.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And you a little bit.
Very nice Mastodon to ride.
I appreciate that.
Yes.
The mastodons have a beautiful sense of rhythm.
Really, really, really rhythmic.
It's a shame you're not around anymore.
It is.
It's , so, um, and then, I think it was, 2018, I was able to go to
Portugal and spend a week, um, at the Vales and, and, and we had two
days of terrible, terrible, terrible.
Rain and windstorms, that were so bad.
Even in their, their covered school, there was water running
down the hill and rushing.
and, and here's, you know, master Lenzo with a, a giant push broom
and trying to, to, you know, move the water and it didn't work.
And so, you know, in true Portuguese tradition, we all just went back
to the house and ate lunch for hours and hours and hours, and,
which they were gonna do anyway.
But, he was gracious enough to let me interview him for about three hours,
uh, until all of the batteries ran out.
Um, and just spending that intimate time with him.
, the first question I asked him, just as kind of a warmup was, you know,
what did you have for breakfast?
And he spins it into this philosophical, beautiful treatise on, on, on Boche.
Um, What a, what a joy.
. Right.
So, , yeah, that mentorship has been, uh, such a gift.
What would you say it's done, you said in terms of providing rhythm and softness
and a wellbeing through that mm-hmm.
, uh, through for the, for your, the, the people that you serve.
Mm-hmm.
, what would you say started for your horses?
Mm.
Well, and we haven't even touched on, on, um, Joel's particular, Brand of insanity.
Um, oh, we're going.
Believe me, , people need to know your particular brand of
insanity because they will go wtf.
And I'll go.
Yeah.
Yes.
So yeah.
What, let, we'll go to the insanity in a minute.
What's it done for this insane crew?
Uh,
they're sweet.
They're sweet, sweet, sweet and soft.
Um, and these are horses that generally come in with not just
tension, but , some gnarly injuries, bone on bone injuries, um, muscle
imbalances, , from their, their, their field of expertise and what they've
been bred for hundreds of years to do.
They just get soft, um, soft in the body, soft in the brain, in
the, not like me, soft in the brain, but , you know what I mean?
Soft in the Yeah.
I'm just taking a hole for myself.
But the softness, emotional as well as Yeah.
Um, absolutely.
Okay.
Absolutely.
Do you have any speculation on why that might be, uh, what's going on
with this in-hand work that creates.
There's a lot of balancing in the body.
There's a lot of, , finding, , horses in, in, in a natural setting will
not very often, um, cross their legs over the midline, um, unless
they're particularly scared.
Um, . But very often we find that when a horse with his hind leg steps
underneath his center of gravity with one hind leg and moves and bends in his
body, he starts steepening his breath.
He starts to lengthen the outside of his body.
He gets softer on the inside.
Um, and then when we consistently reward that, he starts to seek
it not just for his own self, but he seeks it in, in pleasing you
and you being part of that herd.
Um, I'm never.
Ever seen anything.
You know, it used to be that you would just put a horse on the end of a lunch
line and run them until they're tired and then you know, he'll figure it
out, which does work to an extent, and it worked for me for a long time.
But to change that into the horse feeling at home in his body and knowing
where all his feet are and, and, and.
Softening through his back before we put a rider on softening through his
job before anybody's holding a bit.
Um, they just get sweet and that's the word that just keeps
coming up so sweet from insane.
Why are these horses coming insane?
Where are they coming from?
These horses that come.
They're racehorse.
Oh yeah.
So they're bred to be fast and there's nothing faster for, you know,
a mild of five miles than a third.
So you are putting mm-hmm.
autistic people.
Mm-hmm.
on off the track.
Thoroughbreds.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
. Okay.
Now, some people would say that's dangerous.
Some people would say mm-hmm.
, oh, you can't do that.
Mm-hmm.
, , you shouldn't do that.
, How can this work?
Why is it working?
Because it clearly is working cuz you've been around for 16 years,
you've got another satellite here.
Um, I know that you are now, um, under the San Mate Mateo County,
, medical and mental health thing, which we're gonna go to in a minute.
Mm-hmm.
so clearly, clearly, clearly, you're getting results.
, how can this be?
Why isn't it dangerous?
Because a lot, all the naysayers are gonna say, that's not something you should do.
You shouldn't match up.
Mm-hmm.
, thoroughbreds like that.
Mm-hmm.
this possible population.
So talk us through how it works.
One of the things about a thoroughbred is that he is born with humans in his life.
Um, Some of the borough courses, , are not handled until they're
three, four or five years old.
a racehorse is , he's handled at conception.
, the rule is you cannot artificially inseminate for a racehorse.
It has to be a live cover and it has to be witnessed and certified.
So humans are there from that moment of, of conception.
Um, and so.
and, and the good ones.
and good farms.
Um, the people handling the horses are experienced horse people, so
a lot of them come quite trusting.
Um, I don't think they would run if they didn't trust, um, because
we ask them for everything and sometimes it costs them everything.
. , so that's one thing.
You don't have to teach a thoroughbred to want to please or trust humans, um,
because they, they, they come that way.
They've also seen a lot of things at the track, right?
Bicycles are not new to them.
Big tractors are not new to them.
Um, so they do, you know, a four year old horse coming off the track
has seen a lot of human things.
And a lot of different locations, I suppose.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Different environment.
He's, he's, he's hauled in vans.
He's been to sales.
Um, which isn't to say that that isn't traumatic or stressful, um,
but he has been there, done that.
And the fact that he's standing in your yard means that he's
survived it on some level.
Um, you know, he's worked with a lot of veterinarians.
Hopefully he is, had his teeth done.
, and he is had some pretty good nutrition.
So, so there's.
as, as the lead up, but he's bred to be really, really fast.
Um, he's been written fairly roughly, um, and, , you know,
he's been, he's been taught to lean into contact with the bridal.
, , you know, if there's one thing I can say about horses, period, is their
ability to forgive is one of the most soul cleansing and also taxing,
you know, if you think about it.
So once you start to spend time with the horse and start to get him feeling good
in his body, they become so appreciative.
And so, gosh, I sound like a broken record, but they get sweet.
Um, and um, I also like to.
illustrate in a way people can, can understand, you know, the, the importance
of environment and diet for the horses.
So if a horse is at the track, you know, we, we have a joke, a racetrack
saying that you just feed 'em beans and gunpowder, you know, and
then light a match and off the go,
Um, so diet and environment, right?
If you bring home a.
Border Colly puppy and you live in an apartment and you go to work all day,
he's probably gonna chew up all your shoes and your credit cards and the walls.
Um, but if you live on a farm and he goes to work with you all day and he's moving
all the time, and he is with other dogs.
people are gonna come to your house at dinnertime and say, how
come your dog is so well behaved?
He just sleeps over in the corner and doesn't bother anyone.
Um, it's the same with the horses when you create the right environment and the right
diet, um, which helps me and my staff too because I still like to go fast, right?
So it means that the thoroughbreds you have are reason to get them out and
go find a good hill and have a proper Gallup and, and move around a little
bit, um, so that they can regulate.
Um, and that works for me too.
So you're saying that, um, you are taking off the track thoroughbreds and through
a mixture of this classical in-hand work, plus this natural environment.
Um, cause I know I've seen your California hills that you're working
on and giving them speed when they need it so that they, correct me if
I'm wrong, so that they won't need it.
when they're working with your vulnerable population.
Mm-hmm.
because they've got their jollies out basically.
Is that mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
, um, means that you end up with a sensitive and giving horse
that feels good in its body.
Mm-hmm.
, um, there's a real beauty in what you're saying in terms of an animal
that has been, if not broken, or there's some of them, uh, as you say, come
with injuries in service now being.
Rehabbed through this work that you do to then go back into service in a way
that provides it itself with wellbeing.
There's a story to this that I'd like to unearth, which I
actually myself don't know.
Even though I've known you for a while.
Not everyone knows thoroughbreds.
Not everyone would be able to do this.
Um, , let's go back to your earlys.
Joel, what's your first contact with the horse in your life?
How did you get into horses?
, my mother's family were jockeys.
, some of them very good, some of them really bad, um, and, , but
all of them violent drunks and.
. So my mother was terrified of me being anywhere near the track.
, and she had a rough life growing up and she wanted to create the perfect suburban,
, upbringing for her family, which she did.
Um, but it was always horses for me.
And I can remember I was looking at your questions, um,
before I, before I dialed up.
And I can remember being like eight years old at the, at the, at the Park
Pony ride, you know, where everybody else is three or four years old and I'm
eight, so I'm bigger than anyone and I'm on this pony on the little track.
and I am the happiest person on the planet . I just, I can feel it in my body.
I just, it was just bubbles everywhere and I was so happy.
I just wanted to cry.
And, you know, some squeaky little plasticy saddle that I'm sitting
on, on some poor little pony that's going round and round in circles and.
, nothing had ever made me so happy.
And, um, and so I just, whatever I needed to do to be around horses, I did.
Um, which included, you know, working for lessons or, , there were, there were
horses on the way to school, , in stables.
And I remember stuffing.
Sweatpants underneath my, my Catholic schoolgirl's skirt and
sneaking into the barn and sitting on their backs while they ate before
school, um, until I got discovered.
And there were nobody caught you yet calls to the police?
Oh, yeah.
Well, eventually, eventually they did, but um, you know, just being on them and
smelling them and being with them mm-hmm.
, , was all I ever wanted.
And, uh, so by the time I was 18, I was galloping, racehorses at the
track, much to my mother's chagrin.
Um, and that was my life for, um, I guess for the next 12 years.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Now, you, you, you, you said that you were galloping racehorses
on the track from 18 mm-hmm.
. , I know your story and, , I think it would really help listeners to know your story.
, because I think there's a link here into service and special needs.
Something happened to you, um, before that 18th birthday.
Can you tell us that story?
Sure.
, I was, , very unexpectedly a mom at 16.
, and, and this was where, where, where in the US did that?
In Sacramento, California.
Okay.
Yeah.
And, , I was an athlete.
, my son's dad, , was also an athlete.
Um, we were both swimmers.
He was into cycling.
I was, I was running track and cross country, , and we
were training for triathlons.
, I somehow thought that that would.
Act as birth control.
, . I don't know.
That sounds like a 16 year old in an outlook.
Yeah, yeah.
Doesn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, um, but I was very, very, very lean.
Um, which probably between that and being 16 years old and quite stressed,
, contributed to the fact that he, Greg was born nine weeks early, so
he was a three and a half pound baby.
