Alicia Esteve Head: How A Damaged Horse Can Heal A Damaged Person

By Author: aliciaesteve
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Rehabilitating a horse takes time, money and a lot of work. But when the horse begins to trust human touch again, the results are incredibly rewarding.

A few years ago I met a therapist who had attended an equine assisted therapy program in a spa in Arizona and had witnessed firsthand how profound the interaction between a horse and a person could be. When she came home, she started thinking about how she could incorporate this experience into her practice. The first order of business was to find a horse that had the right temperament and was trained enough to be able to sustain regular contact with her anxious clients.

She got my number through a common friend and we set out to have coffee so I could listen to her proposal. She was so passionate about it that she immediately caught my attention. And I immediately knew which of my horses would be the perfect candidate.

When I first crossed paths with him, he was about to get auctioned for meat. He had had a brief racing career, but his owners had given up on him before he could shine. His rider abused him, starved him, beat him, and inflicted cruelty in ...
... many unimaginable ways. I found him through a website and drove thousands of miles to save him. I paid just a few hundred dollars for him, after all horse meat is not that expensive.

When I first saw him he looked depleted. He has in a holding pen with some 20 other horses. I could tell he hadn’t had any water or food in days. He was terrified as if he knew what was happening. I had to bid for him and out bid the kill buyers. These buyers buy the horses per pound for their meat.

Once he was mine, I loaded him as quickly as I could into the trailer (with a lot of help) and left that horrible place behind. As I drove way, I shed tears for the horses left behind. Stallions, mares, some heavily pregnant, young horses, old horses, all destined to become meat for human consumption.

It took nearly a year for him to trust me and let me ride him. When I rescued him I had just came back from a trip to Hawaii, so I decided to name him Ku`u Lei, which means my beloved.

KL (for short) is now an old and happy horse. I no longer ride him and he spends his days catching the sun and enjoying the pastures. And a couple of times a week, he helps heal people. The helps people change and learn to feel again, just as he was once transformed and learned to trust humans again.

Alicia Esteve Head loves flowers. She encourages everyone to plant trees and create awareness to people to save the environment. Alicia Esteve runs a personal green house in her garden and takes very special care of it. There are many varieties of flowering plants and vegetable plants in her garden.