When my accident happened, my whole life revolved around horses. In fact, my first question to the emergency room doctors was, "Am I still going to be able to ride?" I kept asking that question of every subsequent doctor for the next six months until finally I realized that they didn't know the answer, but I did. If I wanted to ride again, I could - and I accomplished that goal using Riding Therapy.

The accident happened at dusk. I was trail riding my horse alone in a state park near my home. A flock of birds flew up out of the reeds and startled him. He bolted. I fell off, breaking my left arm and the big femur bone in each leg. Then I had to wait for three hours-in the dark-until somebody found me. They were the longest three hours of my life. I kept saying over and over to myself, like a mantra, that someone would come. My mother told me later that I could've died from shock, but I experienced such a surge of adrenaline that I was free from pain and acutely alert to all the sounds and movement in the wildlands around me. That's how I heard the clip-clop of horse's hooves coming from far away. It was my neighbor, and he was riding my horse!

A speedy recovery was not in the cards for me; I've had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis since I was ten years old (I'm now forty-one) and that slowed the growth of new bone. Because of the accident, I'm now disabled too. My left leg is shorter than my right leg, and my left hip is tilted back.

I tried Therapeutic Riding exactly one year after the accident. I was walking with a cane, having graduated from using a walker. Nora Fischbach, program director, welcomed me, and quickly assessed my condition. "I can get you on a horse!" she said with such confidence that I had no reason to doubt her. There was a big mounting block, with steps, that I used to get on a small grey mare. Volunteer "sidewalkers" were on each side of me, and someone led the horse by a lead rope. Sitting on only a bareback pad, I rode for about five feet. The horse's gait agitated my fractured hip, but the hardest part of all was controlling my fear. Even with all these people around me, I was afraid the horse would run away with me. Somehow I managed to survive the experience, and when I got off I cried tears of joy.

I signed up for an intermediate class that met every Saturday morning. We rode in an arena, and I slowly started to feel safe. Things progressed gradually and calmly for a while. I was working on building up my muscles to sit in a saddle again. Then, the next traumatic event was a trail ride. In single file, each of us with two sidewalkers, we rode across the grounds of the ranch, passing pens of ostriches, llamas, and Shetland ponies. With each new "attraction," I grew more anxious and eventually I had what you might call a nervous breakdown.

Since then I've learned that I have to keep going on trail rides to overcome my fear of them. It's called "progressive desensitization." So that's what I've been doing with my own horse (the same one on which I had the accident, and in the same park where the accident occurred), and it has worked! Another aid that I would highly recommend is a book entitled, Overcoming the Fear of Riding, by Theresa Jordan, Ph.D., and Peter De Michele, M.Ed. It is full of behavior modification techniques from the top riders and trainers.

Today, after doing therapeutic riding for two years, I've graduated to the advanced class. My newest achievement is that I'm cantering again! I'd be lying if I said that riding never hurts, or that I never get scared. But Nora pointed out that if I don't tackle this fear, it will assume even greater proportions and begin to affect other areas of my life. I don't want this fear to control me; I want to be in command of my own life, at least as much as I possibly can. And overall, to be able to ride again brings me such joy that it overshadows the pain and fear that are gradually receding into the background of my mind.