In January of 2020, my son Vincent was mostly non-verbal, except for saying the word 'on' when he wanted us to turn on a toy. We enrolled him in his first season at TEAD, they had a program to engage kids like Vincent with horses, in order to facilitate speech and language learning by teaching them horse commands, such as 'Walk On'.
On the last prompt, of his last session of his first season with TEAD - immediately prior to the COVID shutdown, something exciting happened: Vincent whispered 'Walk-On', to the excitement of the TEAD staff, and my wife who was present.
The TEAD program can produce miracles where other programs don't. As parents of a son who didn't speak, I can't express the joy that we felt after months of just waiting for him to say something - anything.
Unfortunately, the COVID shutdown closed TEAD's doors, which made it difficult for them to continue operating.
In August of 2022 we held the first Horse Power event and were completely stunned at the turnout. We were hoping for at least 50 cars, which turned into about 400, raising thousands of dollars for TEAD in the process.
We hope to get near that total again this year!