Um, with a 50 50 shadow of survival, three and a half pound baby.
. Mm-hmm.
. And you're a 16 year old mom.
Mm-hmm.
with a, with a premature three and a half pound baby.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
What are you looking at?
How are people reacting to this?
You know, I didn't have time to notice how anybody was reacting, cuz I was, I
was busy praying and visiting and trying to figure out how to breastfeed a baby.
That's on, you know, that's being tube fed.
, he, he did marvelously.
He's is to this day, so strong, um, and pulled through beautifully,
, and came home about a week and a half before his due date
joel, I've lost you.
Hold on.
I got you back.
All right.
So where I lost you is you've got, you're 16, you've got a
premature baby who's come home.
You're trying to figure out how to breastfeed with a baby that's on a tube.
You're trying to figure this out and you are riding racehorse
at the track for a living.
No, I wasn't.
Um, I started galloping racehorses when he was about two and a half.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Cuz that's what all young moms do, is Yeah.
When, when their kids hit toddler and they, they, they go and get jobs,
galloping, two year old thoroughbreds.
Um, which of course not dangerous or anything.
and, you took no wrecks of course, I'm sure.
No, no, no.
Never fell off, right?
Mm-hmm.
M how do you go from this teenage mom surviving by galloping racehorse
on the track, risking your life, eeking out a dirt, poor wage living,
dealing with incredibly rough human beings and meeting the challenges of
being a single mom, at a teenage.
How, how do you put all this together?
I don't know.
I know that's really unsatisfying, but
I think I realized that, , you know, I was, I was a mom and it
was a sacred, um, important duty and that I was his one person who
was ultimately responsible for him.
If I was dead inside, I'd have nothing to offer him, and I needed
something that made me alive inside, and that was horses And galloping.
Racehorse is a way you get paid to have horses in your life
and you're done by 10 in the.
, um, you know, and so I could go to school, I could have another job.
I could be with my son.
, so, you know, and, in a, in a, in a way that's for better or for worse, followed
me through my life trying to cram all these responsibilities in my life.
Um, so, you know, I was thinking, how do I stay alive inside?
How do I feed a, a, a love and a passion in me and still feed my family?
And that's what I did.
So you go from, um, galloping resources on the track.
Mm-hmm.
as a single mom, figuring all this out.
And a certain time later in your life, you enter the therapeutic
world with Neurodiverse people.
What's the connection?
There's a connection there.
What happens in the course of those intervening years that.
Connect you from I.
Is there, is there something to do with what's going on with your child?
What takes you there?
My son had a really unique way of learning.
School was easy for me.
Um, I was always successful in school.
Um, I was successful socially.
Um, I was a mediocre athlete at whatever I tried.
Um, for Greg it was different and I realized that it wasn't a
lack of intelligence on his part.
In fact, far from it, he had this spectacular curiosity
to want to know how things.
and he took things apart and he made terrible messes and he lit things on fire.
And , he, he, he, he just wanted to know, and he had to touch it and he had to
tear it up and he had to figure it out.
And, when you are, , a highly active little boy, um, in our
school system with a very young distracted mom, , you're a problem.
You're a problem.
That's all there is to it.
And he was a problem.
And you know, I, I like to say that he hated school.
I think school hated him.
And that made me so angry that they just were missing this beautiful intelligence.
And, um, at the time, uh, you know, , the only resource that I
had for learning anything about learning was the public library.
And, , so here I am at, you know, now all of 20, 21, 22 years old with a,
with a, with a child in elementary school who's already failing.
Um, and you discovered John Holt and unschooling, and you
start thinking, wait a minute.
You mean brains aren't designed to sit still in a classroom and be
shouted at for the next 13 years?
Um, you know, and John Holt was a nut, but Gotti was a, he was a brilliant nut.
And then you start looking at Waldorf education, which, you know,
how is a Gallup girl, um, going to afford a private Waldorf education?
Here's these people talking about taking children out into gardens and growing
their own food and, and, and, and I start thinking, no, this is how he learns.
He learns hands on.
He learns by experiencing things.
And as I'm learning this and as I'm watching him, he's failing and he's
failing and he's being labeled a problem.
And his behaviors are, , you know, I, how do you take a beautiful eight year
old and have a depressed, angry child?
And I got angry and I got protective.
And I didn't get angrier protected enough because I kept being told he just
needs to sit down and shut up and do it.
Um, and , and I just kept getting more curious.
He taught me so much about learning and so often I would just have to pull
him completely out of school because it was just torturous for everyone.
And so here I am working, you know, two and three jobs at the time,
still working at the racetrack.
And, um, and I got a homeschool him on top of it.
, and then I just, I had to rely on other people to, you know, I had to build
a village for him, , in how to learn.
And the village that came together was not the one that I expected or
even wanted, uh, at the racetrack.
The, , they're all union jobs and the security guards are union cops.
Most of them semi-retired, a lot of them wounded.
, San Francisco and Oakland beat cops.
, I don't like it.
But to this day, my son loves weapons and he learned how to respect a weapon.
He learned how to care for a weapon.
He learned how to handle a weapon from these cops at the racetrack.
And they were so good to him.
And the, and the corporation yard, the guys who built things,
you know, they were kind to him.
Um, the guys in the video department, cuz I worked in the video department at
night, showed him how to wire things up.
Um, it was all hands on and that's where he would thrive and that's
where he would shine and that's where he would be successful.
And, , and he's a mechanic today, you know, horse short.
You learned.
So you learned how to, create community learning, teaching community.
I, you said you had to homeschool and you immediately rather
modestly, leap towards what other people, uh, were teaching your son.
What did you learn?
How did you learn to teach?
Tell us a couple of stories from that.
H h how did he teach you how to teach a child like him?
Yeah, so I remember, you know, here, I, I was working at least two jobs.
I was galloping race horses in the morning, and I was working for
the racetrack in the afternoon.
So Mondays and Tuesdays were our days for school and we had to, we had to
log X amount of hours of schoolwork and turn that into the school district.
And that's how I was able to, so, so we, we would collectively game the system.
So we would go to downtown Berkeley and we would go and watch
a foreign film and eat popcorn.
And so we would log two hours of reading because we had to read the subtitles.
Two hours of foreign language and two hours of history.
We're six hours in and we've had popcorn , you know, . Um, but it was really out
in movement and you know, playing in the water and building dams and climbing
trees and reading books that he wanted to hear about and that was humor He loved.
I think the hitchhikers guy did the galaxy, changed his life,
you know, suddenly reading wasn't a chore and it wasn't awful.
It was funny.
And where did you do this?
Reading?
As often as we could outside up in trees, you know, at the beach, wherever you
climb into the trees with him and read.
Of course, I still climb trees.
I love you.
Say, of course.
I can tell you, Joel, your average teacher, let alone
mum does not climb into trees.
. Well, they're missing something.
What made you able to follow your child like that?
, it was probably de desperation.
Nothing else worked.
Mm-hmm.
, you know, if, if, if, if shouting at him to sit down and shut up and
just do the homework worked, maybe that's where our lives would've been.
But, you know, the universe had other plans and, um, nothing else worked.
The only time he was happy.
And there's a, there's an all hands on science museum in San Francisco.
Uh, well now there's several, you know, this was right, this
was 25 years ago, 28 years ago.
and taking him there and just letting him run loose and touch
everything and experience things.
And, and then I remember one time we went to the, the aquarium in San Francisco.
This was the old one.
And, so here it is, you know, he's homeschooling and, um, and we're in
the aquarium and we're down below and there's, there's penguins.
, you know, in the, in the tank.
And Greg is running back and forth and the penguins are swimming with
him and following him back and forth, and he's having the best time.
And we look over and there's a group of school kids with the teacher,
you know, who's making them go through and do everything in this
very quiet sort of organized way.
And every kid was so desperately jealous, of this little boy who could run with the
penguins in having the time of his life.
And suddenly he looked up and he went, I'm the lucky one.
You know, nobody's telling me.
And, uh, the penguins were having a great time.
I was having a great time.
Greg was having a great time.
That's how you learn to follow the child.
You know, you have those little moments where you go,
oh, this is actually learning.
So you, you're saying, Greg, to this day, he's doing great.
He's a mechanic.
He's, he's a horseshoe.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
, did he become a horseman with you?
He horses were part of his life, his whole life.
Um, you know, his first babysitters were horses, right?
Big thoroughbreds.
And, but school was continued to be torturous and, and awful for him.
And so he was in his senior year of high school, and, and he
just, he just wasn't going to go.
He knew he wasn't gonna graduate.
He hated school.
And, they call this now school refusal, which there wasn't a term then.
, a dear friend of mine, uh, who had, , a program in Maui, saw us really struggling
and fighting and fussing and, and, and Greg had really fallen in with a, with
a bad bunch of kids, who had some pretty, uh, dangerous lifestyle habits.
Um, and so she just intervened and she said, uh, Greg, why don't
you come to Maui and work for me?
And he was, he was only 17 at the time.
And, uh, and we decided that, that we would, you know, this was a
friend that I loved and trusted, and she was, she was willing.
And so he did.
And he went to Maui and he was working on a horse farm.
And, uh, her stepson, is on the spectrum and they lived together.
And, um, and he, he was famous for really violent meltdowns, and that
was part of j Greg's job was to keep Ryan from hurting himself or others.
And, um, and it was a hard job.
And, , and, and the job fell apart.
so now here's my not quite 18 year old son living out of his car
in Maui, and, uh, every month.
Yeah, yeah.
Right, right.
Um, and, another friend in Maui called, and uh, and she said, is,
is Greg still looking for work?
I said, he is.
And she said, I, I really need someone to work for me at, at my farm.
And so I called him because every homeless person in Maui has a cell phone.
And and I said, you know, look, uh, Jillian needs someone to
work for her at PE Holo stables.
And he's like, God, mom, I'm so sick and tired of horses.
I've been scooping horse manure my whole life, LA la.
And I said, look, I, I understand it's not a career move, but it's a roof
over your head and it's a hot meal tonight, so just, just give it a go.
So he agreed and he called her and he went to work for her and.
I don't think it was a week later.
She was an avid polo player.
And the Maui Polo Club, I think is the oldest continually operating
polo club in the United States.
It's a, it's a big scene.
So she goes out into the, um, first game of the season and, um, somebody
rides by her the opposite direction, catches her stir up and turns her leg
completely around the other direction, a really, really violent break.
And she was laying in the hospital and she says to Greg,
um, I need you to run everything.
