DRIPPING SPRINGS (KXAN) — Thursday marks the birthday of the children’s book icon Dr. Seuss. To celebrate, one Texas non profit is celebrating by having children read his books to horses.
RED Arena is an organization based in Dripping Springs that aims to empower children with disabilities through working with horses. To celebrate what would have been Dr. Seuss’ 116th birthday, participants spent time reading the late author’s works to the horses and sang him a birthday song.
Red Arena was founded in 2008 with six children and one horse, it has since grown to serve around 150 kids a week in Dripping Springs. In 2018 a second location in San Marcos was donated to the organization.
As Red Arena grew, founder and executive director Jennifer Young worked to find new ways the horses could be used to help empower children with disabilities. A program was introduced to help kids build confidence and get excited about reading.
“We have had amazing success with this. I really didn’t realize how impactful it would be, not only for our participants in this program, which kids and adults can do but just kids in the community who are struggling a little bit at school,” said Young. “We’ve just seen some amazing success stories with how excited they’ve been. So they’ll come and read to the horse then they want to go home and read to their parents where maybe they struggled with that before, but they’ll read the same book then tell their parents about how the horse liked it.”
The reading program has since expanded to Red Arena’s sibling support program, where the brothers and sisters of participants get to spend some time reading to the horses themselves.
“Our horses are really special and they really know who their kids are and they kind of treat them differently, they are a little sweeter to them,” said Young. “I don’t know what it is just about the energy it just helps calm you to be near them and it’s very peaceful.”
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