History of Windy Hollow - 25 years

How Windy Hollow Therapeutic Riding Centre came to be, has been a roller coaster ride, to say the least. Over the years the acidic relationship that I share with my mother has taught me to hate, I look at the highs and the lows and I often wonder where my strength to go on has come from. In retrospection I have gone back to the beginning twice and using my blog I want to rehash what has gone before to make sense out of my future situation, I have always been a very private person and so this may give those around me a chance to get to know the real me better.

My name is Helen Du Plessis, and up-until recently I thought I owned, what I would like to call a classical hippotherapy centre, which was situated on a 42-acre property, 30 minutes drive south of Johannesburg, (Walkerville). But with the passing on of my father everything has changed and to a large extent 25 years of hard work has been lost - it's only the memories that remain.

But lets rather go back to the beginning of the story, I like most girls had a fascination for horses as I was growing up, having been introduced to them by Dr Lesley Lunn who I would like to call my mentor in the study of horse care.

I from the age of 8 years old worked with Lesley at the Animal Anti Cruelty League in Regents Park and later at the SPCA in Booysens, and found a deep love for the company of animals rather than people.

My love for horses was really inherited from a family with strong equestrian ties, my father's father, the Late Hendrik Nienaber, was a race horse trainer and ran a farm in the Free State that worked with difficult horses.

My mothers Grandfather, the Late Harry Musgrave, was a coachman working for Queen Victoria, who came to South Africa as a body guard to the Duke of York in the 1800's and later became an important part in the establishment of the original Durban Mounted Police Unit.

My father was allergic to horses but my mother rode as a teenager. So as a child I felt devastated when I was not permitted to ride, having been diagnosed with a heart complaint and so I was not allowed to partake in any activity that had the potential to create "Cardio Vascular Strain", no school sports, no extra mural activities that involved any form of exercise, i.e. No netball or swimming etc. I was an only child and with my restrictions I lead a very quiet and isolated childhood, no friends to stay over, no bicycle to ride. At the age of 13, I befriended the daughter of the local riding school owner and so without my parents knowledge I started riding. As I became fitter and my Cardio Vascular function improved so too did my general health, eventually I was forced to admit to my parents what I had been up too, because I now no longer needed the open heart surgery that I was supposed to have when my main growth years were over.

I so badly wanted a horse of my own but my parents said that they could not afford the stabling costs and so the only way that I could ride was to do all the dirty work at the stables on a Saturday morning to pay for my half-hour ride in the afternoon. I would fill water buckets, teff nets and lead ponies for other paying children to ride while learning. Seems almost unfair but now that I look back on it, I am grateful to Gloria my at the time instructor and the stable manager, she taught me a valuable lesson - hard work will pay off in the end. (I met her recently and thanked her for my history to her surprise).

My first horse was a mad Thoroughbred named Honey Child, as I said my parents refused to pay stabling and with me being 16, I left school, got a job working for Metro Cash and Carry so that I could pay livery and went out and bought the first horse I could find that had 4 legs, a head and a tail. It took us 4 hours to get her into the trailer to truck her from Randfontein to Regents Park where I was to stable, then in the week that followed I discovered I had bought a mare that was a dangerous rearer. I was too scared to ride her and because my parents feared that she would kill me, they paid Eric Bianci who had been a stunt rider at that time to school and get her calmed down for a month. The first days that he worked on her were akin to absolute madness, he had us dropping dustbin lids and the like behind her so as to spook her and make her rear. A mare has little balance on her back legs - that's a male past time, but no matter what she did he just stayed on, even when she through her tantrums between the fancy BMW's and Merc's, I often just closed my eyes and prayed that the half an hour would be over quickly. After the month was over I started riding her myself and in the end our favourite past time was to ride to Rosettenville, where I would tie her up outside Woolies and buy a yogurt before heading back to the stables, but the funny part was if anybody tried to go near her she would bare her teeth like a dog and want to bite.

At the time I was a very bad rider to say the least I sat in a chair seat with half jockey length stirrups and I would hear nothing about improving or changing my position. One of my fondest memories I have of this horse was the day I invited my father to come to watch me ride and when he bend down to give me a leg up onto my horse, Honey must have thought he wanted to hurt me and so she bared her teeth and chased him out of the arena.

Yes my story is a long one, hope you my reader have lots of patience, I have little else other than my horses and my wonderful daughter who has stood by me through thick and thin to show for all my hard work over all the years. Forgive me if I drift from the past to the current every so often, its just the current situation is hard to hold at bay at times.

