Principals Pat Stark and Deborah Magnuson just returned from majestic Park City, UT and The Sundance Film Festival! They attended as part of the promotional team for one Marketing Matters' newest clients- The Horse Boy Foundation. The team was there to premier Rupert Isaccson's touching documentary 'Over the Hills and Far Away'. A film chronicling his family's extraordinary journey through Mongolia to try to save their little boy from the grips of autism.
In 2004 Rupert Isaacson’s son Rowan was diagnosed with autism. At first he seemed unreachable. However, whenever his dad took him into the woods behind their house his tantrums and stimming would relax. Contact with nature seemed to calm Rowan’s dysfunctions. So Isaacson talked to his neighbor Stafford, who owned Besty, and got the key to his saddle room. For three years father and son rode every day through the woods and fields of Central Texas and – first through Betsy, then spontaneously, Rowan began to talk, to engage with his environment and other people.Then in 2007 Rowan, his dad, and mother – Kristin Neff, a psychology professor at the University of Texas – took a journey across Mongolia on horseback, going from traditional healer to traditional healer, shaman to shaman, looking for healing. They went out with a child still tantrumming, still un-toilet trained, and cut off from other children. They came back with a child no longer tantrumming, toilet trained and able to make friends.
Upon returning they decided to start the New Trails Center to help make horses and nature available to other children, autistic or not, who might not otherwise have access to them. The Horse Boy Foundation bring special needs (mainly kids on the autism spectrum) children and ‘neuro-typical’ (ie ‘normal’) children together, using the horse as a social nexus. There is no specific program – each child is catered to according to their own needs. They believe strongly that special needs kids, and kids on the autism spectrum, can go way beyond mere equine therapy. The mission is to bring horses and the children that need them together. Pure and simple.
A movie about the story is already in pre-production, and a book is set for release in the U.S. in April! Visit www.horseboyfoundation.org for more information and to view a trailer from the amazing documentary.
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