Cerebellar hypoplasia

Babe saunters in lazy circles around a Palouse barn twice a week. It's good exercise for the 26-year-old chestnut quarter horse, but more important is what the stroll does for Babe's riders.

Most come in wheelchairs, rolling over the ground covered with bark chips and up a ramp to get to Babe. They are lifted gently from their chairs and placed on the horse's back. Sometimes they face forward, sometimes backward, and sometimes they recline on the horse like they're relaxing in a chaise lounge.

And though it might be fun, this is not play. It's therapy. Hippotherapy, to be exact - from "hippos," the Greek word for "horse." During the sessions, the horse is used as a tool, like a bicycle or therapy ball.

"We use the horse because it moves up and Down, side to side and front to back like the human pelvis," said Robyn Moug, a pediatric physical therapist. "for kids to feel that is a gift."

It's a gift because regular motion is not what most of these patients are used to.

Jenna Webber has cerebellar hypoplasia, which means the part of the brain that controls movement, balance, coordination and speech is underdeveloped. The 3-year-old with bright blonde hair and a face like a china doll doesn't speak or walk. Her vision is impaired.

For about five months, Jeanine Webber has brought Jenna to the barn for weekly hippotherapy sessions. The South Hill resident says she can't imagine life without her daughter.

"She's a smiley girl - her facial features tell us how she's feeling," Webber said.

And as Jenna started her 30-minute session, the smiles on both mom and daughter spoke volumes.

"This is my favorite time," Webber said. "The atmosphere is very encouraging."

During the session, Jenna sat on Babe, the horse with never- ending patience. As Babe walked slowly clockwise, then counter- clockwise, Jenna faced forward and backward, stretched to grab a pink plastic ring Moug held just out of reach, and lay on her stomach across Babe's back.

Each position made some of Jenna's muscles stretch and others work to support her body. It is in this way that hippotherapy differs from therapeutic riding, where patients actually learn riding skills.

"Five months ago, she would have been a noodle," Webber said as she watched her daughter atop the horse. Now, though Jenna is still a bit wobbly, she sits up straight. Webber said the progress she's seen in her daughter is amazing, and Moug agrees.

"Look at that head control! It's awesome!" Moug shouted.

Hippotherapy has been used for 300 years in Europe, but for only about 30 in the United States. Though popular on the East Coast, hippotherapy is not well known here.

Moug and physical therapy aide Robin Pearson brought hippotherapy to Spokane about eight years ago. For the last two years, they have combined their efforts with those of Paula Dillon Mays, the owner of four physical therapy clinics throughout Spokane. The treatment is generally covered by insurance.

"It's an amazing therapy and service, beyond treatment as physical therapy," Mays said. "There is family involvement, volunteers, and the combination of all the people together provides social and physical benefits."

Hippotherapy relies heavily on the horse, of course, but also requires a four-person team consisting of the therapist, someone trained to lead the horse and two trained side-walkers who keep a hand on the patients to make sure they don't fall off.

As therapists, Mays and Moug are responsible for making sure their patients are doing what they need to for the results they are after. Hippotherapy is much more than just sitting a patient on a horse and watching them walk around, and Moug warns that hippotherapists need to have both therapy and horse training.

Also crucial is knowing which patients will benefit from hippotherapy. As fun as it looks, it's not for everyone.

"Down Syndrome kids often have lax ligaments between the first vertebrae and skull," Moug explained. "We will not treat that person on a horse."

But for those who do use hippotherapy, the results are often astounding.

"It gives people the opportunity to risk - to do something that gets the adrenaline going," Mays said. "Too often, people get sick and they don't really live."

Brianna Carroll, who turns 4 today, has Rett Syndrome, a developmental neurological disorder almost always seen in girls. After about 18 months of normal development, girls with Rett Syndrome begin to lose communication skills and the ability to perform motor movements. Though they can hear and understand, and their brain knows what to do, they cannot speak and often cannot learn sign language.

For Brianna, hippotherapy has helped in numerous ways.

"It strengthens her trunk, helps her balance and helps her walk because she can feel the movement of the horse," said her mother Maureen Carroll, who drives down from Indian Trail Tuesday evenings. There are also hundreds of sensory inputs from the horse - a warm, soft, breathing being - that provide stimulation on many levels.

Brianna is known around the barn as the one who gets the horses moving. By hopping up and down on the horse, she signals her desire to trot.

"It's helped her confidence," said Carroll. "She thinks, `Finally someone understands I want to go faster!'"

The therapists' goal is to take such accomplishments and get them to carry over into the patients' lives.

Of Mays and Moug's 20 hippotherapy patients, about four are adults. One is Susan Buckner, 40, who lives in north Spokane and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 20 years ago. MS is a progressive disorder of the central nervous system, with symptoms including stiff muscles, numbness and extreme fatigue.

Last spring, Buckner's neurologist mentioned to her that another of his MS patients had started doing hippotherapy and that now she could shave her armpits.

"I told him, `If I could shave my armpits, I'll do anything!'" she said. And so, she has.

Buckner said she is one of the 33 percent of MS patients who have chronic pain, but that after a hippotherapy session, she usually has a couple of days without pain.

Her session includes a lot of stops and starts, push-ups with her hands on the horse's neck to strengthen her abdominal muscles, and holding a pink foam cylinder straight out in front of her to practice balance.

Those who sit atop the horses aren't the only ones affected by the therapy though. The volunteers who serve as side-walkers are encouraged by the weekly results they see and entranced by the stories of those they help.

Side-walker Tina Danzig said volunteering with the hippotherapy program is the greatest thing she's done in years.

"I look forward to it every Tuesday," she said. "When I first started, I'd never spent much time with handicapped kids. I didn't know if I could do it. But you fall in love with these people."

A self-described "horse person," Danzig also said she's found a new respect for the animals she grew up with.

"I've always loved horses, but never as much as when I see what they can contribute to people's lives."

Moug said she's seen autistic children who are usually scattered and distracted able to focus when they're on the horse.

Every week, she sees the boy who grumbles and screams until he gets on the horse, and then suddenly becomes calm and even jovial.

And, there's the girl whose hand clenches so tightly it takes at least two long minutes of prying to open it. But after laying over the back of the horse and taking a few slow circles around the barn with the gentle sway beneath her, the hand relaxes and opens.

"That's like Christmas," Moug said. "If we could get that consistently, it would really make a difference in her life."

Perhaps, it already has.

This sidebar appeared with the story:

LEARN MORE

Hippotherapy

For more information about hippotherapy, call Paula Dillon Mays' South Hill therapy clinic at (509) 624-4200.

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