Having my own riding school was a dream of mine since I was a teenager, so after loosing Honey Child and having bought the horse that I had originally learnt to ride on, when I was offered a sort of employment opportunity at Fellside Stud Farm in 1982, I started giving a few children lessons to pay for the upkeep of my own horses. At the time I had Tanya stabled at Thornhill in Walkerville and I then discovered Fellside when I bought Sarizin a polocrosse pony that was stabled there. How I bought Sarizin is a long story in itself - might put all of this on the blog at some point, I have the history of it written as a childrens story that I used to get past therapeutic based pupils to read, we'll see might dig it out at some point, not to mention the Stonehouse Stud Farm, situated next door to Fellside and my two week employment venture there, which I gave up because the managers cottage was back to back with the stable block and the rats running in the roof at night was just too much for me to handle.

After a time I realized that I had a passion for teaching especially small children and because of this I have worked very hard striving to create a school that is different to other commercial stables, where money often means more than the horse's happiness or the riders safety. I wanted to teach using the principles that I had used to teach myself coupled with the approach that Gloria had used, this over the years has sparked debate, as to be slow and labour intensive but to date I have only had one child break a collar bone and only two disabled children making contact with the floor during a fall, that's a 25 year record that I am sure very little instructors can beat.

At the end of December 1987, Fellside Stud farm closed down it's breeding program and so I moved my horses to another farm to enable me to continue with my lessons. By this time I now had three horses - Tanya, Sarizin and Kandy King, and life and lessons went on with very little adjustment for quite some time, only thing that was to be discovered was the name "Windy Hollow", my parents had got tired of my constant battle while stabling my horses with others and had decided to find a plot and start working on creating a centre from which I could work.

My father then bought Plot 20 and started growing teff, and while spending an afternoon there one weekend my Grandmother came up with the words this plot is like a Windy Hollow, I for many years hoped that would be where my centre would be. At first the name gained fame in our area because I used it while running shows at our local agricultural show grounds, Windy Hollow Show Centre and later Riding Centre when I started giving lessons again.

My horses started getting old and I lost Tanya first with Navicular disease (this is a type of arthritis that attacks the navicular bone in the horses front feet), a few months later I lost Kandy King with broken wind, the after effects of the outbreak of horse flu in 1987.

I now only had one horse "Sarizin", which I had moved to Blignautsrus in Walkerville and just after meeting and marrying my first husband, I was offered the stable managers position at Norton Lodge, the stables next door. My husband a police officer, was and still is at Booysens and we had a son and it is through him that the Therapeutic part of Windy Hollow was established.

While I was in the employ of Norton Lodge Riding School I discovered that my then 8 month old son was a deaf baby. To make sure of my assumptions I took him to my GP, who referred him to an ENT, for a proper assessment. Dr Hon confirmed my fears but told me it was the result of a middle ear infection. Furthermore, he told me that his condition need not be a permanent disability, all he needed was surgery. So Charl was fitted with grommets to clear the infection, 3 months later corrective surgery was performed. Some 18 months later Dr Hon decided to remove Charl�s tonsils and adenoids because he felt they where the reason for the ear infections.

As Charl regained his hearing a new problem started to appear, his balance and general motor co-ordination where causing him to fall on a regular basis. Thinking that this was being caused by the middle ear again I took him back to Dr Hon for a check up. On this day I was wearing my horse riding clothes, Dr Hon noticed this and he asked me if I had thought of teaching Charl to ride, to gain his balance. I took the initiative from Dr Hon's statement and purchased my son's first pony. (Ironically this pony "Honey Bee" is still one of the childrens favourite) I carefully set about teaching my son to ride. While working with Charl, I started teaching his friends at nursery school to ride too. Charl was never a really good rider, but because he enjoyed his pony so I persevered with his lessons, and with time his balance did improve considerably.

I acquired a new show quality pony for Charl, this pony was young and untrained. After bringing him home, I had him gelded and set about training him. A few weeks later, while he was grazing in his camp, Charl went to pat him. I don't know exactly how it happened but Roman kicked Charl on the side of the head. We took Charl to hospital for stitches and after the cut healed he started with lessons again. I learned a very expensive lesson here, and so this particular pony is no longer with us. Subsequently I now screen all ponies temperaments with the childrens safety in mind before they are used in the school. I can pride myself on the amount of children, who have come to us for lessons having suffered similar fates, at other riding schools and with time and effort I have rehabilitated them and got them riding again.

Charl went to visit a friend of the family who is a Clinical Psychologist (1998) and he noticed Charl having Petit-Mal seizures. This revelation was really the start to fixing Charl's problems. After taking him to every specialist I could think of. I discovered that he not only had Petit-Mal Epilepsy, which was causing his low school reports, but he also had scoliosis, which was causing his bad balance. (His one leg is longer than the other which had caused the spine to twist).

