Barry Scott Young: 0:03
This is the my New Norm podcast and I'm your host, Barry Scott Young.
Laurel Manning: 0:30
This was our first client. She is a person with Parkinson's disease, but she has a grandson with autism on the spectrum, and so she actually had brought him to ride and so we put him on this horse and all of a sudden she said I want to ride. Have you ever been on a horse? No, but I want to ride, got a helmet that fit her, walked her up the ramp and before we were, honestly before we were ready to have her mount the horse, she was throwing her leg over and climbing on. And here she is, 72, 17 years with having Parkinson's disease, never riding a horse, years with having Parkinson's disease, never riding a horse. Probably five minutes into this interaction, she calls out my brain feels free. But that, to me, was exactly what we're here for to have that connection, and I always just think back to that moment and just having that freedom, your brain feels free. My name is Laurel Manning fun one, if you like animals.
Barry Scott Young: 2:19
I have in the studio today Laurel Manning, and she is from Southern California. Would you say hello to my listeners and tell us a little bit about where we're going today?
Laurel Manning: 2:33
Sure, Barry. Thank you for having me, for the warm welcome and to all of your listeners. I was born in Southern California and I live here now, but I have lived across the country in Virginia, Georgia, Florida, flew all over the country and corporate life many years ago. But, the one thing that always anchored me in a really positive way has been animals. I feel like I came out of the womb with a love for animals, and horses in particular.
Barry Scott Young: 3:06
Tell us a little bit about that love for animals.
Laurel Manning: 3:09
That's so interesting. I'm going to tell you a quick story, and this has to do, actually, with a pit bull and my friend, Jeff Bradley, who introduced us, introduced us. I went to his his folks house and I believe it's his niece that had a pit bull that's not able to hear and, from what I understand, is not always accommodating to others, and I walked in the front door and that dog leapt off the couch and ran right up to me as if we've been friends for life. Oh my, you know that doesn't always happen, but when it comes to other animals, horses in particular have been my love and there's been this innate connection with all kinds of horses, all different breeds.
Laurel Manning: 4:02
Like it is for many people, my love of animals was cultivated at an early age. My grandfather always had animals around him, ran a business but had animals in the yard at his place of work and at home, and helped me in getting my first horse.
Barry Scott Young: 4:21
Wow.
Laurel Manning: 4:22
And that has been a retreat for me also, so that anytime there needs to be a refreshment sort of thing in my life, that that's been where I've connected.
Barry Scott Young: 4:33
What kind of animals are you collecting or rescuing? Jeff tells me he gets on the ranch and finds out that you've been busy putting animals in the car. So what kind of animals are we talking about here?
Laurel Manning: 4:50
Right Well, and I want to be very careful that I am not a hoarder collector, anything like that. That's an easy trap that some fall into. But some of the rescues that we have, I've got two sulcata tortoises that are they're, you know well over a hundred pounds, 80 something years old. I have this space in my backyard, although if you looked at some of the holes that they've dug, I don't think you can tell a sulcata tortoise where to live if they're able to dig, they kind of choose their.
Laurel Manning: 5:27
So that's been a really fun one and for interactions on those, that's probably one of the most fun things that people come and do is look at the tortoises, feed them watermelon or strawberries or lettuce and just enjoy that. It's something unusual that you don't often get to see because they're hard to keep. They're hard to keep. You can't just pick them up and move them if they go under your fence.
Laurel Manning: 5:55
We've got chickens, we've got a couple of pigs that are the coony coony pigs that a family had raised and realized they're too big and they don't really have the time, the energy or the resources, so early on we took those and have them housed here as well. But mostly our rescues consist of horses and one of the beautiful things is that, while our focus today is on therapy for people with Parkinson's disease using horses, how we get to a therapy horse often is through a rescue horse and to the extent that we are able and again it's not our primary focus, but to the extent that we're able to take a horse that has had some kind of trauma, abuse, neglect and bring them back and restore them to health and give them a place of peace and safety, and then they're able to interact and give back as a therapy horse.
