Nashville-Children's Health

Howdy y'all! Greetings from the NashVegas crew on Volunteer Day #2!!! Today was a long, but wonderful day spent in Franklin, TN, as well as right here in Nashville. Our group kept busy cleaning out stables, washing ponies, scooping giant piles of poo (surprisingly, some enjoyed this a little too much ;)), and helping build a fence around the main therapy pen. Everyone really enjoyed being able to independently take lead with each horse and gain more horsemanship experience, as well as one-on-one interaction with the children Kindred Spirits serves. Alicia shared a lot about the reasoning behind her founding Kindred Spirits and we were inspired by her desire to serve children with disabilities and developmental disorders on a closer level than most facilities. After almost a full day's work, most of the girls went grocery shopping and began preparing a delicious meal of lasagna, caesar salad, breadsticks, and chocolate chip cookies for the individuals that were a part of Gilda's Club-Nashville. Some of our participants were touched by personal accounts specifically of the Widow(er) support group that we fed-feeling a sense of pride and accomplishment at being able to brighten their lives, even if only for an hour. After dinner was cleaned up, we all used our free time getting ice cream/froyo, workin on our fitness at the Vanderbilt Rec Center, and watching movies as a group. We are all SO excited to do even more this week and gain valuable experiences that we know will stay with us forever. Following is a personal testimony of one of our participants, who is an Occupational Therapy student at Mizzou.

Today I was able to assist Alicia during one of her lessons with a little boy that has Autism. I started off by helping the little boy to brush Cody the horse with a bunch of different brushes. I helped him to use his language to count his brush strokes. I also helped him to put on his hemet and keep it buckled (which was a pretty big task). When he got onto he horse, my job was to reinforce what Alicia was telling him to do. I used verbal cues and reinforcement to help the little boy during his lesson. My experience was amazing today! I learned so many things about the possibilities of working with children with developmental/neurological disorders and all of the settings you can work with them in. I never thought that I would want to work with therapeutic animals until this trip. Today I have been able to see the connection a child has with an animal and how that can assist them in reaching major milestones and overcoming obstacles. My experience today was not only fun, but it reinforced my hopes of becoming a pediatric Occupational Therapist.

-Sean Joy