STAR Quality
Special people helped through therapeutic riding
by Steve Jones
Sarah was a 6-year-old girl with shoulder-length blond hair, a face as cute as a button, and Down
syndrome.
It was five years ago when, one day at school, she seemed preoccupied and almost ready to burst
with excitement. Smiling and fidgeting in her seat, she looked as if she had something important
to share. Finally, her teacher came over to see what was up.
“I ride Shannon!” Sarah blurted out suddenly.
With that simple sentence, all eyes in the class fell on her. They were the first words Sarah had
ever spoken in her life.
***
Shannon is a 9-year-old black and white pinto mare, and one of 10 horses at the Shangri-la
Therapeutic Academy of Riding, an organization in Concord, Tenn., dedicated to helping and
challenging disabled individuals through the use of horses.
Lynn Klimas Petr, 36, is the executive director and head instructor of STAR, and can relate story
after story of some of the many student riders who have participated in the program she created
almost six years ago. But when she speaks of someone like Sarah, it’s hard to miss the sense of
excitement in her own voice.
STAR seeks to help its students in a variety of physical and intellectual capacities. Through
interaction between the rider, horse, instructors and volunteers, the staff can usually chart
significant improvements in its students’ physical and cognitive skills, emotional stability and social
interaction.
Sometimes, however, the STAR staff can’t help but notice that, for a few students, weekly horse
rides seem to be little more than recreation. Then, just when the staff might be feeling
discouraged, a parent will call to say that their son or daughter did something they had never done
before, or said something completely unexpected.
When that something comes from a “non-verbal” child from whom little, if any, progress had been
seen or anticipated, it’s an even bigger thrill, says Petr.
“You never really know what will happen. Some things move very slowly.”
***
Horses have always been a part of Lynn Petr’s life. She has lived in East Tennessee since she was
10. As a camp counselor, she taught riding and dreamed of finding other ways of combining horses
and teaching. After graduating from the University of Tennessee with a degree in special education
in 1979, she went to work to make it happen.
Her plan was to use horses as part of a therapy for the handicapped, but when she began to talk
to others about it, Petr found the going a little rough at first.
“People just weren’t receptive to my ideas,” she says. Eventually, however, she was able to
convince the director of special education at Anderson County Schools to give her method a try.
She spent time teaching and performing her therapy at the Daniel Arthur Special School in Oak
Ridge. But when that school’s students were mainstreamed, she decided to return to college for
graduate study.
By the time Petr received her master’s degree in therapeutic recreation from U.T. in 1987, she
knew what she wanted to do with it — and her life. Her thesis project was to start a therapeutic
riding program in East Tennessee, so she was able to hit the ground running immediately following
graduation.
STAR was incorporated soon thereafter.
***
“There are not a lot of recreational avenues open to the disabled population,” says Petr, whose
own such program started out small. STAR began at her Hardin Valley home, where she had to
carry wheelchair patients on her back to the horses in the field.
STAR eventually opened a place of its own on Northshore Drive, before moving to its current
location off of Old Stage Road in Concord.
As word of this type of therapy spread among area doctors and parents, the number of referrals to
the program grew. STAR now serves about 50 clients per week, student riders with a variety of
conditions, including attention deficit disorder, cerebral palsy, spina bifida, mental retardation and
autism.
“About half are physically disabled and half are cognitively impaired,” says Petr, who tailors
therapy programs specifically designed for each individual according to their needs and abilities.
Although each rider takes a different path through STAR, the overall approach to every participant
remains essentially the same: Petr does not believe in babying her students.
One of the secrets to the success of the STAR program, according to Petr, is the way in which she
and her staff push their student riders to a point many have not been. “I don’t want this to be a
pony ride. A lot of times they have been pampered and never gotten the chance to be a caregiver.
They get that here.”
Indeed, riding is but one part of STAR therapy. If a student is deemed capable, they also learn
grooming techniques and are required to brush and groom their horse prior to each ride.
“That’s therapy, too,” says Petr, “occupational therapy … and the parents rally enjoy the fact that
their children work with the horses (before riding them).”
One parent, Peggy Neal of Farragut, has been bringing her 4-year-old daughter DiDi to STAR for
about a year. DiDi has cerebral palsy-like tendencies, and her mother says she sees advantages of
working with a horse as compared to traditional therapy.
“The games that Lynn does (during he rides) accomplish some of the same things that happen in
regular therapy,” says Neal, “but this is a completely positive experience, whereas with DiDi’s
regular therapy, it’s more like work.”
There are other, less tangible, benefits as well, according to Neal. “Her siblings are involved in
sports and other activities, but this is something that (only) DiDi does … so she gains more self-
esteem in getting to do something that the others don’t.”
According to Petr, progress in these areas can be as important as any physical improvements.
“The independence and self-esteem that (our riders) attain cannot be emphasized enough.”
***
It is a warm Tuesday afternoon at the STAR stables. Petr has just finished a round of classes and
walks over to greet her 2-year-old daughter, Leah, and husband, Larry, who has come by to mow
the grass after his day job as an accountant.
This is one of the few days that Petr gives riding lessons anymore, not because she is seven
months pregnant, but primarily because she now finds herself devoting more and more of her time
to administrative and fund-raising activities. STAR currently has a waiting list, and as its director,
she must keep everything afloat.
With an annual budget of about $40,000, the program’s largest source of funds is individual
donations, and its only paid employees are Petr fellow instructor Jan McElroy. They rely heavily on
a small army of volunteers, several of whom began at STAR with little or no knowledge of horses,
just a willingness to help and learn.
There is another group, however, that is equally important to STAR’s success, and Petr takes extra
good care of them. They have names like Bucky, Sugar, Poco, Albee and, of course, Shannon.
They are, as one volunteers says, “the stars of STAR.”
“Our horses are good teachers themselves,” says Petr. Using them as therapy “is a direct
reinforcer, because if you tell a horse to turn, and then it turns … well, it can have an impact on
these kids like nothing else.”
STAR’s four-legged teachers go through a “stringent evaluation and training program,” says Petr.
“We don’t take just any horse.” Like STAR students and staff, “these are very special souls.”