by When I was born – in Funes, a few kilometers from Rosario – it didn’t take long for my parents to realize that I couldn’t see. They wanted to build a world for a blind baby that would not confine her to darkness. If I think about them today, I think about the path of light that they made the woman that I am.
I am 18 years old and my diagnosis is bilateral coloboma of the optic nerves. It is a congenital condition that causes a developmental problem in the optic nerve. I am missing tissue in the connection of the eye with the brain, causing profound deteriorations in my visual field. I have severe low vision and, at least in my case, it cannot be solved with surgery or glasses, only the early visual stimulation that I received from the age of two months allowed me to enhance the small visual remainder that today I only have in my left eye.
Before the year I saw the first shadows, some outlines… One day he discovers the eyes of my mother and father! But I write this text not to tell you about my parents, I write it so that you know how I got to where I am now: at the walk, at the trot, at the gallop.
In the neighborhood of Funes where we live, there was a field where Chiche, a Creole tobiano of our neighbor, grazed. My dad watched him graze meekly during the mornings and afternoons until one day he perked up. I was a baby the first time he approached the huge animal and I touched it. Without seeing Chiche’s dimensions or height, I think that what my baby hand must have felt was the soft fur, combed by the warm town wind. My dad picked me up and I lay on his back. We can say that it was my first contact with those who would be my life choice.
The passion for horses led my family to look for a way to intensify contact with them. They realized that they gave me security and that was something that everyone – family, doctors and teachers – agreed that I would need to cope with my difficulty. Since she was a six-year-old girl she began riding at the horse school of the Jockey Club of Rosario.
Horseback riding is an expensive activity, but my family was determined to do everything in their power to help me grow up healthy. The teachers had no experience with cases like mine. and today, that I ride somewhere else, I realize that the track was not prepared for my disability either. They hindered me like any girl who rode.
And I wanted more than to walk at a pace, I wanted to gallop. I felt the horses trotting and I wanted to experience that sensation. My grandparents told me “You can do it, you can do it” so one day I told my teacher that I wanted to try, so she should let me try. She said yes! Imagine, it was an adrenaline rush that ran through my body. I proposed it, but the horse was lazy, he didn’t want to. Frustration is also a feeling that appears but, as in everything, it means insisting again, not giving up, setting a goal. I tried again with Tango, my first galloping partner. All I could think was that I had to hold on tight, I hugged my legs to Tango’s body, held on to the reins and felt the wind hit my face. It was wonderful. The first time you do something you don’t forget it anymore. It is feeling free, that one can do anything. When they came back they congratulated me, they were proud of me. That day I understood that I was not going to set a limit, adaptive riding is safe and accidents are as common as for any rider.
Then came the jumps. You may wonder how I deal with the fences if I don’t see them. Today, with Ornela, my jumping instructor, we previously walk the circuit and review it several times so that I can form a map of the track in my head and thus be able to locate myself without seeing it. Additionally, the instructors stand on the side of the fences and make sounds as I approach so that I am the one guiding the animal and not the other way around. In these tips lies the most important thing. At first, this was difficult because the teachers were not specialized and by treating me like a girl without problems, they did not realize that it is not enough for the horse to see the obstacles, the rider must know how to indicate where.
There was a time when not everything was rosy. Due to various problems – financial, among them – I had to stop training and I experienced it with sadness. So my dad, who was convinced from that time he took me up to Chiche that I had to rely on that desire to progress, created a routine so that the horses would not disappear from my life.
Every weekend he took me for a walk to more remote areas where it is common for horses to be grazing on land, first with a certain distance we would get into their world until sometimes we were lucky to come across a tame little mare and then he would let him caress. Fabián is a determined and affectionate man and he found a way so that he would not lose the satisfaction of being in contact with the horses. I like to become part and all with them, watch them feed, rest under a tree, stand defiantly. because you are there. That joy that I had every weekend led my father to look for another place where he could ride and in 2016 I met Manuel, a great Creole riding teacher, with whom I learned a lot for 5 years. Since then I have been happy, and every day I encourage myself to do something new.
