On August 5 and 6, over a hundred horses and riders gathered at Bear Spot Farm on Pope Road in Acton to showcase their riding skills and raise money to benefit the equine therapy program of the Bear Spot Foundation.
The equestrian discipline on display was “dressage.” In dressage, the horse and rider perform a prescribed set of movements within an arena, completing their moves within seven or eight minutes. At the Bear Spot event, riders competed at a range of levels 1 through 4, along with Freestyle. The pairs who are new to dressage perform simple maneuvers such as large circles to the left and right, and they are allowed to have a reader call out the moves from the side of the arena. The more skilled riders perform from memory, and complete more difficult maneuvers, such as pirouettes. The rider is not allowed to talk to the horse, but must instead communicate by nearly invisible “aids” such as subtle weight shift or thigh pressure.
This event was a fundraiser for the Bear Spot Foundation. The Bear Spot Foundation supports the Farm’s program of equine facilitated psychotherapy. In this form of therapy, clients with depression, anxiety, terminal illness or loss interact with a human therapist and a specially trained horse, sometime described as a “co-therapist.” The child or adolescent client grooms and saddles the horse, and may snuggle them, and then rides the horse with the therapist walking alongside. The Bear Spot website recounts how an adolescent with deep depression found “a positive feeling in her body, her mood and so in her sense of self” through her relationship with therapeutic horse Jake.
In an interview after the first day of competition, Bear Spot owner Jane Karol explained that the event raises money through sponsorships and entry fees, and the horses and riders come from approximately a two-hour radius around Acton. Building on a doctorate in psychotherapy, Karol founded the equine therapy program and the Foundation in 2004, when such an approach was still quite unusual. Bear Spot’s program is especially effective, according to Karol, because the clients ride the horses, rather than just grooming and feeding them as in some other programs. When a child sits up high on a horse, the apparent power relationship with the adult therapist is reversed, and some clients find it easier to talk. Others benefit from feeling the calm, steady gait of the horse, according to the Bear Spot website.
Acton-based rider Sara Carlisle and her horse Ace of Spades won first place in the Sunday afternoon FEI Freestyle Test of Choice competition, and achieved a high enough score to move closer to qualifying for the regional championships. “Freestyle” means that the routine is choreographed to music, the required moves can be done in any order, and the judge attends to how well the horse’s moves follow the music. Ms. Carlisle and Ace of Spades set their routine to I Wanna Dance with Somebody, by Whitney Houston. Interviewed after her winning ride, Carlisle said that she likes dressage because there is always room for improvement and she is working in such close partnership with the horse. She said she has been riding every day since she was four years old. As for Ace of Spades, she bought him for one dollar because he was so rambunctious, and has worked with him for eight years to bring him to his current status as a Grand Prix level competitor. She praised the Bear Spot competition as one of the best organized of all of the many competitions she attends. Carlisle is the head trainer at Lythrum Farm on Nagog Hill Road in Acton.
For more about the Bear Spot Foundation and its equine therapy program, see https://www.bearspotfarm.com/copy-of-therapy, and for Lythrum Farm see https://www.lythrumfarmdressage.com. If you’d like to watch a high quality dressage competition, locally, free of charge, Bear Spot Foundation Dressage Benefits are held every May and August.