I need you to, um, run all the lessons, take care of the
horses, and there's no money.
Um, but what I do have is I have a string of horses, I have a rig, and I
have a membership to the Maui Polo Club.
So you can have my membership for the year if you'll do it.
From homeless to member of the mouth, from homeless to to member with a full string.
Yeah.
It's such a Maui story.
Um, and, the, the local pro saw a lot of talent.
Um, you know, because Greg knew horses very, very, very well from
the ground and wasn't afraid of hot horses cuz he'd been around racehorses
his whole life and took him under his wing and, and privately tutored him.
And, uh, within a year, I think Greg was rated, um, one goal outdoor and
two goals indoor, which is unheard of.
And it really changed his life.
And so the fact that horses would be a turning point in his life where he wanted
to be healthy and he wanted to be engaged in life, um, was a dream come true for me.
, he came back to the States and, uh, started working for us.
Um, adopted a horse off the track, whom, you know, who would
go through a forest fire for Greg.
, got involved with a girl who was working for us, who is now, a quite
accomplished trainer in her own right.
And that's brings us to today.
So you follow, you, you're a 16 year old girl, you get pregnant, you end up
with, uh, somewhat special needs son.
You at least in terms of what would people now would probably
call a D d A D H D and mm-hmm.
, oppositional defiant, and so on and so on.
So, neurodiverse, you are galloping resources at the track.
You find a way by following your child reading books and trees going into nature,
moving and finding community for him.
Um, To the point where he can find a way for, for horses to bring him from
homeless to a two gold polo player.
You then said he came back and started working for us and adopted
a thoroughbred off the track.
Somewhere in there you went from single mum galloping race horses on
the track to having a program, taking off the track thoroughbreds and using
them therapeutically, fill that gap.
What happened?
Um, I think just pretty naturally, when you gallup horses at the track, you start
to wonder what happens to them afterwards.
Um, and then you start placing them, um, which is a great
excuse to do a little competing.
But then.
, you, you have these horses that, you know, they're not a 16 one hand gray gelding.
Um, you know, with a, with a nice balanced body that is going to
very easily find a, a, a show home.
You know, what do you do with a, with a one-eyed horse with a big
ankle, um, who's a fantastic horse who gave you everything on the track?
How do you help that horse?
Um, cuz that's gonna be a hard horse to, to place.
And then I just started thinking about the car bank debt that
we owe horses as a rule.
You know, everything that a horse has done for humanity, but in
particular racehorse because they so willingly give you everything.
Um, and they do get hurt and they do break down.
I started.
Collecting is the wrong word, but there were few horses that I knew were gonna be
really, really, really tricky to place.
And um, so what can those horses do?
And, um, then you realize that you, you've got to have a lot of skill
with, , with, with keeping them comfortable in their bodies and a lot
of skill with, with training them so that they're quiet enough in their
bodies to maybe be a lower level school master, um, or be a good trail horse.
Um, so it really started with the square peg horses, right?
The horses that were gonna have a hard time fitting in.
Um, but I had an experience, I, I I, I started to garner, and I think probably
just from my experience with, with realizing, that people learn a whole lot
differently than we were taught to teach.
Um, so I'd gotten a reputation in, in running a writing school for, for
working with kids that were gonna be a little more difficult to teach.
And, um, you know, a friend of mine told me one time, it
takes no talent to teach talent.
And I thought, well, that's an interesting, that's
an interesting challenge.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
. Um, and it's certainly true, right?
If we think about it, and, you know, we, we so often wanna compete for
those clients who are talented.
, you know, and, and those clients don't stick around, right?
Because they get recruited by every other trainer.
And I thought, I don't wanna do this.
I really wanna invest in, in students.
I wanna spend time with and with horses that I wanna spend time with.
I didn't want to be in a business where I was just turning horses over
constantly and turning clients over.
I wanted people that, um, you know, if they wanted to launch into a different
discipline that I didn't specialize in, that would be great, but it would be, it
would be a natural movement rather than this, this kind of ugly dog eat dog sort
of world that I saw in the horse business.
And, uh, so I got a reputation as a, as a, as a, as an instructor who,
who had, and I'm putting air quotes around a lot of patients cuz I don't,
I don't know how anybody can be successful in the horse world unless
you have some degree of patience and.
. So this family brought this little girl, uh, out for writing lessons, and
she was just, she's just a cute little red-haired, freckle face little girl.
And she was very shy.
And the parents came to me and said, well, um, she has autism.
And I said, well, what, what does that mean?
And they said, it, it, it, it means nothing.
Just treat her like any other child.
I said, oh, okay.
And she was shy and, and we could work around that.
And she certainly seemed like she liked the horses, even
if she was afraid of them.
And, uh, so I had thrown her into a few group lessons and, we were out
one day a day, I'll never forget.
And, we're in the ring and, and it's just one of those windy, shitty days.
And, um, the horses are distracted.
My voice isn't carrying, so I'm shouting really loud to be heard.
And, um, and the barn crew decides that they've had it with this
crappy weather, and they're gonna feed the horses early and go home.
So now I'm teaching a group lesson and all the horses in the arena can hear
is the horses in the barn being fed?
So now they're super distracted.
So every time this little girl goes by the gate, of course the
horse just hangs a hard right hand turn to the, to the, to the gate.
So I do what every riding instructor since the dawn of time says to do.
And I shout at her to hold her left ring and the horse ducks to the gate.
So we go around again, and of course the horse ducks to the gate.
So I did what I was supposed to do, I thought, and that is, shout
more loudly to hold the left rain.
So this goes on and it's just getting awful and I'm doing my best.
I'm shouting so loud.
. Obviously anybody could understand.
All you have to do is hold the damn left reign, so I go marching over.
I like the languages in schools too, right?
It's true, it's true.
Yeah.
Shout louder.
Yeah, shout louder.
And, uh, which I was doing, you know, with alacrity, I was,
I was really holding my line.
And um, so I ran over and I grabbed the horse's rain and I made a face
at this beautiful little girl.
And I, and I looked up at her and I said, all you have to do is hold the left rain.
And she leans over and she gets almost nose to nose with
me and she just whispers.
I'm trying, hi.
And I, yeah, yeah, yeah.
and the whole, I felt the ground underneath me.
Just move and shake.
Yeah.
Everything changed in that moment.
Yeah.
Everything changed and I think that was the moment my life changed and I
realized this is the service I need to do.
I need to recognize when someone's trying.
I need to honor the student way more than I was, and I needed to change
the way I thought about everything.
Yeah.
Now, Joel, well, hats off because not every writing
instructor would've listened.
Hmm.
What made you listen?
I don't know, but it was so profound.
It was such a physical experience.
Mm-hmm.
. and I realized that I'm not teaching any, I, I don't believe, and I've
thought about this a lot since then.
I don't believe that anyone has ever taught anyone anything.
I think we learn when we decide to learn.
And if you wear the mantle of teacher, you have to honor that
every day that all you can do is present information the best you can.
And the learning is, is, is up to the learner, not the teacher.
And I think it's the same with horses too.
You know?
I mean, how many, how many ways to the pi off are there?
There's so many ways.
And every horse is gonna show you their.
and you can't teach the poff.
You have to search and look for it and see what happens, and then you can help
develop it, but you're not teaching it.
What happened to that little girl?
Hmm.
That family?
I was associated, um, with some families that were close to that family.
I think at that time, and you can speak to this certainly better than
I can, at that time, there was very much a very big school of, um, what I
call the Get over it School of Autism Therapy, . I do remember that school.
And it's still out there.
Yeah.
And, and that family was quite dedicated to that school.
Yeah.
did you manage after that moment where she communicated to you, that she
needed compassion and joy before she was taken away to a world of less joy?
Would you say that you managed to switch her approach with her?
Yeah.
And how, how did you do it?
What did you do?
What did you change?
Well, the first thing I did is I told, uh, I told the parents that
I, I only wanted to work one-on-one.
Um, and then we went to the round pen, you know, where, where we could, we could,
you know, Skinner would call it sterilizing the environment, right?
Where you had less distractions and you had less things that she needed to do.
She didn't need to necessarily steer, she could just.
, you know, feeling the horse going forward and we could, we
could add one element at a time.
Um, and uh, and then I just decided that it had to be more fun.
Mm-hmm.
just had to be more fun, you know, nobody ever changed the world because
they knew what diagonal to post on.
Like, it's, it's never actually made the world any better, . Um, uh, but
you know, that was, that was early on, but it was how, how was definitely
how before we go, cause it's a really interesting point cause the, the listeners
don't know where you've gotten to.
Now we will get there because it's worth hanging with this, anyone who's
listening because, Joel's program is for sure, uh, I'd say it's probably
one of the, it's in the top 10 in the world, um, in terms of its
effectiveness, , with Neurodiverse people.
. , and we'll go into why that is.
So how did you make it more fun?
How did you make it more joyful?
What did you do?
What did you change?
I changed me, right?
I changed the focus or the intention that who cares about this
academic world of riding a horse?
Let's, let's just enjoy it.
What do you like about the horse?
Which horse do you like?
What is he, you know, is he funny?
Is he sweet?
Or when you're scared, you know, what does he do that's scary?
So it was, it was an invitation to having conversations about not just what
the horse was, but who the horse was.
So personalizing the horse, I think was, was something that
came pretty naturally to me.
But, you know, when you, when you find yourself running a, a riding
school, you know, the numbers add up.
And if you can get six horses, six kids and horses in a lesson,
you know, you can make a living.
, but making it way more personal.
Um, and then, and, and, and then, and then fun.
You know, do you think the horse is having fun?
Well, what could the horse do that's having fun?
Um, and that started to change everything and it just gave me so
much freedom to do something way more interesting than some type of
an academic writing school, you know?
Which then I later learned, came out of a military tradition.
That's how I came up.
You know, I was shouted at and screamed at and told how awful I was.
I mean, I did my time there and, and just, um, and, and I'm grateful
actually to those teachers because, because it helped me understand what
I didn't want in a writing school.
And in those moments where I'm shouting to hold the left reign thinking.
. Well, this is, this is no good.
This isn't what I want.
So before we move on from where this girl changed you to where you are now, um,
which is an impressive, uh, climb, does a memory stand out from this girl before she
left your life where it did become fun?
Where, where, where, where it became healing?
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
. Well, what happened was, um, because I'd been quite a bit more successful
with this, with this girl, autism family just started coming in, um,
and some of whom are still in my life, and that was 20 some odd years ago.