Confidence is essential for adaptive riding. Your own and that of others. Now I don’t miss a class, when it rains the schedules are changed so that we can all use the indoor track, which is clearly smaller. Every Saturday Athina awaits me, the mare who is my partner today and with whom I gallop and jump 50 centimeter high fences. I love her with all my heart. She knows what I’m like when I get frustrated and when I get happy. She senses me too.
He has a strong character, like me. She is capricious and when she doesn’t want to she gets hard-headed. We already know each other so much that I know that when an exercise doesn’t work and you have to repeat and repeat and repeat, she gets upset and nods. I get upset too but I’m not going to regret it and I keep trying. It’s a tug of war to see who is more stubborn: Athina or me. I have to admit that there are times when she wins. We have blind trust in each other, it is something vital to do a sport like this with a huge animal and a woman with vision problems.
The synonym for opportunity in the dictionary of my life is “Cecilia”, my teacher. Cecilia is like the song about “that she can open the door to go play.” I met her when she was training at “El Susurro”, she watched me for a while and then she approached my parents and told them about “Pingo Fe”, a place where she taught classes. She told us about equine therapy and adaptive riding. She convinced us to come closer. In life you need opportunities, we all need them and effort is better if it is shared. She transmits another way of connecting with this sport, the “adapted” part is simple, she seeks how to make a sport easier, more in line with the needs of those of us who want to practice it.
Virginia, she is my mother, my great companion, but sometimes she is afraid that I will fall off the horses. Jumping horses are tall, very tall. It’s not just about sitting and parading, horsemanship is about telling a huge animal to do what you want. To merge through sounds and contact. A “blind trust” must be developed between the two. Horses are alive, they are not a bicycle: they get angry, tired, or misinterpret a cue. One can even make a mistake and confuse them. That’s what I thought had happened the first time the mare pushed me to the ground.
It was a day like everyone else, during the week I had gone to class and arrived on Saturday to go riding, it is a long-awaited day and I have the necessary equipment. When I arrive at the riding center, many times everything is ready and it is just taking the first step, hooking my foot in the stirrup and getting comfortable. But two years ago a horse got angry or scared and threw me. Something completely unexpected, as you can imagine the fall was very fast, but for me, while I was falling it felt like in those dreams when you dream that you fall. I couldn’t tell if it was happening or not.
How I hit the ground, I don’t know; When I came to my senses, when I came to, one teacher was taking off my helmet and another was running. I thought about my mom before the pain. She is fearful and the possibility of her falling on me had always worried her. I fell, it was the first, but not the last time. From that day on, the teacher preferred that my dad bring me to class.
With Cecilia I go out to move the equine therapy horses, I help her. She also does their hair and organizes their frames. It is a job that she does through exercise, connecting from various places makes you part of it and she gave me that opportunity. That of not being the exception but one of those of us who love this sport. Maybe this is the true meaning of writing these words. That we encourage ourselves more, that we look for opportunities and that we are not afraid to try and that we do not get frustrated at the first opportunity. That alone is not easier, that family and friends have to be supportive. I sought to write this article thinking that I wanted more people to know about adaptive riding and now I realize that my story is not just that, it is more about how we can together. To listen to ourselves in what we want and to be listened to. To see, but not with the eyes, to see with the heart those who surround and support us.
One day the faces of my loved ones were in front of me and I don’t remember what I felt. One day I went up to Chiche’s hair, but I don’t remember what I felt either. What I know is that my parents, Virginia and Fabián, saw me, they saw my face. They conquered their own fears, assumed their frustrations and even when they did not have the means they looked for the opportunity to meet a tame little mare that would allow itself to be caressed. Now I have on my horizon to study the diploma in Adapted Horse Riding, it is the way in which I propose to continue so that more and more children and young people, why not adults too, know that it is possible.
Vera Alegre. I am 18 years old and I have just finished high school at the Fisherton Institute of Comprehensive Education. I live in Funes, a city on the outskirts of Rosario. I was born with a visual disability. As a child I alternated between the school for the blind and the common kindergarten and I always attended schools that were not special with the help of integrative teachers. In the fifth year they proposed to us to do a final project; The research I conducted was on adapted horsemanship, “Adapted horsemanship as a tool for the social development of young people with visual disabilities.” That was the kickoff to tell you my story.