Laurel Manning: 6:57
And we've got so many stories, Barry, of horses that were somehow mistreated, but in coming here, they're able to decompress, get healthy. We're not asking them to do difficult things. We're asking them to be who and what they were created to be.
Barry Scott Young: 7:17
So you may get a call or find out that a horse has been neglected, and once you get the horse you just basically assess and begin to love on them and they begin to come back to life, so to speak, and then you kind of give them a purpose.
Barry Scott Young: 7:41
You said 30 or so.
Laurel Manning: 7:43
We've got 30 horses on the property right now and we've got 87 acres to be able to house them. So some of those horses are personal horses of a couple of the folks who live on the property. We've got about eight that are fully dedicated to therapy and then the rest of them are either in training or would be considered sanctuary horses. But we've got our commitment when we started. This was any horse that we bring here, whether it was a therapy horse at the very beginning or a rescue and rehabilitation horse that we would commit to having them from the moment they come onto this property until it's their time to go, and that we would humanely euthanize when that time comes. And it's an important one, because we don't always think about what you know, what do you do? What's your end of life with a horse?
Laurel Manning: 8:43
We had a call from actually another rescue who said that there were two horses that were malnourished that were across the valley from us. So that's part of our community and we've got a huge commitment to community, people, animals and their welfare. And so I went over and took a look at them and indeed they were completely malnourished, not being medically treated for, and the family had come on hard times. They weren't able to care for them and the horses were a little bit older, so they had tried to sell them, give them away, do the appropriate measures, and weren't able to do that, weren't able to find somebody who would be willing to take them, and that is a legitimate concern, right.
Laurel Manning: 9:26
Nonetheless, the horses got to the point where they were in seriously terrible shape. So we brought them over to our ranch. We isolated them, kept them in quarantine, had a vet out, we did all the medical treatment to bring them up to where they needed to be, put weight on them. They were several hundred pounds light on weight, so you have a body score of 10 on a horse, and they were at a one or a two starving. The good news is one of these horses is completely healthy and doing extraordinarily well on the ranch Not a therapy horse but in the sense of the word that we talk about it, but still a horse that can be ridden and has just come so far. But the other horse, actually his body just started shutting down and it was about midnight and we called a vet out and there were four of us who stood around him and we had brought him out.
Laurel Manning: 10:23
But I still get emotional on this because it's like we're here for them all the way through. We brought him his name was Whiskey. We brought him over by some of our other horses, my personal horses. They really formed that herd around him and we just loved on him while he was euthanized and went down, so that we know that, as his body was failing and it was time for him to go, that he was loved and cared for and had a purpose and was known, and I think that exemplifies everything that we stand for at Park Horse Project. Another example course project. Another example we had locally a gal who boarded two Arabian horses.
Laurel Manning: 11:10
An Arabian is one of my personal favorites but they are as a horse. They are considered a hot-blooded horse, kind of like a thoroughbred which many people know about and hear about. But they're a hot blooded, lots of energy. They are an incredible endurance horse. They have heart, literally, and they are very long-lived. It is not unusual for an Arabian horse to live past their 30s and compared to, I think, quarter Horse, the American Quarter Horse Association says 25 is where you're capped. That's kind of as long as they're going to live. And then an Arabian is really sensitive. They have a compassion and a connection that not all breeds have. Now, again, I've got a little bit of a bias, because Arabians are just one that I have connected with over the years.
Laurel Manning: 12:06
But these two Arabians that I'm speaking of had been nurtured, taken care of, well-loved, lived at a stable down the way from us and the gal who owned them and called them her heart horses had cancer and had struggled with that for years and years and was just at that end point and did not have a plan for where her horses would go. The manager of that stable, along with a gal that we've worked with as a consultant and a mentor, they called and said hey, I know, laurel, I know you love Arabians and I know you've got a lot of space over there. Not sure if these horses are the right fit, but could you help us out? I said, yeah, it's the right thing to do, we can take them and planned on having them at the stable until the gal who owned them passed, but upon finding out that there was a place for her horses to go, she died.