Yeah.
Uh, and so.
it became one of the few places that she could go where she felt successful
and that that was healing for her.
It was healing for me.
You know, any teacher who hears that and who doesn't get really turned on
by that and say, wow, somebody who, somebody really wants to be here.
This is the place they'd rather be than anywhere else.
So, and this girl learned how to operate your off the track thoroughbreds.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
. That's not too shabby.
Yeah.
Now this is you running a small survival writing school.
Suddenly you're getting overwhelmed with people, with children with autism.
Mm-hmm.
, because you did well with this autistic guy.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
. , I know that you, uh, have several methods that you use.
I know that you use Horse Point Method.
I know that you use Movement Method.
I know that you train horses in hand with the Baz, old classical burop thing.
What are your go-to methods and what are not your go-to methods?
Basically, what is square peg?
Yeah.
You know, method is such a tricky word, right?
Because it seems restrictive.
I like to think of it, and I think you and I have had long conversations
about this, that the thing that really excited me about Horse
Boy was that it was a framework.
I felt like it gave.
A set of principles that I could hang flesh and muscles
and clothes and jewelry off of.
Um, and that's what I liked because, , you know, I'm just not good at methods.
I'm not, because every horse, you know, if, if, if you don't
like unpredictability probably shouldn't be in the horse business.
you know, but for people with short attention spans like us,
um, it works really well, right?
We're diligence.
We, we want to be adaptive, we want to, to roll with what's happening today.
Um, and, and when you've got rigidity, right, that's gonna break.
Um, and so having the flexibility of a framework, which
one of those big portions of the framework, like the, the,
the encompassing bit is joy.
You know, certainly self-advocacy is our North star.
, but what propels that is, is joy and fun.
And if it's not fun, um, there's a million other things and therapies
and activities that most of our families are participating
in, , that aren't based in fun.
Yeah.
Um, and, and we know the brain science now that it pays off, it pays off.
And like I said, if sitting around and shouting at people
worked better, maybe I'd do it.
But all things being equal, let's have fun.
And, , so there's a lot of silliness around here.
There's a lot of creativity and self-expression.
there's a lot of costuming and dressing up around here.
, there's a lot of music, you know.
Um, and it's so great to, you know, the technology that we have now with
Bluetooth speakers that we can put on a, on a, , On a saddle and clip to it.
Uh, and if you can't do that, you know, um, we've got a
horse that plays the ukulele.
I don't know, have you seen those videos?
Yeah, I have not seen those videos.
Oh, I think I would like to see those videos.
Yes.
Yeah, you should see those videos.
I mean, listeners would probably like to see those videos.
Your horses playing uk.
Anyone?
Yeah.
All in favor say aye.
Yeah, that's a resounding aye.
. Ok.
He's got chops.
Yeah.
Ok.
Yeah, he's got chops.
Um, and so, you know, and then we start giggling around with whether or not we
should, , you know, we've got horses that love to pick things up and shake them.
So we we're, we've gotta start a band.
Um, so we Yeah.
But you say that you, uh, don't like methods, , but you also said, you
know, the neuroscience to it now.
Yeah.
Um, and I also see you diligently.
Following the old master system of training horses with the lunch,
with the in-hand work, and then the assisted in-hand work in the manner
of the old masters, which clearly is getting great results with these
horses, both from the horses' point of view and for the kids' point of view.
So there seems to be, to me, an interesting mix there of freedom and
pre-ex expression mixed with hard science, mixed with humbling yourself
to an ancient tradition that works.
And somehow in the midst of all those three apparently contradictory things,
the square peg delivers up what
sweetness.
I know, but it's, it's what it comes down to, it's sweetness.
Um, the horse feels good, the people are feeling good, the parents.
, you know, a a as a parent, there's nothing sweeter than the sound of your
child laughing and enjoying themselves.
And what is the child learning?
What are they learning while they're in this sweet state?
Give me some examples.
Well, we wanna focus on what they wanna learn.
And a lot of it is self-expression.
A lot of it is self-expression.
And I think, you know what we hear, if you give the child the opportunity to
share their interests, they're reinforcing things that they're struggling to learn.
we had, uh, uh, during Covid, uh, and we've got a little video somewhere, , we
had, we had one girl, dress herself up as a, , a bottle of hand sanitizer,
And then, and then, uh, uh, uh, and then she painted the coronavirus
molecule on, um, on a horse.
And then she, uh, bathed him, right?
And so that was her way of washing away the coronavirus
and being part of the cure.
And no longer, you know, part of being scared.
Um, it's pretty out of the box.
Pretty weird, , right up there with a horse playing ukulele.
Okay.
So, um, I, let's say I bring my child to you mm-hmm.
, and I say, um, okay.
It's clear that you can get communication going.
, I have a child that doesn't wanna communicate.
Now I wanna take it further.
I'd like my child, child to, , get comfortable with maths.
They don't seem to mm-hmm.
math.
What's your approach to that?
What, what are you doing?
Well, I mean, first we have to figure out what the math level
of the, of the learner is.
Um, and also remember, music is math.
Right?
Right.
We can, we, we've got, we've got, we've got eight counts and you can
factor that into, you know, four sets of two, two sets of four, eight ones,
one, eight, you know, an infinite, uh, an unending numbers of zeros.
And, and playing.
playing with the rhythm of the horse.
And, and music.
That's one easy one.
That's one of my favorite ones.
And also reminding, um, reminding parents that listening to music is math,
enjoying music is math, dance is math.
Um, I think, do you remember, um, we were in Thailand and there was a, there
was a boy playing guitar and his mother was so upset and he was, he was a, he
was self-taught from YouTube videos and his mother was incensed that he wasn't
learning math , you know, and helping him understand, oh my gosh, you know, this is
all that, was, was, was helpful for her.
So, So at some point, yes, there is the performative academics that you
do to make a family feel happier.
Um, but the stealthy academics are way more challenging and way more fun.
And, um, and I would say when I, when it comes to math and math concepts,
um, either, either music or, or the actual physics, you know, jumping off
into the stream and building dams and red diverting water and thinking about
how much pressure it's gonna take to make the water flow down the hill.
Um, so you'll get the child off the horse doing things like this.
Sure.
Showing them the physics, then rebounding them, having them, uh, working the
rhythm of the horse, counting them and putting the numbers together.
Then they're with math, both on the horse, both off the horse
in that natural environment.
It's, it's, mm-hmm.
, would that be a typical Yeah, very typical.
Very typical.
I think I would maybe want to send my child to that.
Um, for, for, for, for a lot of reading books on horses too, you know.
Okay.
And, and talking about books that we're reading, you know, normalizing
the fact that people read and enjoy books can be very educational.
You know, when a book is otherwise just this torturous thing that people
make you do instead, all of a sudden you're around a bunch of people and
they're all excited to talk about books.
Well, guess what?
That child wants to read a book so he can bring it back next week and
participate in that conversation.
You talked about getting the kid off the horse.
Would you say that that is as important when you are doing equine assisted stuff?
Percent at the work with the horse?
Yeah.
Anytime you get attached to how much time or what percentage of the time
the person spends on the horse, um, you've already, you've already lost.
Not that, it's, not that it's a a, a zero sum game, but, um, you know, because
then you're, you're forcing someone on a horse and, you know, even the, the square
peg name is about not forcing a fit.
Right.
Because if you, if you force a square peg into a round hole, you're, you're
forcing that fit and you're creating, and then you're not only creating
resistance, but you're destroying the peg and possibly the hole.
So I'm a child, it's just a mess I get mm-hmm.
, uh, brought to your place.
Mm-hmm.
parents say, I want to try the sequin therapy thing.
Mm-hmm.
, it's clear that I have want nothing to do with a horse.
Mm.
What are you gonna do?
We are, are going to, um, make sure that we have a, a, a volunteer,
um, who is close enough with the horse, but then the instructor, the
employee, is going to figure out.
What you like, what you are interested in, and we're going to be really, really,
really sensitive to how close we can bring and involve the horse in that activity.
And that may take weeks.
Um, and then somebody else is going to be talking to the parent and explaining
to them what's going on so that they feel involved in it and they don't
feel like they're wasting their time.
Or helping that parent just go for a walk and, and spend some time alone or
go with a friend to the coffee shop.
Um, so you will find, you will find out the child's interests, follow those
interests, whether they're horse or not.
Mm-hmm.
, have the horse sort of available mm-hmm.
mm-hmm.
to let the child grow into Yeah.
And naturally find either funny or, or very natural ways to involve
the horse in the conversation.
. Um, and a lot of times, and I think the, the rescue aspect of the horses plays
into that because you'll find a softness and a, and a, and a and a care that
most people will have for an animal.
Um, and this, this horse needs help.
And, you know, he's a recovering ukulele addict and, um,
So it can be silly, it can be ridiculous.
Um, but laughter's a beautiful way to, to ipel learning.
When, um, the client, let's say, cuz they could be a child,
they could be a young adult.
Mm-hmm.
, um, reaches a certain level of engagement with the horse.
You've built this relationship.
Do you involve them as trainer?
absolutely.
Tell me how you do that.
And it's, I, well, it's empowering, right?
I'm not just using this horse as a beast of burden.
I'm helping this horse feel better in his body.
I'm helping this horse learn new things.
Um, we also, we do a lot of trick training around here and liberty too, which can
be really, really, really empowering for somebody who's constantly being told
what to do, to be put in the position to get 1100 pounds of x-ray horse to
do something silly, like step up on a pedestal or bow or smile or lay down.
Um, we've got one who loves to lay down now, and so we can get people
to sit on him and then get back up.
And it's a really thrilling, big feeling.
Mm-hmm.
Um, so, you know, also taking what the horse's natural interest is too.
, again, this was a horse that when he was frustrated, would
throw himself on the ground.
That's a problem in training him for what we're doing, but we
turned it into something sweet.
and, uh, and now he'll lay down on Q and you can get on
him and he'll stand back up.
Um, so again, you know, this just suits my own a d d Dilatant type
brain, um, to try and just roll with whatever, whatever being presented.
Do you find that a lot of your clients actually make quite good horse trainers?
Mm, I do.
I do.
Why do you think cutting?
Cause they're, you know, one of the, part of autism is a brutal honesty, right?
Mm-hmm.
and horses love honesty, and they love consistency.
They're so much happier with that than, um, than with other people
who have, you know, fuzzy, weird rules that change all the time.
, you know, somebody who's, who's very clear.
