Emily is PERFECT!

I volunteer for the Little Bits Therapeutic Riding Association as a sidewalker and leader, and it is probably the best 4 hours of my week.

As a side walker I walk alongside a horse named Spud and help a girl named Emily keep her balance. On the other side of Spud and Emily is another sidewalker named Annabritt, and leading Spud is a lady named Kath. I don't really know what Emily has, but I suspect maybe cerebral palsy. At any rate, Emily is an 18 year old girl who is confined to a wheelchair, but lives a very full life. She goes to school, she rides horses, she has swimming lessons. And my favorite part is that when Emily arrives someone asks her how she is and she replies very enthusiastically "I'm PERFECT!" with a huge grin on her face. She's enthusiastic about everything! When she's telling the instructor who she's riding and who's leading and who's sidewalking. When she's telling Spud to "walk on" or "whoa". It's her enthusiasm, her spirit.

It's so beautiful, and I wanted to share that. Emily is perfect.

Then, as a leader I go out to the pony pen and I catch poor old Prince and haul him into the stables where I brush him, clean his feet, and saddle him. The poor old guy is the cutest little pony who has an aura about him that seems to say "anywhere but here". He plods along. Riding Prince is a young boy named Ben. I don't really know what Ben has either, but I suspect autism. Ben is so cute. He loves 2 things: outside, and music. The thing with Ben is that if the horses stop for even a little bit he goes to climb off. So we've learnt that we can sing to him and it'll keep him on the horse, or we'll keep walking. However, today his mom told us he was sad. And Ben is never sad. But today he was. So the moment Ben got up on Prince he was ready to throw himself off, and he was making crying noises and it was just not Ben at all.

So I sang. For an hour. Straight. No stopping. The 2 sidewalkers chimed in a few times, and offered up song suggestions but mostly I just plodded along with old Prince and sang. And I actually impressed everyone (because EVERYONE could hear me) with the number of songs that I knew.

But those are my volunteering adventures. Emily is PERFECT! and I sang for Ben.

Life is beautiful.