NAME:	Betsy
SPECIES:	Quarter horse
DATE:	2004
LOCATION:	Austin, Texas
SITUATION:	Autistic child suffering multiple dysfunctions
WHO WAS SAVED:	Three-year-old Rowan Isaacson
LEGACY:	Shining example of equine therapy and intuitive connection between horses and autists

In April 2004, when he was three and a half, Rowan Isaacson was diagnosed with autism. He displayed the classic signs: He babbled or only repeated memorized words. He was obsessive with toys, lacked interest in people, and exhibited repetitive gestures.

After the diagnosis, Rowan’s autistic symptoms steadily worsened. He began throwing monumental tantrums, most likely due to sensory overload; suddenly, out of nowhere, he would thrash wildly and scream uncontrollably. Rowan’s father, Rupert, said, “His screaming once even drowned out the noise of a jackhammer crew, who downed tools and just stared in awe.”

During these fits, Rowan might slam his head on the ground, projectile vomit, and become incontinent; potty training was useless.

Autism cannot be cured, but dysfunctional behaviors or symptoms can be treated so they are less disruptive, and sometimes even eliminated. Also, autism exists along a broad spectrum, from extremely mild to very severe. However, as Dr. Temple Grandin has shown, some children with severe autism can eventually lead high-functioning lives (see “Thinking in Pictures”).

The Isaacsons started treating Rowan with a mix of prescription medicines, vitamins, and homeopathic remedies. They sent him to a range of educational and behavioral therapists. Nothing seemed to improve Rowan, particularly his hyperactive outbursts, except one thing.

Every day, Rupert took Rowan on walks in the woods behind their home in Austin, Texas.

“Immediately his screams would lessen and out he’d fly,” Rupert said, “flitting between the trees like some happy woodland elf.”

MEETING BETSY
During one walk in August 2004, Rowan ran off, away from his father, and by the time Rupert caught up, Rowan was scrambling under a wire fence into a neighbor’s horse pasture.

On the other side, four horses grazed quietly. Rowan laughed, delighted, for he loved animals, and “he threw himself on the ground, belly up, right in front of the alpha mare, the herd leader,” Rupert said. “A big bay quarter horse called Betsy.”

Rupert, a longtime rider, had once trained horses. He knew Betsy might trample Rowan if she became threatened or spooked, so Rupert approached cautiously as the horses regarded the strange boy. Then Betsy “dipped her head, and mouthed her lips. The sign of equine submission,” Rupert said.

“I knew I was witnessing something extraordinary. . . . In all the years that I had been training horses, I had never seen this happen.”

Weeks later, intrigued by Rowan’s unexpected horse connection, Rupert asked his neighbor if he and Rowan could ride Betsy. The neighbor agreed.

To risk putting his son on the horse, “I broke all the rules,” Rupert admitted. Rupert knew Betsy dominated and bullied the other horses, and she could be willful with adults. But he sensed an unusual restraint, even kindness, in her behavior with Rowan.

This became obvious as Rupert readied Betsy for their first ride. Rowan ran wild in the barn, chasing a cat, yelling, hitting the horse with his doll, and racing beneath her belly. Through it all, Betsy “stood like a rock, moving not a muscle,” Rupert said.

Then Rupert asked Rowan if he wanted to get up. “I wasn’t expecting a response,” he said, “but for the first time ever, he gave me an answer to a question. ‘Up,’ he said. And off we went.”

To Rupert’s amazement, the conversation continued as they rode. Rowan kept responding to his father’s prompts. Rowan mostly repeated his father’s words, exhibiting echolalia, but it still “was more cognitive speech than I’d ever heard him utter,” Rupert said.

Acting on impulse, Rupert let Betsy run, and Rowan laughed in ecstasy. Rupert was amazed at Betsy’s responsiveness. “Already we had achieved a level of instinctive trust . . . that usually takes months, sometimes years, to build.”

When the ride was over, Rupert asked Rowan to say thank you to Betsy. Immediately, Rowan hugged her brown head and gave her a kiss. “As he did so, an expression of extraordinary gentleness came over her,” Rupert said, “a blissful half-closing of the eyelid.”

In that and many moments to come, Rupert said he felt that “something passed between them, some directness of communication that I, a neurotypical human, could never experience.”

RIDING AND TALKING
Rupert and Rowan started riding Betsy almost every day, and invariably, Betsy was tolerant, submissive, and calm with Rowan. Further, while riding, Rowan showed the same linguistic, behavioral, and cognitive improvements. The only frustration was that, away from Betsy, the advances disappeared. Overall, Rowan’s dysfunctions continued unabated.

As months passed, professional therapists grew pessimistic that Rowan would ever improve permanently, “but with Betsy he was a different kid,” Rupert said.

And Betsy was a different horse. During one ride, the cinch broke on the saddle, which swung below her belly, unseating Rupert and Rowan. As they fell, Rupert’s foot caught in the stirrup and his head slid under a wire fence.

“I should have been dead meat,” he said. Rupert had seen horses bolt or buck in that situation numerous times, kicking and flailing until the loose saddle fell off.

“But again Betsy did not move,” Rupert said. “She just stood there, with that soft look in her eye she always had when Rowan was on the ground near her.”

Betsy waited patiently as Rupert fixed the saddle and they continued the ride. Had Betsy saved both their lives because of her devotion to Rowan? Rupert thought so.