. Um, and no, you don't get the treat or whatever until you do x and holds
boundaries, um, is refreshing to a horse.
, and also just, just the joy.
Um, you know, it feels good when the horse does these groovy fun things and,
and we can play around and say, look, you know, this is a bullfighting move
and this is how a bullfighting horse feels, and now you feel him dancing.
Um, and, and then you'll find that, that, you know, the, the people
that we serve start asking for it.
Well, he feels a little sticky today.
Can we do the bullfighting stuff?
You know, nobody wants to kick a horse around in circles, and we all have horses
that some days just don't wanna do it.
So when he gets in that flowy feel, it feels good.
Yeah, feels good.
Yeah.
There's no joy in just.
brutalizing horse and the ribcage.
Given that the horse world can be a pretty rough world, um, obviously the
racetrack, obviously the sport world, but also, you know, the riding teacher world,
as you say, it comes from the military.
So shouting at people and so on, um, unless they go through an evolution like
yours, um, within the therapy world and the equine assisted world, what would
you, what changes would you like to see?
What would you like to see more of?
Have you seen the study that just came out this week out of Cornell
about, um, uh, they've put e e g, um, little helmets on horses?
No, I have not.
Tell me about it.
Oh, I will.
It's um, I made some notes here.
I'll just read you these two sentences because cuz they're significant.
Um, in answering the question, so it says, horses and stables showed an average of
two and a half times more right hemisphere gamma waves than those living in open
fields with other horses in people.
Such waves are often a sign of anxiety, distraction, and depression.
The horses that spent most of their time out in the open fields showed
twice as many left hemisphere theta waves on average, which is generally
a sign of calm and attentive mind.
Um, I think paying attention to the environment and the social needs that
our horses have, um, before delving into to doing, making sure that the horse's
social and exercise needs are attended to before expecting them to participate
in a healing modality is what I'd like to see more of in the equine therapy world.
I guess that's logical if the, if the horse is supposed
to, uh, transfer wellbeing.
Yeah.
If the horse is not in wellbeing Yeah.
How are they going to do that?
Well, and you know, you introduced me to, um, uh, Nina at Coleman Fry,
who's been doing so much of the studies on the permission-based horsemanship
in the, in the equine guided field.
And, um, you know, at the time when she started that, she, I
think she took a lot of heat.
And it's nice to see, um, people recognizing that if you, if you, if
you're not attending to the horses' social and physical needs, um, it's just plain
dangerous to ask him, to, to interact with, with people who need healing.
Mm-hmm.
, I agree.
You know, we were talking about brain science earlier too, for, for those,
um, listeners who don't know when a horse goes in soft collection,
and it rocks the rider's hips.
It fills the rider with a, uh, feel good hormone called oxytocin, which also
happens to be the communication hormone.
So if you have someone who's in a high level of anxiety, you're
filling them with a feel good hormone and a hormone that wants them to,
makes them want to communicate.
And then when they move and problem solve, which is the balancing, um, a protein
is produced in the brain called bdnf, brain derived neurotrophic factor, which
over time working with neuroscientists, we've, we've obviously found out,
you know, is, can be transferred for neuroplasticity, um, in people.
do you find that this same process works for the horse?
Do you feel that the horse is getting oxytocin as well?
When you're working him in the this way, do you feel the horse
is getting B D N F as well?
And if so, how is that, how is that, uh, making life better both for
that horse and for whatever client is interacting with that horse?
The studies aren't that far along, with the horses, but it would certainly seem
that, uh, that the horses are regulated.
Um, you know, what do we look for in a horse if we're, if we're
judging in a hunter course, right?
We're looking for this horse that's.
Soft over his back, that where his, his neck and his shoulders meet.
he, he doesn't have a lot of tension that his legs swing evenly.
Um, that he, he has a soft gaze, that his ears are even and pointed forward.
All of those things indicate, , you know, a horse that, that is, is
regulated and whether or not, um, that translates as, as oxytocin.
we don't know yet, but we certainly see on the outside of the horse, a horse
that is regulated and feeling good.
Um, We can translate that into our own bodies, and we certainly feel it.
You know, any rider, any rider knows the difference between a horse that is
stressed and uneven as opposed to a horse.
That's, that's, you know, even just going down the trail, right?
That, that head bobbing, swinging, let's go somewhere, curiosity
as opposed to the Jesus Christ, we gotta go back to the barn.
This is awful.
You know?
Um, yeah.
You don't, you don't have to be a horseman to feel that.
You just have to be, have a heartbeat.
What about, what about neuroplasticity?
Um, brain change, positive brain change.
Mm-hmm.
, what positive brain change do you, do you, would you see, you see,
would you say, see this in the horse?
Absolutely.
And, and again, you know, you, what I've seen with the in-hand work when,
when it's done skillfully, um, is, is that, the uptake of information.
so quick.
Uh, we are having horses learn faster now that we're five or six
years into using the Lenzo method than I've ever, ever imagined.
Um, you know, the, the, the group we have between the two farms, we have 26
horses right now, never ever had as good a group of horses as we have right now.
And these are, you know, these are 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 year old thoroughbreds and,
you know, really grouchy 21 year old thoroughbreds too, with a lot of injuries.
Um, and they're, they're coming up and learning faster and faster and faster.
It, it just, it, it, it blows me away.
So, you know, so the proof is in the pudding at the end of the day.
Um, and so it, it, it, you can draw a pretty straight line in between.
doing good in hand and lunging work, and a horse, a horse's learning
curve, and neuroplasticity and being able to tolerate, um, more stressful
situations before, you know, before just having a refusal or whatever that is.
It's what, it's what I see and I, I, I'm pretty confident
that the science will play out.
And so it's really nice that they're, you know, again, that's why I loved
this study from, from Cornell is that they're, they're finally, um, they're
measuring brainwaves on, on horses.
They're regulated and it, you know, uh, we all know that an anxious,
distracted, and depressed mind doesn't pick up or retain information that well.
And there used to be an old cowboy saying that says, you know, you can, you can
whoop a horse into understanding, but you're gonna have to do it again tomorrow.
Mm-hmm.
, right.
. And um, that's a very rough way of saying it.
Um, but, you know, but, but I came from that rough school of, of
horsemanship and we did, and you had to do it over and over and over and
over again until that was an accident.
Yeah.
Until there was an accident.
Yeah.
Or until the horse just gave up.
Yeah.
And we thought I was training, we thought I was trading.
Well, we were told to do it.
Yeah.
We were, we were, we were told to do it that hard school.
Yeah.
We were told to do it.
Yeah.
But I think we all observed that it didn't really work.
didn't really work.
. If it did, we wouldn't be looking for other things.
But you mentioned Lenzer method.
, I, , I will put a, for those of you who are listening who listen to that,
I'll put a, a web link at the end of this for that, for the ER family, and
the, this classical work that they do in hand, um, I'll make sure that that's
there in the links at the end of this.
Um, so we've gone from your backyard.
off the track thoroughbred thing to now here you are, you are receiving
regular grants from the Off the Track Thoroughbred Association.
You are receiving awards from them.
You are, a registered health provider now with San Mateo County, is that correct?
. Mm-hmm.
Talk to me about, about that for mental health.
How, how has that played out?
, so, , San Mateo County Mental Health has engaged us with a contract to
provide, um, equine assisted mental health services, uh, for the county.
So what we did, , was we did a series of retreats for the mental health providers
where we actually brought them out for a full day long sensory based, , day
of helping them build resilient skills.
And at the end of the day, um, we did, , what, what in horse boy work
we called sensory work, which was putting them on the horses body to
body in different positions that of course the children have shown us.
, and getting them a feeling of being supported and up on the horses in these,
in these very vulnerable positions.
, and for a lot of people, a significant amount, it's a really emotional experience
and people who have been around horses our whole lives and grew up around
horses, um, it doesn't feel that special to us because that's how we spent
time on our ponies, you know, laying backwards on our pony out in the field.
And if we rolled off, you know, you rolled into the grass and you giggled
and you laughed and you dropped your book, or, um, you know, we would sit
two and three on a horse and, you know, somebody's up on his neck and somebody's.
. but for people who aren't around horses, this is, this is life changing.
Mm-hmm.
. Um, and so to give them that experience and then, we we set it up with
the therapist where they have the opportunity to either come with their
client or whether they send the client here and we're supporting the, the
therapeutic goals, for that person.
, and , we ended up doing a lot of intense services for a youth program
that's kind of a quasi, um, it's kind of the space between foster placement
and juvenile detention facility.
These are kids that kind of are in that space in between and, . , it's
a residential program and, uh, and we are seeing those kids come out,
um, two and three times a week, and they're now volunteering with us too.
And they have been really, really, really good in working with our autism families.
Um, so it's been a really nice integration.
we're also, working on piloting a program for the San Mateo County, , department
of Education to do resilience workshops, including the somatic stuff, um, for,
for teachers experiencing burnout.
So pretty exciting stuff.
So this is mental health beyond autism, and this is mental health
of mental health care providers in a weird way, like in hand work for
the horse in hand, in brain work for the, for the, for the, for the car.
You, how do you deal with burnout, Joel?
I mean, you were a, a stressed out single mom.
You were a teenage, stressed out single mom, galloping resources
on the track, risking your life.
You had to start a whole organization from scratch.
You have built it now to one of the biggest, um, you know,
equine uh, facilities in, in, certainly in California, and you're
right there in Silicon Valley.
You've got two locations now.
Um, I know that there's another rather cool location coming up,
which I hope you'll tell us, right?
How I've seen you, I, I, I know the intensity of this work and
everything that goes into it.
The horse training, not to mention the fundraising, not to mention the money.
How do you yourself deal with burnout?
What's your, what's your advice?
Mm-hmm.
for the people in this field?
Ray Burnout, I think,
, doing something creative outside of, of whether it's, you
know, horses still turn me on.
I'm so lucky that way.
But, you know, I have times where I need a break.
, and, , , but, uh, but writing, even journaling is a creative
endeavor that, , that helps.
, cooking.
I love cooking.
It's a creative challenge.
, , and I've gotten quite into cold water, sea swimming here, , which I
really, really, really, really enjoy.
Um, but I'm so lucky to do what I love doing and,, and I have a pretty
strong meditation practice too.
Talk to me about the creative writing.
Well, I finally finished a novel.
I've got, um, I've got a, , a screenplay sketched out that just needs all of
the bells and whistles hung on it.
And that's a, that's a, that's a, a creative form that I never expected that
I was gonna, and it, and it just came.