Laurel Manning: 13:09
It was one of those again, one of those connection points where, okay, this is the right thing to do and it's a reminder that you know we do need to think about what are our next steps for our animals, because it's not just when they go, but it's when we go where. How will they be cared for and maintained? And then, with those particular horses, we brought them over here and they went through a mourning period which I hadn't experienced. I hadn't really maybe paid attention to it or had the opportunity to see that, but those horses exhibited grief and loss. The really exciting thing about that is the one. In fact one is off to the right of my office and I can see it through the window, and the other one is in our therapy program, so both have new lives and we're able to decompress and release, you know, go through that grieving process, release some of what their old life was and embrace their new life.
Laurel Manning: 14:09
Anyway, that's the horse sides, just some of the stories that we have, and we've got many. Each of our horses really does have a story, and once I have the time, I'm going to get all of that updated on our website, because it's the stories really that do matter and are so um makes the difference, make you feel like you. You know this horse.
Spot: 14:31
We'll be right back. Emergency room doctor walks in as he's about to walk out. He stops and then he comes back and he looks at me and
Barry Scott Young: 14:44
I'm just looking at him like what? And he goes. I know that you're overwhelmed. I know you're very overwhelmed right now, but you're doing a good job. And then he walked out. I'm like what doctor is going to say
Spot: 15:01
that? You know, I was just like. I don't know you, you don't know me. From that point on, that's what it was. That's what it was. You know, the caregiving was top spot of my top jobs because it was. You had to put yourself aside. I am not the daughter right now. There were times when she didn't know who I was towards the end, but I knew the Lord was telling me. Something's up. My name is Cecilia De Los Santos and this is my story.
Barry Scott Young: 15:48
Oh you can find Cecilia's story at Season 5, episode 1 on the my New Norm podcast. Remember to follow, listen and share with those you know. You've talked a little bit about therapy. We'll get back to that, but if we were to walk on the property or drive on today, what would we see? Where are you going as far as the development of this property?
Laurel Manning: 16:29
oh, good question, good question, so Good question. So when you drive onto the property, first of all we've got 87 acres, which is incredible, it's just incredible. And we're in just this historic valley called El Monte Valley. That's in Lakeside, california, it's in San Diego County, it's got a lot of history that relates to agriculture, and where we reside is was originally a dairy, and so we've tried to embrace a lot of you know what was here, if we're able to improve it or save it. And then the mountains all behind us.
Laurel Manning: 17:09
The Kumeyaay Indians lived along these banks, so when we go up into the mountains you can even see where they lived and did their grinding and things like that. There's eagles, there's even bald eagles, lots of hawks, all kinds of wildlife. But when you drive in, probably the first thing you would see off of our road is we've got this three rail red fence and it's kind of a rusty barn red. And that was the very first thing we did when we moved on to this property. I needed quite a bit of rehab. That was our first marker and that's how you can find us today when you drive on. We've made improvements on roads, boy, you can never imagine exactly what it's going to take on infrastructure.
Laurel Manning: 18:00
We did a lot of due diligence before closing on this property. Lots of due diligence, and even with that there were things that we just had not accounted for. There's five wells, so we have plenty of water, but if you have one, well, go down or go dry or break, you have to fix it. And so, doing those kinds of things and doing bridge repair, we have a natural creek that goes through our property and filters through a pond that has bass and catfish. It's just a beautiful. It's a beautiful space, yeah, and then the hillsides are literally dotted with there's pastures for horses. I mean, my personal vision was that when you drive down El Monte road and you look to the right where the fencing is, there will be no doubt in your mind that this is a horse property and that you see horses not just in one cluster on the property, but you see them stretched out across. And that's exactly what we've got today, and there's lots of expansion to be done.
Laurel Manning: 19:09
But it's one day, know, it's one day at a time, and it's planning and strategizing you know, trying to stay ahead of what crises might loom out there and avoid them as much as possible.
Barry Scott Young: 19:43
Our listeners
Laurel Manning: 19:25
That's 501c3 non-profit.
