[title subtitle=”words Dwain Hebda
Images: courtesy Manes & Miracles”][/title]
Cliff Cabaness’ father is a three-tour Vietnam veteran, twice decorated with the Bronze Star for valor and once with a Purple Heart for being wounded in action. Cliff, himself a vet, saw the toll such service has taken on his dad, in the way of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And, he’s also aware of the shocking statistic of suicide among veterans, very often directly related to these issues.
So, when a new Fort Smith nonprofit reached out to ask for his support of a new state-of-the-art therapy center featuring hippotherapy for special needs children and vets, the Fort Smith businessman jumped at the chance. That is, once he got one detail cleared up.
“At the time, [hippotherapy] is something I had absolutely no awareness of,” he said.
The good folks at Manes & Miracles at Chaffee Crossing were more than capable of educating Cliff on the benefits of hippotherapy which utilizes horses to improve physical and emotional health. He signed on to donate 30 acres of ground to the project, a slice of a three-hundred-acre buy at Chaffee Crossing.
“When I learned what [the organization] did for veterans and special needs children, my wife and I said immediately we’ve got to figure out a way to get them out here,” Cliff said. He also signed on as president of the organization’s board of directors, thereby spearheading efforts to raise millions for getting the structure out of the ground.
“Between the veteran cause, which is near and dear to my heart with both my father and I being servicemen, and the work that they’re doing with special needs children, this is something I just wanted to be involved with,” Cliff said. “Having an opportunity to acquire a large part of Chaffee Crossing and then donate ten percent of that land back to a nonprofit just made sense to give back to the community.”
Hippotherapy is an effective treatment for people with special needs as well as those suffering from certain mental conditions including PTSD. The benefit of the therapy is multi-faceted: A horse’s gait imparts a movement response similar to normal human gait, providing an immediate impact on balance and coordination as well as timing, reaching, grading of postural responses and physiological function.
The therapy also improves communication skills in people with speech, language, social and cognitive-communication and swallowing difficulties by coordinating the brain and sensory system. Last but not least, hippotherapy impacts emotional connectivity in people who struggle with such relationships in other aspects of their lives.
While hippotherapy doesn’t replace or substitute for other types of therapy, when combined with other treatment, it can yield remarkable results quickly, Cliff said. “It is just another tool in the toolbox that sometimes allows for a breakthrough,” Cliff said. “We have had kids that have not been able to eat solid food go through hippotherapy and in six months they’re eating solid food. We’ve had autistic children who’ve showed no emotion to their parents that have hugged the horses and began to tell their parents that they loved them. We’ve had children that are not speaking and within one or two sessions began speaking to their family. So, these are life changing events. They are legacy-changing events in families.”
Locally, the need for hippotherapy services is particularly pressing: The U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 2012-2016 reported the prevalence of disability in Arkansas for non-institutionalized persons at nearly seventeen percent, but more than eighteen percent in Sebastian County. And, thanks to Fort Chaffee, there’s a high military and veteran population in the area as well.
Despite these demographics, those wishing to avail themselves of hippotherapy are hard-pressed to find a suitable program. “We heard that there were so many people from here – both special needs children as well as, and just as important, disabled veterans and veterans – that were driving or having to be bused north of the Arkansas state line into Missouri,” Cliff said. “We knew that there was great need here and just felt like we could bridge that gap.”
The Manes and Miracles facility would not only provide hippotherapy locally, but also other types of therapy on premises. Among other unique attributes, it will house the only Hooves for Heroes program in the state, a program that specifically targets veterans.
From 2006 to 2010 2.1 million veterans received mental health treatment from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Studies show that only represents about half of the vets who needed help. Putting the scope of the issue another way, twenty percent of vets just from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from major depression or post-traumatic stress disorder and twenty percent of vets in these two mental health categories have experienced a traumatic brain injury, reported the RAND Center for Military Health Policy Research. Most sobering of all, 6,000 veterans took their own life in the U.S. annually between 2008 and 2016, according to Veterans Affairs statistics.
“We know about the rate of suicide among veterans and we know about PTSD challenges,” Cliff said. “My father deals with that through the Veterans Association. He has challenges being a three-time Vietnam tour veteran with two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart. Those issues are really close and have impacted my family. We just understood what a special need it is.”
Manes & Miracles at Chaffee Crossing became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit last April and secured Cliff’s donated ground late last year. At the same time, the organization launched a $3.5 million capital campaign to build its state-of-the-art facility, the first phase of which will spend about $1.5 million on a covered arena to shield clients from the elements while participating in their treatment.
When finished, the total project will encompass a twenty thousand- square-foot covered arena, seven-thousand-squarefoot barn and a six-thousand five hundred-square-foot therapy facility that will include an aquatic therapy pool, therapy rooms and offices.
“The interesting piece to this is within one mile [of the proposed Hearts & Hooves site] they are building a physical therapy center, an occupational therapy center and a speech therapy center beside the osteopathic medical school here,” Cliff said. “Those people will be able to work within equine therapy for clinical hours. So, the proximity of this land and being where these schools will be built really was a nice fit.”
Fundraising for the project is in full swing and has included a 5K/10K road race in April and partnering with the Arkansas Naturals baseball team’s Veterans Appreciation night this June.
In addition to special events, private donations are starting to come in as the community becomes more educated on the need for this type of facility. “It is definitely a learning curve and we have found it to be pretty consistent that people are learning the dynamics of hippotherapy,” Cliff said. “But the outreach and the in-reach of volunteerism and people participating have given us multiple people who have already earmarked us to be their nonprofit of the year or nonprofit for an event.
“We are also looking for naming rights; we are looking for a family, a foundation, a sponsorship to name this barn raising, this covered arena and therapy space. We want some philanthropist to come forward and say I’m ready to put a stake in the ground and help raise this facility.”
For more information and to learn how you can get involved, call 479.847.5535 or visit manesandmiracles.org.