Once, after a long ride in spring 2005, Rowan threw a fit because he wanted to keep riding. Then, abruptly and unprompted, he stopped wailing, walked up to the horse, and hugged and kissed her foreleg, saying, “I wuv you, Betsy.”

“It was the first time he’d ever said the words,” said Rupert, and as always, “Betsy’s eye half closed as he held on to her.”

Still, Rowan’s progress on Betsy was inconsistent and didn’t translate beyond riding. So, in summer 2005, the Isaacsons hired a teacher to work with Rowan while riding Betsy. For a year, this worked far better than any previous therapies, but permanent gains were elusive. Rowan’s tantrums remained a volatile, ever-present storm.

“Our lives were tantrum,” Rupert said. “Tantrum and the spaces in between.”

Exhausted and feeling their marriage coming apart, Rupert made an admittedly crazy proposal to his wife, Kristin.

THINKING IN PICTURES

Dr. Temple Grandin is one of the world’s most famous autists. She is a professor at Colorado State University, a published author, and an acknowledged expert in animal behavior. She was severely autistic as a child, but she improved dramatically because of devoted caregivers and an early connection to horses.

Dr. Grandin said, “Animals think in pictures. So do I. So do many autists. It means we can’t connect to other people, who think differently, in words or other mental patterns. Because animals think the same way—visually—autistic people often connect well with animals.”

Dr. Grandin has written about this in her book Animals in Translation. She says that fear is the main emotion in autism, and its the same for prey animals like horses and cows.

“The brain of the horse is very specific,” she said. “If a horse gets a fear memory, it’s stored as a picture, a sound, or a feel.”

Dr. Grandin compares it to having a slide projector in your mind, in which there are no generalized, generic images.

“Animals and autistic people don’t see their ideas of things; they see the actual things themselves.”

TO MONGOLIA AND BACK
As a travel writer and journalist, Rupert had met aboriginal Bushmen from Africa and seen Bushman shamans perform incredible healings. Once, a Bushman even performed a healing on Rowan, and afterward, for a short time, Rowan’s symptoms eased.

“Might there, I wondered, be some way of combining these two things—horses and shamanic healing?” Rupert asked.

The answer was yes, in Mongolia, the birthplace of the domestic horse, where native people still nurtured their ancient shamanic traditions. Rupert’s idea was to ride with Rowan across Mongolia on horseback seeking traditional shamans who might heal Rowan’s symptoms.

For two years, Kristin had resisted the idea on the grounds that it was insane, but finally she gave in. They were at the end of their rope. Even if it didn’t work, what did they have to lose?

So, for a month in 2007, the Isaacsons journeyed across the windswept Siberian steppes, meeting herds of wild horses and engaging in a series of bizarre rituals and strange healings. The last shaman they met, Ghoste, even informed them that he had communicated with Betsy in the spirit world, for he said the horse was Rowan’s animal protector. When Ghoste was finished, he said that Rowan had accepted the healing and would be fine.

The Isaacsons didn’t know what to believe, but as they made their long way back home to Texas, the shaman’s promise was realized. Within days, Rowan’s tantrums faded, he began using sentences, and he used the toilet on his own, a practice he then continued. Within a month, Rowan had become social and conversational, and “the tantrums, the hyperactivity, and anxiety . . . had left him completely,” Rupert said. To their utter amazement, “we had come back with a completely different child.”

Rowan and Betsy kept riding, and by six years old, Rowan was riding her on his own. He was also making friends and reading above his age level. In other words, Rowan had his life back.

“Rowan is still autistic—his essence, his many talents, are all tied up with it,” Rupert said, but “he has been healed of the terrible dysfunctions that afflicted him—his physical and emotional incontinence, his neurological firestorms, his anxiety and hyperactivity.”

Neither Rupert nor Kristin can explain how this happened. But some change occurred in Mongolia that proved lasting, and it was born in and remained connected to Rowan’s intimate relationship with Betsy.

Rowan “has not been cured,” Rupert said, and emphasized, “nor would I want him to be.”

HEALING ON A HORSE
Today, equine-assisted therapy is used to help people with a range of emotional, psychological, and physical issues, from children with autism, ADD, Down syndrome, and cerebral palsy to veterans with PTSD, adults coping with depression, and more. Simply put, riding a horse can be effective medicine. As with Rowan, it isn’t a “cure,” but it can help ameliorate a wide range of problems.

Many theories exist about why riding a horse and being involved in horse care are therapeutic. None have yet been proven. In part, interacting with animals in nature just feels good. Another reason has to do with the nature of horses. “Horses are naturally empathetic,” said horse trainer Franklin Levinson, who runs programs in England. “The members of the herd feel what is going on for the other members of the herd.”

Horses are highly attuned to body language and are extraordinarily responsive to a person’s emotions. Stories like Clever Hans (see page 295) and Molly (see page 154) illustrate this well. Interactions with horses can be revealing, useful mirrors for a person’s psychological state.

However, the motion of riding, as riders fall in and out of balance, is also thought to open the brain to learning. This may explain why autists show improved language skills. Finally, the physicality of riding tones the muscles and improves posture.

One day, research may explain why riding is therapeutic, but it’s doubtful that it will ever unlock the secrets of shamans and the spirit world.