Barry Scott Young: 19:30
So we can talk about wherever our listeners are. They have a love for animals, especially those that need encouragement. They can donate or visit your website. We'll put that in the show notes, but is there different ways that people can volunteer what's needed?
Laurel Manning: 19:55
Absolutely, we take care of.
Laurel Manning: 19:58
We have staff that takes care of the feeding and the cleaning and the keeping the flies at bay, getting water, in all those kinds of things.
Laurel Manning: 20:11
But, as you can imagine, there are horses that need to be brushed, need to be walked, just need time spent.
Laurel Manning: 20:19
So we always need people to volunteer in that capacity. Some people can volunteer to actually ride horses or do some practice therapy in our arenas with a couple of our trainers. We need basic things like helping us polish tack or clean bits and bridles and all of those things that are the little extra that don't always get taken care of just because we're stretched, taking care of the animals and meeting all of their daily needs. And then, when it comes to therapy, having people who are willing to be on site when we have clients here, to be sidewalkers, to lead horses and to just be that calm support team that's available and willing. I think the other thing is we have work parties where it's just basic stuff like oh gosh, we've got I don't know how many succulents that are around that need to be maintained and it's just hard to do that. It's easier to do with a work group that can just come in and volunteer together, even a family volunteer, to help with some of that stuff.
Barry Scott Young: 21:35
I would think that from time to time you have had like an open house or an event there. What are some of the things you have done in the past to bring the public on site?
Laurel Manning: 21:50
So some of the things that we've done are we host a 4th of July barn opening and keep in mind we've been opened because our nonprofit is in its third year. It's our second full year of being on site on this property. We've invited people in for that, just to celebrate. We celebrate Independence Day and. Independence Day for our horses, independence Day for our clients, and that's what we're looking for is independence by using these horses and the horse therapy and just being around them. So it means a lot of different things.
Laurel Manning: 22:31
At Christmas we have a Santa at the ranch and that has become a real favorite and we have volunteers who come in. In fact, a great group, a great organization of women that have helped support us Victorian Roses Ladies Riding Society and they have come in and brought some of their horses a key group and created a sled so that people could actually watch a miniature horse pulling a sled and then taking pictures with Santa interacting with the horses and our horses. We go to some of the community events. We always try and bring some of our horses with us so that people can get that sense of. I think you had mentioned Heartland before and watching that.
Laurel Manning: 23:16
I just to kind of capture that same kind of look and feel of okay, there's a way to know a horse, and the more you're around them, the more comfortable you are, and the more you see them doing different things, the more you realize how capable they are.
Barry Scott Young: 23:32
And good for the horses to be socialized.
Laurel Manning: 23:36
Absolutely yeah.
Barry Scott Young: 23:40
I'm sure you have noticed different horses with different personalities. Is that real obvious when you meet a horse? I mean, are they different from one another?
Laurel Manning: 23:55
absolutely? absolutely, I it's. It's uncanny because you will put a horse, you'll put a horse in a herd and they will immediately figure out who's going to be in charge, and you know and kind of how that rolls downhill. And it's important because they're a prey animal and you have to have someone in charge. You can't just leave it all to chance. So you see those kinds of leadership skills, as it were, and you put different horses together and one that was a leader in herd A is not a leader in herd B and may have difficulty because they're not, but then you get to that personality. So I told you my favorite. You know my breed is Arabian. They're spicy, they're hot, they're, you know, my Arabian. I call him a red dragon because he just snorts and he, you know. But I had a serious back injury last year and wasn't sure I would be able to ride again in entered Theo, which actually means gift from God.
Laurel Manning: 24:56
And I believe that he was. Um, he's a halflinger, which is he's. He is pony size, but he's like a baby Rhino. He's stocky, he's like you know, those draft horses that you see, that's how he's built and that horse has taken care of me. He came off of an Amish farm and was a plow horse.
Barry Scott Young: 25:17
Really.
Laurel Manning: 25:18
Yeah, he came through auction with a team, so he and another halflinger, and so I swooped them up and they came here to the ranch. Today I claim Theo as my own and I even ride him in parades. And he would still be considered green broke to ride because he doesn't know all those things. He hadn't been ridden before, he'd only pulled a plow. But he has that demeanor and that personality. That's just calm.