So it's kind of fun.
And if it turns into nothing, who cares?
I'm, I'm enjoying the process.
, and, , and I'm working on a, on a book that is the square peg
story that Trafalgar Square has given me a handshake deal for.
That said that they would love first option on that.
And , and I'm about 60,000 words in, so I've got a pretty
good go at a first draft.
, yeah, I dunno where you find the time.
Tell us about the novel.
What's it about?
Can we buy it?
Can we read it?
Sure, sure.
You can buy it as a, , a Kindle at a dam fine hand.com.
Is that the name of the book?
, that is the name of the book, A dam Fine hand.
, what's a That's great name.
It's, , fun title.
It is a fun title.
, what's the story?
What's it about?
The story is, uh, it is, it's a, a fictional telling, of,
uh, it's, it's really, it's the girl and horse story, right?
It's, which has been told over and over again.
But, um, it's started as a short story where I was really fascinated.
by thinking about black beauty as a story.
Black Beauty was the first time anybody told a story from
the animal's point of view.
And Black Beauty launched the movement that created the, the S P C A.
Mm-hmm.
So a story really can change the world.
And that story did, and I thought just as a creative exercise, I wanted
to see what would happen if I got in the mind of a horse and took him
through the journey of going from the racetrack to the Slaughter pipeline.
Hmm.
And, um, what a lot of people don't understand is, uh, I, I very much
appreciate the, the, the efforts of the Humane Society, but what Humane Society
did, , about 10 years ago, was that they outlawed slaughter in the United States.
, which sounds like a, a real win.
What it did was that it forced the slaughter to go across the border
to Mexico and Canada, and the transport of animals across those
borders is unregulated and the slaughter houses are unregulated.
And it unfortunately created a pipeline of suffering, but is spectacular.
, so, you know, if you're signing a petition, read the whole petition.
, not that I'm advocating that we need slaughterhouses or that we need to
slaughter horses, um, but you know, if we're, if we're euthanizing horses,
which any horseman has to do, We just, we have to think about the
compassionate way to do it rather than kicking the can down the road.
And I wanted to tell that story and I thought that telling that story from
the horse's point of view was the only really effective way to do it.
So a damn fine hand started as a short story of that horse
going through that experience.
, and I named the horse via Condiss, which is go with God.
And I realized that this horse was the best Buddhist that I'd ever met.
that alone created in my life, that he truly lived in the
moment, in the here and now.
And he lived with true forgiveness.
, and the story grew from there.
Grew from characters in that story, um, to the people in his life who
surrounded him and what their stories.
and we can, we can, how do we order this book?
How can we get this book?
You can go to a damn fine hand.com and purchase a Kindle version of the
book if you'd like to download it.
Or you can contact, um, oh my gosh, I've forgotten the name of the
bookstore here in town, because that's where my mind is right now.
Give me a minute and I'll think of it, or I'll send it to you and we
can put it in, send us, we'll put it in the links, but@downtimehand.com.
I think.
We'll, we'll help, we'll put that, we'll put that there too.
Yeah.
Um, one of the things with burnout, , that I find interesting
is that we're surprised by it.
Hmm.
Right.
And we're outraged by it.
It's like, oh my God, I can't believe I burned, you know, it's like,
well, of course one burned out.
You know?
And of course, one burns out regularly and often and, um, it,
it, and fires need to be re-lit.
I, I, I.
I say this as if it was obvious, but of course, you know, I myself had to
spend 30 years before I tumbled to this.
Um, that of course burnout's inevitable and , in fact is often I think proof
that you're doing very good work.
Now, mums burnout because they're great moms, , people burn out in
their jobs cuz they're working very hard and, and and doing a good job.
And, but obviously in, in, in this line of work with equine, anything equine,
but particularly equine with vulnerable human populations, not to mention
vulnerable equine populations, which of course you do, you also have this
responsibility to keep everybody safe.
Mm-hmm.
And so into the bargain on top of how exhausting and demanding and
absorbing and amazing and interesting and all these things that work
is, there's also this underlying stress constantly of, I, I must.
Keep everybody safe in a, in an environment that has many, many
inherent risks, um, and take responsibility for those risks.
So what often surprises me is that we have no, no training has offered
us, or no mentorship has offered us, whether it's from our parents or in
school or in college later, or, uh, that prepares us for the inevitability
of burnout and almost allows us to make friends with burnout and to say mm-hmm.
mm-hmm.
from time to time you will burn out.
And that's okay, because really that's just says now you need a pause
between the last awesome thing and the next awesome thing that you're
gonna take on, you know, even, even Hercules rest between the 12 tasks.
And, , so given that, , what's your advice for, particularly for younger
people coming into this field?
Um, because a lot of people come into it, obviously, with a lot of altruism as as,
as one should, altruism is a good thing.
, and then they of course get surprised.
What's your advice to someone going into the field for how to thrive?
help me pronounce his name because your French is way more sophisticated.
Albert Camu camu you, you youu, you, you hit it right first Camu.
Okay.
Um, like a camel with a Ooh , A camel with a Ooh . A uh, uh, wrote an essay,
, called The Myth of Sisyphus, , that I'm a nerd and I love essays and,
um, it's the most beautiful story.
And, and, and write Sisyphus.
That was his, his his, his sentence right, is to roll this boulder
up to the top of the hill and it rolls back down every time.
And he's, he's destined to have to do this over and over and over and over again.
And, uh, what Kamoo does is he said, what if we imagine Sisyphus is happy in his
job, that it's the natural, normal thing.
Of course, the Boulder rail rolled down the hill, it's supposed to
roll down the hill, and now he knows exactly what he needs to do.
And so he stands at the top of the hill and he watches that boulder down and
he laughs and he says, ah, I gotta go back down the hill and get the boulder.
That to me, is the most beautiful anti burnout story.
There he is, and it, ah, and I review it.
Interesting.
I review it pretty regularly.
Thank you for the tip bright.
So the rolling up of the.
The boulder is its own art form to be read the rolling up.
He knows what his work is.
Yeah, right.
He knows exactly what he has to do.
And how beautiful is that?
To know exactly what you have to do.
And perhaps with every time he rolls it up, he notices more nuances of
the stone or more nuances of the vegetation, or strengthen his body,
or he chooses to be happy at his task.
He chooses to find something interest, he chooses to find some difference,
something to learn something about it.
He chooses to be happy that he knows exactly what he needs to do.
He has a choice and he chooses happiness.
A lovely, lovely metaphor.
I'm so gonna steal this.
Um, yeah.
Enjoy it.
Thank you.
, because the, you know, obviously in all of our line of work, we're
dealing with burnout, whether it's ourselves or people we're working
with, or workshops we're giving or, you know, blah, even with horses.
Um, but yes.
. It's true.
We do not stop to consider.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
We do not stop to consider that the beauty of starting again from scratch.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
every time.
Um, like I know this is a writer.
, when I write a new book, it really doesn't matter how many books I've written.
It doesn't matter if they were successful.
Is that, that you are starting from the beginning every time and there's
this feeling of, oh, I thought I knew how to write and now it's like, ah,
it feels like rolling above up out.
Um, interestingly, I do not have that reaction when I'm starting a new horses.
I always have that thing of, oh, here I go again.
Interesting.
You know, you know.
, but what I've had to learn to do with writing is to say to myself when it.
Sian
Sian with the camels, with an, when it feels that way.
Um, it's just to put one, I call it putting one word in front of the
other, saying, well, mm-hmm , it's maybe be rubbish now, but it will
not become good until it exists.
So let it exist as rubbish and then I can make it good later.
Um, we don't give ourselves that permission, do we?
We we gotta be perfect every time.
Mm-hmm.
, that's where, that's where the stressors comes in, in, in, in dressers.
Well, you didn't execute that thing perfect as well.
Of course I didn't.
Cause I'm going through a learning curve, you know, . How, how could
I, how could I possibly, you know?
Um, and by the way, I never will actually.
I'd like to move in that direction, but none of us will ever achieve perfection.
Um, and of course the joy is killed.
And you've talked about joy a lot and I love that you've brought into the
system sub . Um, Boulder rolling uphill thing that, that, that could actually be
really joyful and to, to consider that.
Mm-hmm.
rather than saying, this burnout thing is a dragon.
Ima slay, like, this autism thing is a dragon Ima slay.
We know.
Well, that will never work.
Yeah.
The autism is a perfectly viable way to go through life.
Otherwise, temple Grandin would not have, or the degrees she had and hasn't not
have published all the books she has.
And it's clearly, she's very successful and autistic.
So the, the burnout is the burn is the autism problems, the burnout, the
problem, no suffering is the problem.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm , that's the problem.
Mm-hmm.
, the, the suffering brain, cortisol, stress hormone learning brain is the happy brain.
The unhappy brain is not the learning brain.
, but I love how you've just brought that to our attention.
So how would you help an ambitious and impatient young
person going into this field?
, um, and, and perfectionistic because horse people are, , to come to
that , , outlook and, um, perspective.
Give us a tip.
I think, I think journaling is really critical, um, because it gives you an
opportunity to make that choice, right?
Of course, the boulder r rolled down the hill again.
It's supposed to, and it's going to the next time and the next time.
And so you can stand at the top of the mountain and curse, and yell and kick.
Um, but if you, if you journal it out, then you get the opportunity
to reframe the situation and make a choice as to how you wanna proceed
and how you wanna be proceed.
, you know, why are you in this field?
And any of us in mental health, any of us in healing need to think about why we're
in the field and we need to think about it regularly so that we don't fall into
the trap of pity and being condescending.
Because once we're there, we are not helping anyone.
No.
And, and then of course, we, we, we, , very quickly, slightly to self-pity.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
and self condescending.
That's natural.
Which is beating ourselves up.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
. , and I do agree with you.
I think it's natural.
I don't think one can, I don't think one can escape it because
I think that's part of the human condition, but perhaps one can learn
to use it as a thriving mechanism.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
. Um, is this, is this the acquisition of wisdom?
Is this the acquisition of, of resources and skills?
Does Ssus get a little buffer, richer, happier, healthier, fitter.
every time he rolls the boulder up.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
is the, is the rolling of the boulder up the, the thriving,
and is the relaxed walk down.
Could you be admiring the view?
Could you be, is that, is that your, is that your retreat time?
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
when just walking relaxed down the hill, swinging.
I was whistling, smelling the herbs on the mountain, looking at the sea.
