The Religious sister who has dedicated her life to working with the healing potential of horses
Sister Mary Joy with the Princess Royal at Wormwood Scrubs Pony Centre last year
Alamy/PA, James Manning
Peter Stanford meets a woman Religious whose life has brought together a call to help poor and marginalised children with her love of horses
Horses, she knows from experience, can also get children walking who haven’t been able to do so before. “I’ve had children come to me over the years with, for example, cerebral palsy. The great thing about riding is that it stimulates so much. When a child who can’t walk is on a pony, the motion of the pony walking is the same motion as if they were walking. Their two bum bones would be doing the same motion. So, it stimulates, it triggers nerves to stimulate other nerves and then one day the children are running around.”
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