Laurel Manning: 25:52
It's like a big inhale and exhale and he's rock solid there for you. That was one of those pivotal points in realizing I've always been very capable and physical and able to do, and when the back injury occurred it brought me to that point of how does it feel for somebody who is not doing well and not in control of their body or their spine or their hips to get on the back of a horse and trust that that horse is going to take care of you and give you back your gate, your walk, your freedom, your independence, by you just being there and letting go.
Barry Scott Young: 26:30
Wow.
Laurel Manning: 26:31
That's what we're about. That is what we are about.
Barry Scott Young: 26:35
Well, I know a lot about therapy because of my own story and I kind of feel that therapy, whatever it is, whatever's needed, helps you where you are and get you to where you want to be. I mean, therapy is that bridge. Tell us a little bit more about the actual horse therapy, with different clients that need different things.
Laurel Manning: 27:08
We have horses that feel in different ways and, if you don't mind me giving a couple examples in therapy how that works, so we have one horse that we had originally gotten. He's an Arabian, he was stallion, he was used in the Charo rodeo and he was a tripping horse, so they would hook his legs and drop him to the ground, and he just said no more and became, I mean, seriously traumatized, an unsafe horse. So we, after he went through quite a bit of work at a rescue that focuses on that kind of horse, he came here to our ranch and one of the things that we don't use him for any of our Parkinson's or autism clients or anything like that but he has this unique ability to identify folks who are going through recovery Wow, recovery from addiction, recovery from alcoholism, just those dark addictions and he is unafraid of that and he has a connection that I can't explain it. Our other horses don't do it, but for him he won't come to a lot of different people, but he will come right up to somebody who's struggling in that way and provide a real healing point, and I just find that incredibly fascinating. That that's kind of his special power.
Laurel Manning: 28:42
We have other horses, though, that are. They can sense when somebody is physically struggling, and they do. They see the truth. They don't see. You know we talk about.
Laurel Manning: 28:57
people with Parkinson's disease, that mask is a literal and physical you know mask that happens as progression of the disease. Horse sees right through that. They see right into where you're at, they feel your heartbeat, they can connect with your heartbeat, your breathing, all of that. So they truly know and with the ones that we have identified as just ideal therapy horses for that equine therapy, for that touch component, they will relax and take care of our clients in a very different way than they take care of one of us when we get on them to ride.
Laurel Manning: 29:46
really clear what you know again you were asking about. You know personalities and to me it's just, it's so clear what you know again you were asking about. You know personalities and to me it's just, it's so easy to see what their personalities are but also to observe their change when they're ready for a client and it's like, oh, okay, here's, this is my job and I know how to do this and I'm good at it and I'm good at it, and often when we put somebody on their back because it's going to be somebody who is more rigid or more spasmodic or too tight with the legs or the hips versus what they might prefer.
Speaker 2: 30:33
But they relax right into it, the session.
Laurel Manning: 30:34
we let our horses out and they're able to run and roll and kind of shake off that physical that they took on for the person that they're working with.
Spot: 30:39
I don't know if that answered kind of your question.
Laurel Manning: 30:41
It was a roundabout way, if you are not ambulatory or you're in a wheelchair, we have ground options, so there's interactions with horses that do not include riding them, and that can be a really satisfying kind of therapy as well.
Barry Scott Young: 31:03
Sure.
Laurel Manning: 31:04
A lot of the exercises both vocally, cognitively, physically that are used for a traumatic brain injury, for stroke, for Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders, and try and incorporate those into our exercises before we even get on a horse, so that we're loosening up and we're complementing some of the things that our clients might be getting from physical therapy or occupational therapy or perhaps their neurologist has recommended. And we do not pretend to be any of those things that's not us, but we want to be a complementary option and, most importantly, we want to be something that offers freedom and independence, brings true joy and satisfaction to a horse that was rescued found their own independence and their purpose and found! a client that it likes to work with, and you saw this happen.
