Book Reviews
Secretariats Meadow
by Kate Chenery Tweedy
This book tells the history of the family and the land that raised a champion racehorse, Secretariat. The book is written by Penny Chenery Tweedy’s daughter, granddaughter of Christopher Chenery founder of the farm called, The Meadow.
It tells the story of the Chenery family going back to the 1700’s. It explains the love that some of the Chenery clan had and still has for horses and for horse racing.
The book is full of pictures of famous race horses raised on the farm and people that took care of them along the way. There are stories about these people and you can tell they were valued members of the farm family.
The pictures and the story itself is so interesting, but also a bit sad, because it is gone now. The farm, many of the people and horses, gone but not forgotten.
If you love horses and you love to read about people that truly love horses, you will love this book.
You can go to the website, www.secretariatsmeadow.com for more information on the book and how to get it.
The Horse Boy
By Rupert Isaacson
In April 2004 Rowan Isaacson, a two year old boy, was diagnosed with autism. The new epidemic which now touches one child in one hundred and fifty, seemed to snatch away his soul.
The charming, animated, blue-eyed, brown haired boy suddenly ceased to say the few words he had accrued over the previous year. He began to flap his arms and babble, to obsessively line up his toys, to retreat into himself for hours at a time, to avoid eye contact, to scream uncontrollably, as his nervous system erupted like a series of volcanoes, searing him with burning pain, terrifying him, traumatizing him, causing him to “fly away into another world” far from the reaches of his distraught, grieving parents.
That same year, while casting about for solutions, Rowan’s father Rupert stumbled upon something extraordinary. He noticed that his quarter horse mare, Betsy, displayed submissive body language to the two year old boy when ever he wandered, babbling and spasmodic, into the horse pasture.
Intrigued, Rupert put him up on the mare’s back . Immediately the “stimming” (self-stimulation) stopped, replaced by an unusual even blissful calm. The next day Rupert took Rowan riding with him, holding him in front of him in the saddle.
Not only did the shrieking and jerking cease Rowan began to talk.
Rupert had found his way into his son’s world. Betsy, the patient bay mare, had provided the link between his world and his son’s.
So Rupert asked himself, was there a place on the planet that combined horses and healing? He did some research: the country where the horse was first domesticated, where the nomadic horse life is still lived by most of its people, is also the one country where shamanism, healing at its most raw and direct, is the state religion, Mongolia. Where horses and healing intersect.
This is the story of their extraordinary adventure as they traverse Mongolia. A deeply moving, truly one of a kind story of a family willing to go to the ends of the earth to help their son.
Rowan’s parents have since started a therapeutic riding center in Elgin, Texas, where they bring special needs (mainly kids on the autism spectrum) children and “neuro-typical” (normal) children together using the horse as a social nexus.
For more information on the story and where to get the book go to www.horseboymovie.com.
We have several Equine Riding Therapy facilities in Mississippi:
Pony Dream Farms
11241 Holly Springs Rd
Hernando, MS 38632
(901) 212-9726
R.I.D.E.S. Therapeutic Equine Center
540 Gurlie Malone Rd.
Caledonia, MS 39740
RideABILITY
P.O. Box 5061
Brandon, MS 39047
