Why Horses?

Ever since we decided to form Saving Grace TRC, we've been asked (and even asked ourselves at times), why horses? We've been involved with many other Special Olympic sports, including swimming, basketball, softball, and track. Why choose the one sport where the equipment can bite you, where the expenses "will" be in the thousands EACH YEAR for EACH HORSE, where you put in hour upon hour of work, for months, for a class that lasts three minutes? Where you have to scramble for volunteers, because people who would volunteer for other sports won't because they have no horse experience, or the ones with horse experience don't have experience with riders with disabilities. Why focus on a sport that has, legitimately, so many moving parts that you are almost guaranteed to forget something?

Love.

We love our athletes. We love our horses. We love the sense of accomplishment when a little boy who can't walk on his own can sit up on the back of a horse and experience a sense of freedom that the rest of us take for granted. We love it when a rider who is nonverbal all of a sudden says "walk on". We love it when we see a rider advance from having to be assisted on a lead rope to riding independently. We love it when a rider achieves a new goal and they yell "I did it!". We love seeing a horse lower his head down to a rider, slow their walk down to accommodate the person on their back, because at that moment the horse knows what is needed.

We love God, we love our family, we love our horses, and we love our riders. That's why.