Barry Scott Young: 32:26
What story would that be?
Laurel Manning: 32:28
Wow. There's a lot of different ones that I can think of, but one in particular. We got a horse that came in as a rescue and he actually had not been. He had not been abused and neglected like some of the other horses that we've had, but he's one that his owner was no longer able to physically take care of him. And this horse in particular is very connected to one person. I mean, he's a one person kind of horse and we've used him, thought he'd be really good for therapy. And I'm just going to tell you the beginning of this relationship, because that, to me, is the most poignant part. There's lots to be said of the relationship that's developed since this was our first client.
Laurel Manning: 33:17
She is a person with Parkinson's disease, but she has a grandson with autism on the spectrum, and so she actually had brought him to ride. She actually had brought him to ride, and so we put him on this horse and we're doing what we do and all of a sudden she said I want to ride. Have you ever been on a horse? No, but I want to ride. And she said get me a helmet. Can you get me a helmet?
Laurel Manning: 33:49
And so we did, and I'm the last person to say no to someone safely riding a horse or having an animal interaction. I want to explore every opportunity to make that possible. So we, we got her grandson off the horse and we got a helmet that fit her and we walked her up the ramp. And before we were, honestly, before we were ready to have her mount the horse, she was throwing her leg over and climbing on. And here she is, 72, 17 years, with having Parkinson's disease, never riding a horse, and she gets on the back. We're holding her legs, we're walking her around. Probably five minutes into this interaction she calls out my brain feels free.
Barry Scott Young: 34:34
Oh my.
Laurel Manning: 34:36
And www. park horseproject. org out of somebody's mouth, as just you know, because they're searching for. You know we want to get the dopamine up, we want to. We want to create that freedom, and you know as much as we create opportunities for that to happen. We can't force it, we just can't. We just create an environment where, hopefully, that happens. But that, to me, was exactly what we're here for, and to have that connection. And that horse, to this day I mean that's that favorite client horse to get on and ride. And they connect and I always just think back to that moment of you know and just having that, you know freedom, your brain feels free.
Barry Scott Young: 35:19
Probably the client realized she's not thinking about her disability and her illness. All of a sudden, it's the experience you know and the way she said it.
Speaker 2: 35:35
Yeah.
Barry Scott Young: 35:35
That was incredible. Yeah, the information that you have available on the website, I'm sure, will help begin ability to know what's going on, what you do. What is the website for our listeners?
Laurel Manning: 35:53
It's park P-A-R-K horseprojectorg.
Barry Scott Young: 36:01
Okay, so they can go there. And as you populate it, there'll be different opportunities for the public and for donations, events and all that.
Speaker 2: 36:17
Well.
Barry Scott Young: 36:18
I really want my listeners to hone in on this website and get familiar with Park Horse Project. I appreciate your passion. I love that your aim is to give horses independence, as well as people that need the same, and your ability and desire to do this has already blessed animal and people man. I just want you to hurry and get what you need so you can help more people. So I really trust my listeners will adopt this ranch, maybe desire to give or to visit or to just be a part of the story that's unfolding.
Spot: 37:13
Thank you. Thank you Barry.
Barry Scott Young: 37:15
And I've learned a lot today. What would you like to say here in the closing?
Laurel Manning: 37:21
So for your listeners, I would ask that they do just embrace our story, become a part of our story. Get to know our horses, our people come visit, feel that you are part of our community. It's based on community that we are going to succeed or fail, and we're building a legacy program and we need people to be a part of that. Horses healing humans, healing horses that's really says it all.
Barry Scott Young: 37:50
Man, I could hear it today, not only in just sharing your story, but the story of the ranch that is helping animal and people. Well done.
Speaker 2: 38:05
Now you can help support this podcast with as little as the price of a cup of coffee. Go to wwwki-ficom. Forward, slash my new norm. Thank you in advance for your support and interest in this podcast. Until the next episode, this is the my New Norm podcast. It's all about real people and real stories with your host, barry Scott Young. Thank you so much.