We have realised that it was the blow to Charl's head from the pony that caused the epilepsy. With this under control, his schoolwork improved drastically, we also moved him to a school that catered for children with learning problems. I started using odd length stirrup leathers for his riding, this helped to correct his scoliosis. His balance and co-ordination have been totally corrected, making him a much happier.

So it is due to my own son's need to ride, that I discovered the enjoyment of teaching children who need therapeutic riding lessons to ride, somehow these children appreciate the opportunity to ride more than children whose parents are already involved with riding. At the same time I created employment for myself right on my own doorstep, so it is in some ways out of my personal misfortune that Windy Hollow Riding Centre was created.

After hiring a stable yard for some time, the opportunity arose for me to go home to "Fellside", the yard in which I started the riding school so many years ago. So my primary reason for moving and reforming the pupil base of the school became making horses accessible to people with minor handicaps or fears, who could not afford high prices. I will tell you all about the full circle that I have traveled back to Fellside when I write again.

Fellside as we called it was the Thoroughbred Stud farm owned originally by the Late Graham Fell, and because it had stood empty for more than a year it had been vandalised when the bank had reclaimed it.

Due to the fact that it had the right country setting for creating a quiet atmosphere in which our children needed to be taught, my parent decided that they would help me and when it was sold on public auction my parents bought it. We set about with all the repairs and upgrading which had all been personally financed on a cash basis as money was available, this included the inheritance that I had received from my grandmother.

At first we started working with children in the 3 - 6 year old age group, this later grew to accommodate all ages and riders who wanted to pursue the art of horse riding as our infrastructure improved.

So our riding school was originally established in 1982 but as time passed by I realised I should specialise in working with individuals who have difficulties and so we re-evaluated our principles to be more therapeutically based, in 1997 when we received our affiliation to the South African Therapeutic Riding Association (SATRA).

With time our experience grew so that we could accommodate all possible riders no matter what the age or whether there is an occurrence or severeness of a disability.

So it is from these humble beginnings that my parents bought the farm where I gave my first lessons and I set about establishing a riding centre that could cater for individuals that could not afford the prices charged by other conventional riding schools.

This is the same plot where my mother nearly jumped out of her skin as the hammer fell - "Going once, going twice, going for the final time to the lady in the red jersey" It saddens me and makes me wonder what my Late Father would think about how what he thought would be a secure future and home for us was taken from us, by the same person who at the beginning of this circle was so excited to buy it.

Life has become a struggled existence, to a large extent at times I felt that I had lost the ability to carry out my life purpose of rehabilitating disabled people. It's as if I walk most days in a trans as I wait for the close of each day praying for relief to accompany the new dawn when I can wake up and what is, has been reviewed and its merit finally realised.

My calling was to rehabilitate disabled individuals so that they could take up a useful place in society, and the prophecy that I was given was that "My Riding Centre" would be taken away from me but then given back to me better than I could imagine (more on this in the page our prophecy).

As you have probably figured out, we have moved to new premises but that is not the only move that we have made, "we have moved on psychologically" too.

At the start of our difficulties we were given notice to move and I the quest to find our promised yard we were caught in what I would like to call "Peter's Scam", this may sound like it was a bad thing but almost three years down the line now I want to say it was a 'Blessing'. Why do I say this? Well when we thought management was about to start with the preparation for our immigration - I removed Juanita from school because I did not want her doing three months school and when we left and she would have to start all over again in June when the school year starts overseas. Meaning we home schooled Juanita with a private tutor, because our finances were so low we used hand-me-down text books from grade 6 and 7 and to use up any spare time, I promoted Juanita to read - something she hated doing until she found a book she related too.

What then happened is by June we still had not left the country and we concluded that Peter's job offer was a scam, with it being so late in the year we carried on at the pace we had used for the past six months, spending most of our time reading till the end of the year. Juanita was then assessed and it was found that she had not lost any cognitive ability and so she moved into the grade that she would have been in if she had not missed the year.

During this year a few things were proved, when she left school at the end of her grade 4 year, she was what I could only call a mediocre student that past by the skin of her teeth and by the end of her grade 6 year she was achieving almost straight A's.

My opinion is the year's rest, the riding therapy that she has been able to partake in by virtue of being my daughter and the intense love for reading that she has developed have all contributed to the repaired and improved cognitive standard that she is able to demonstrate.

Why am I telling you all this?? Well one of Juanita�s teachers last year gave her an application form for a high school bursary, which we have been working through the process of applying and being tested for during the past 5 months. The bridging program for this for 2009 kicks off next Saturday and out of the original 3000 learners that applied, 2500 wrote entrance exams, 120 odd were interviewed and 95 learners chosen to take part in the additional schooling on a Saturday in preparation for the scholarships for 2010 and Juanita was one of this final group chosen. And life goes on one day at a time.