Cause I've just placed myself in California in ancient
Greece for some reason.
and, um, then, oh look, here's a, the boulder again.
. There it's, oh, there you're again.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Humor helps now.
Humor helps.
Tell me a funny story from Square Pack
We have a little boy.
Um, He's adopted, , his life before adoption, pretty traumatic.
And he's, he's beautiful.
, he's just, he's just so damn cute and, , and very innocent looking.
And when he's frustrated, he, he says some very bad words, words, naughty words.
Naughty words.
And he says them in context, . And he sends them, which is really impressive.
And, , his, his, his mom is wonderful.
, and she knows with him and, and, and he runs hard and he chases things.
And this is a kid who can pluck a butterfly out of the.
, you know, , he, what did he catch?
Well, he caught a coil with his hands.
What?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He, um, that, that
it's very like, I don't, yeah.
Yeah.
I cannot imagine that we're or something.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Um, April between 15 feet into there, I know how fast those things grew.
Yeah.
Aqua, he, , he caught, he caught a rubber boa.
We haven't seen a rubber boa here.
He has caught, um, the snake skins.
Yeah.
Okay.
He's caught little skins.
Um, I brought him to a place one time that had a little rabbit hutch in it
and turned my head to do something.
Turned back.
He was in the rabbit hutch.
Which is impressive.
. Uh, so, you know, he's super, super, super physical.
And so being on the horse, on the lunge at the canner is really regulating for him.
Lots of sleep problems.
Um, but he wanted to run around and, you know, and catch snakes and his
mother's like, look naughty word.
Yeah.
And well, is that, is that, is that the key?
He shouts, he's very naughty as the, and the, the snakes freeze in shock and
No, but his mom saying can mood you.
He, he can't keep coming back unless he spends at least 25 minutes on the horse.
So we're trying to figure out how to, how to do this without
forcing him on the horse.
So, , why, why did she say that out of interest?
Why does it matter?
It, it matters to her.
And, um, that's, we've, we've talked about it, but it, it matters to her.
Okay.
And I think mostly because when he is on the horse, , , he's, it, it it's
demonstrable how much better he sleeps.
Right.
Okay.
And their life is much better when he sleeps, obviously.
Okay.
So , we told him that, , that the horse's back is a safe place where
he can say anything he wants.
Did he take that opportunity?
He did.
And the problem is it's really hard to keep lunging a pony when
this adorable seven year old going, beep, beep, beep, mother.
So we're trying not to fall on the ground.
And we of course, know that we're reinforcing the behavior by laughing.
And so, so now his mom comes back and she's like, look, , we're
pretty much.
. And, and of course we, we think that we've, you know, really
pulled off something great.
So , but you know, she, she knows that he's gonna get in a lot of trouble
for, um, mother for, you know, saying bad words for the mother, Pete.
And, uh, so we had to come up with secret swear words that were so
awful and so terrible, Ooh, that, um, you know, they, they can only
be spoken from the ponies back
And so as a staff, we would come up with these nonsense words and we would say
them, and we were just like, oh, you know, everybody would like, would you?
Now he's got this adorable seven year old panning around going
bar fig newgen, bar, fig Newgen.
Ooh.
. Yeah.
I felt chill.
Like German is fantastic that way, right?
Yeah.
And then you would have to just like, and then you would, you would make
it so that other people would be walking by and just like, oh, kind of
flinch, you know, as he would say it, because the payoff would be so big.
So we would, you know, it's spend the whole week coming up with these, these
terrible, terrible made up words.
Um, but Fark Newgen is one of the best ones.
And so even today, far, this was months ago, we did this Fig Far Newgen.
Yeah, fig was, that's, that's, that's remember, oh, ooh, that's, yeah.
No, that, yeah.
Definitely freezes the spleen.
Yeah, absolutely.
It does.
Yeah.
You have to kind of wipe up after saying that.
Yeah's confession.
Yeah, exactly.
Bless me, father far.
I far kin.
Um, it's just a funny, funny, funny story and, and coming up with new
words or just walking by him and leaning over and whispering in his ear.
Dude.
Perfect nugget, , like running away and laughing.
you know, it's really interesting that, because I remember with um, my son Rowan,
when he went through a phase now, 10, 12 years ago, or wanting to say, beep beep,
beep, beep, beep, beep all the time.
And we gave him a safe place to do it and people said, you know, oh, he's
gonna just abuse that all the time.
And yeah, there were a couple of times he said it in the wrong place, but actually
what happened is he totally got it out of his system and um, we didn't make it
a holy grail and we made it funny and we realized it was gonna happen anyway.
So we rather roll with it.
But then I also taught him the history of those words.
Cause there's a very old words in the English language.
In fact, they show up in Be Wolff and from the fifth century, you
know, the first poem in English.
And that's, it's in there.
Um, the one we all know, , The fun one and, , fun one then.
And then from there we could go into Anglo-Saxon history and then fall of the
Empire and, you know, blah, blah, blah.
And we could go further then up into Norse history and the Norse gods.
And it was, it was a really good way into all sorts of things.
Um, and then to reading the, the poem itself.
Um, so what I love is that what you did is as well as giving the safe space and
the regulating behavior, and he's now on the horse and having fun and sleeping, but
also you've shown him, , social context.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
, you've shown him in a really stealthy under the table sort of way.
So he, it's not gonna be resisted.
, this is how you can be fun and a bit naughty in a social context that will be
then rewarded and you won't be punished.
And it's also inventive, but what I really love is you, you hit on a very
key thing, which I feel is often missing.
in the world of, of equine, , assisted stuff.
It's a very bit of a serious world.
Mm-hmm.
, um, and to the detriment.
I, you know, I, I think if you're working, particularly if you're working with
kids, it's like if you're not laughing at least every couple of minutes,
you're kind of in the wrong business.
, any time one is you, it's using, , toilet humor or a four letter or, or whatever.
, it's an act of rebellion.
Mm-hmm.
. And if a child is being told from day one, you are not right.
You need therapy.
That's why you are going to this square pay place, or this is,
that's why you're going into this therapeutic writing place or whatever,
and they're also in all these other therapies and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And you are not right.
You're not right.
You're not right and you must do this and you must do that, and da,
da da, and their spirits get broken.
You see this?
Mm-hmm.
What we call, you know, being therapied out.
It's another form of burnout.
and I know so few people who are able to restore the broken spirits of people.
Cause it's not just kids who have been given a profound sense
of shame about who they are.
Mm-hmm.
. And the only way that's a form of oppression and the only way
you can shake off the oppressor is to rebel, to break the chains.
And often that's violently done.
I mean, that's obviously what teenage rebellion is and so on.
And um, to give an outlet for that where you can rebel in a constructive
way that will not get you in trouble, will actually when you brownie points,
but will restore your self-respect.
That's genius.
And that's why I wanted to talk to you because I don't know many people,
Joel, who can do that, where you see the bigger picture you follow.
where the child is at, you see what the dangers are, and you sidestep them
by coming up with something inventive that negates the negative side, but
gives all the positive outcomes.
It's genius.
Um, are you training people at Square Back?
Are you men?
We are, yeah.
We, how did somebody get trained or mentored by you?
Mm-hmm.
You know, the pandemic slowed down a lot of the mentoring that I was
doing for new programs, which I realized I really, really enjoyed.
Um, I loved travel.
I love working with people with their horses and their facility and giving them
license to learn the Farik Newgen game.
, , , but you know, the pandemic slowed all of that down.
But what I did was that I invested much more into our staff here
and that, and our horses here.
And, , we have some really brilliant humans working here and they're doing
better work than I've ever done because of the work that has been done in the past
because of spending, what, 7, 8, 9 years with Horse Boy Method and, , and, and,
uh, and traveling around and seeing other world class programs like Miss Kenneth.
, so I think that mentoring has been some of the most satisfying work
I've ever done because I get to sit here and watch it bear fruit.
Mm-hmm.
, and then.
We, we grew a job training program for young adults with autism and got that
funded through a regional center here.
And, um, most people in this field, uh, especially if you're a nonprofit,
you will get a certain group of people who, I lost you again.
Better?
Yeah.
Got you back.
Good.
Can you hear me okay?
Yeah.
Uhhuh.
? Yeah.
Okay.
, most people in the field, uh, most people in the field are going to
get offers of people to volunteer.
People who are, are a, , it's usually gonna be women in their forties, fifties.
, people who want to be back around horses, haven't been around horses for a while.
Um, they can be a tricky group to manage as volunteers.
They have expectations, they have needs, they have, um, rules.
Um, most of our young adults in our job training program have been therapied out.
Like you said, people who, , have been told you are not able to do this.
You are not good at this.
You are not quick at this.
You, there's this wrong with you that, wrong with you.
Putting them in a position of power to the supervise volunteers.
You put autistic young people in charge of bossy horsey women.
Mm-hmm.
. Yeah.
Do you have this on video?
with the ukulele soundtrack?
. Wow.
Yeah.
It is really amazing.
So the, the authors are training the neurotypicals effect.
Mm-hmm.
, this is what it comes down to.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
good author.
And the care that they take, um, the, uh, uh, it can be pretty brutal at times.
Uh, um mm-hmm.
and I, I, I would to come and watch this
and it may sound cruel, but how cruel is it that.
Yeah.
Uh, it's just a role reversal.
Mm-hmm.
and it's, it's, it's really beautiful.
And watching, watching the person who is in charge of, of training
the neurotypical people, watching that kind of brutal supervision
soften over time is really special.
Really, really, really, really special.
, and it's, it's one of the things I'm quite proud of.
Would you say that's the thing you're the most proud of?
This, this, , employment step?
I think just developing our staff period, you know, and staff meaning, you
know, including our job training people has been the thing I'm most proud of.
Yeah.
And you, you talked about new locations, um mm-hmm.
I happen to know because you told me, , that your half Moon Bay,
your original location mm-hmm.
is about to change.
Mm-hmm.
in a rather exciting way.
Really an exciting way.
Thank you.
Could you tell us about that please?
So we, , we have worked a deal, , in our area of Coastal Bay Area, California.
Um, there is a subset of the National Park system called the Golden Gate
National Recreation Area, and it's a sum total of I think eight or nine.
Big pieces of property, , from Sonoma, which is about 80 miles north of us.
, this piece of property we're gonna talk about is the southern most part, but it
includes the Marin Headlands, which is the north part of the Golden Gate Bridge.
, it includes, , a lot of the, the North Coast in Marin County.
, the Presidio of San Francisco is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
, and then this piece of property that we're moving to is called the
Rancho Corral Del Tierra, and it's 4,200 acres of coastal California.
Um, can you see the ocean?
And you can, you can.
, yeah, so it's coastal.
, Monte Mountain, we hiked it actually last week, is an 1800 foot vertical gain to
the top with a view of the entire Bay Area, including, um, Mount Tamo Pius,
Mount Hamilton, the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, and all the way down to Pescadero.
If you look on a map, it's some of the most stunning
landscape you can ever imagine.
, and the, the, the trails are maintained by the Department of the Interior.
, there's actually a state part right next door, so it's even more
than 4,200 acres worth of trails.
And you can access all this with your, with your autistic clients, with your.
Good Lord.
Yeah.
So we are, we're, um, right now the herd is split.
We have six horses here in half Moon Bay and, , six in
the Rancho Corral, Del Tierra.
And so we do sessions all day and then we run over and we just get, and
it's, it's mostly the thoroughbreds that are at the Rancho right now,
getting them out on the trail and just getting used to, you know, there's
gonna be loose dogs cuz it's a park.
There's gonna be mountain bikes, , and, , just exploring trail loops that are gonna
be appropriate for different clients.
, we can actually in about 10 minutes ride from the, from where the horses are, we
can be at the local elementary school.
So we're looking at, um, engaging programs there.
Um, parents can go for a hike and a picnic while their family members ride.
, it is, you know, the ability to get out into stunningly beautiful natural spaces.
is, , is so exciting.
So this is so exciting.
This is, this is genius because, , obviously for so many of us in
the field, the idea of a barn and the barn has the land that it has.
Mm-hmm.
might be large, might be small.
Mm-hmm.
, but usually the, , the program is contained often in an arena which isn't,
you know, ideal cause it's a sterile environment and you are now able to get
out into all this public land with your.
. Yeah.
Yeah.
And that was the thing is, you know, this is Silicon Valley, so,
, real estate is cost-prohibitive.
Mm-hmm.
. Um, and, uh, and it's, uh, you know, nobody was jumping up and wanting
to give us 20 acres, and even if they did, as you know, um, just
maintaining your own trails Yeah.
Suddenly takes away so much from your program.
Yeah.
Um, and, um, so now somebody else has to manage the trails and maintain them.
Um, and we can focus on programs and we can focus on horse care.
And we can focus on, on, on just getting people access to this.
And in property that is meant to be shared mm-hmm.
and we're bringing a population into the national park that is not traditionally.
You know, participated in national parks, so the national park has a
feather in their cap that they're reaching out to vulnerable populations
that normally wouldn't access the park.
Um, so, so perhaps it's really a win-win.
You know, you talk about mentoring, would you say actually now?
Yeah.
To, would you recommend that, um, people who are running programs reach
out to the public recreational land?
, I think so.
Organizations in the air and see, can we do our work in these areas
because, , that's really where these people need to be, right.
Is out in that type of nature.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
. And we know that nature deficit disorder is a thing.
Um, and we know that horses are a part of the American heritage.
a a deep, important part.
And so integrating horses into public parks and public trail systems is, is, is
an important way to preserve that history.
And we can sell that to communities, we can sell that to the
organizations that own the Parklands.
We can sell that, , and , and be able to focus our efforts and our,
and our resources in programs.
And I think it's really exciting.
Um, I think that doing really innovative public and, and, and nonprofit
partnerships is, is a way to go.
And of course I learned that from the great Doyle and who we will have on this.
Uh, if we can persuade him to talk man as an allergy to talking for
those who he does who do not know.
David Doyle is, , and you should tune into the David Do.
David Doyle is actually the Wizard Merlin, , disguised as.
An middle-aged Irishman, um, who runs the extraordinary li
skin it farm in county Limerick.
Um, one of the most extraordinary autism and mental health with horses, facilities
that exists anywhere in the world.
I think we all look up to him and I'll be definitely, , he just look for
where I have him on, on the podcast.
You do want to listen to David do.
Um, one of the things which, , we're often talking about in this, , walk of
life is how important environment is.
And of course, you know, riding arenas are often sterile, smell bad.
Yes.
Sometimes if the weather is really bad, okay, then that's where we have to be.
But we can bring the forest in perhaps, or put trees in there like we've put jumps or
be imaginative about how we use the arena.
But one was so much rather not.
And you know, you talk about you've got access to this land and I can
just hear now some people saying, oh well, but you know, we're, we are in.
Europe or wherever and we don't have access to that.
And I would always challenge that actually.
So for example, where we are in Germany, um, we don't even
own, own our own place to it.
We're renting boxes.
Um, but the land around us, there is free access on all the trails.
It doesn't matter who owns it, you can ride across it,
you can ride into the forest.
So of course that's where we do our work.
And I'll say to parents, okay, meet me in that carpark.
I'll be over there with the horses to meet you.
And we go to this lovely spring in the forest or to this , lovely
little playground we've set up.
Cause we hang silk hammocks from the trees or whatever, or whatever
to think outside of arenas.
Um, and the fact that you've now done this in public land, I think is a real,
um, inspiration for others to follow.
To please think we say, think outside the box, think outside the arena, and think
outside of your own property boundaries.
, is there National Forest near you?
Is there a public park near you with a swing set that you don't have to
raise 200,000 to put in because you can just go there and meet the kids
and play there with your horse?
Or can you use the resources, the outdoor resources that are in the area?
And boy oh boy, are you doing that?
Um, I cannot wait to to come check it out.
, can people, when I first met you, , all those years ago, you were
operating out of a trailer in mm-hmm.
, a very confined riding arena, which, or riding boarding barn Really?
Which did have access up a very, very steep, very difficult to get up
trail to some open hill area, but, you know, most of what was going on
was confined to an arena and mm-hmm.
And I've then I saw you sort of expand out to a more spacious
property, but it was still.
, um, relying on what that property had within its boundaries.
And now you seems you've expanded through just sort of a leap of
imagination to a completely unlimited, , natural sort of Eden type playground.
Is this something we could all do, do you think?
Yeah.
Um, you know, I I, we had been searching for about two years and I was pretty
close to a deal on what looked like was gonna be a really nice deal.
Uh, it was part of , , a sport horse breeding farm.
Really nice farm.
And she wanted to lease us or sell us a portion of it.
, and she, she really wanted to make the deal work and, , and
it just wasn't right in my gut.
And I, and I couldn't figure out why.
And, um, and David Doyle and his wife Moura were visiting and I sat
him down and I said, you know, I, there's just, I, I don't know why I'm
not feeling so confident about this.
And he said, well, I'll tell you why you're not feeling confident about it.
You have 140 families on a waiting list for services, and you would be moving to a
place that is as big as where you are now.
There's no room to grow.
And I, oh, you're right, . You know, um, he said, you need, you
need, you need to know exactly what the criteria is for a property.
And the property will find you, you know, it's a square peg story.
Right.
I was trying to make an opportunity.
That we had fit.
And instead, I needed to reverse that.
And I needed to, I needed to know what the dream was and
then let that property find me.
And it's a leap of faith that I didn't like taking, I like
being in control of things.
Um, but I came home from Ireland and I was waiting for my bags in the airport
and the phone rang and I had talked about this property that we're, we're moving
to a couple of years ago with the, with the woman who owns the, the lease on it.
And we decided that it wasn't private enough.
And so we'd given up on it.
And she calls me and she says, you know, I know that we talked about Oceanview
Farms, um, a couple of years ago, but I can't get square peg outta my mind.
And it turns out that traditionally everything behind the arena had
horses in it, but we haven't had horses there for years.
What if we did a custom buildout for you?
and then you would have all the privacy you need and have
all the access to the trails.
Would that work?
Yeah.
That would work.
So, so there you go.
That's whether you call that manifesting or just dumb luck.
Um, it wasn't until I knew exactly what we wanted in a facility that I was
able to find it or for it to find us.
Dream the dream and let the dream find you.
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
. Yeah.
Where to live by.
Yeah.
And proved out.
Wow.
Out.
So if people want to come to Square peg and be mentored in how
to create square pegs, or how to have more square peg in what they
already do, um, can they do that?
Can they contact.
. They can, they can, yeah.
It's gonna be a little wild and wooly until summer with us, you know,
moving and getting reestablished.
But we're really hoping by summer that we'll be able to, um, we'll
be able to actively mentor people.
It's something that gives us a lot of satisfaction, um, and, and it feels
like that's one of the, the best ways to send those waves out into the world.
Okay.
So we will be putting in the links, , how to contact you, Joel.
, yeah, with your permission and if people would like to go and be mentored by the
amazing Joel Dunlap, which I certainly have been, , I would recommend it.
, it seems to get one to rather lovely places.
, if nothing else, it's a great excuse to go, um, check out that property.
Um, so it's been an amazing story.
, it's been an honor to talk to you.
, and as long as I've known you, there were still aspects of the story that
were unknown to me and gaps that you filled, which I find fascinating.
What would you leave us with?
What are your parting words of wisdom for us?
Joe, I'll done that.
Or square peg foundation for us in the equine assisted world,
my favorite go-to whenever I am confused by a horse or a family that
I'm working with, that I come back to is, is three really simple words, and
that's always assume intelligence.
And that has guided.
through some big decisions.
I'll leave that open-ended and for whatever interpretation or far fig.
Yeah.
I was just thinking, I'll try that with my morning affirmations in front
of the mirror, look at myself and go.
But very practical.
Always assume intelligent.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I would agree.
Yeah.
Um, I never met anybody who was, or any other organism that was unintelligent,
except in my own limited view of them, and it was my limited view.
And when I shift there, I, I come to much more compassionate decisions.
Mm.
Less frustration.
Yeah.
Mm mm.
Yeah.
Looking for the, the beauty of rolling the rock up the hill.
Mm-hmm.
not the effort or down.
Yeah.
Or down or the walk down with the nice sea view.
With the nice sea view.
Yeah.
All right.
Well thank you Joel.
, it's late for you.
Thank you for staying up.
Oh, it's been, it's been a pleasure.
Yeah.
We are on different time zones.
, we will put links to Square peg down fine hand Za method and other resources,
, from this plus how to contact Joel and get mentored by her and go and check
her Amazing place out, , in the links.
, until next time, we'll be seeing you in the equine assisted world, cuz
it's where we hang out for our sin
, Joel, thank you so much.
It's been, it's been, thank you.
Yeah.
Okay.
See you next time.
Okay.
Bye.
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