A horse therapy program in Namibia brings joy to children with learning disabilities

WINDHOEK, Namibia (AP) — Susan de Meyer's horses have different effects on different children. Hyperactive kids learn to be a little quieter around them while nonverbal children are moved to communicate and to bond with them.

De Meyer runs a program in the southern African country of Namibia that harnesses the power but also the gentleness of horses to help children with learning disabilities and conditions like ADHD and autism.

Each weekday morning, de Meyer's dusty paddock just outside the capital, Windhoek, is enlivened by a group of eight to 10 children from one of the special schools she helps. The children ride the horses, groom them, stroke them and often, de Meyer says, talk to them.

De Meyer grew up on a farm surrounded by horses and they've always been part of her life. She said they have a quality that is invaluable: They don't judge the children, no matter how different they are.

“The horse is the hero in this whole situation because these kids don’t want to be around a lot of people," de Meyer said.

De Meyer's program, "Enabling Through the Horse," is supported by the Namibian Equestrian Federation and won an award last year from the International Equestrian Federation because it “underlines the wonderful characteristics of the horse in exuding sensitivity and intuition.”

Horse therapy has been promoted by autism groups and those that work with children with learning disabilities as having a positive impact. And animal therapy in general has been found to be useful in many instances, like dogs that help military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and therapy cats that are taken to hospitals and nursing homes.

Some survivors of the devastating 2023 Hawaii wildfires found relief in horse therapy while grieving loved ones they had lost.

De Meyer jokes she has “two-and-a-half horses.” These include two Arabians — a white mare named Faranah and a brown gelding, Lansha — while the “half” is a miniature horse called Bonzi, who is about head-high for a 5-year-old.

The Arabians are often the most useful for the children's therapy because of their size, de Meyer said.

“It gives them self-esteem. When they stroke the horse, the therapy starts because this is a very big animal compared to their height, and they are not scared to stroke the horse ... and then to ride it and tell the horse what they want,” she said.

De Meyer works with children with a range of conditions or disabilities, including autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Down syndrome, those who are nonverbal or touch sensitive, and some who were born with fetal alcohol syndrome and have developmental problems.

She has received interest from other countries in Africa and Asia to start similar programs there.

“The changes that I’ve seen with the learners are significant,” said Chriszell Louw, a teacher at Dagbreek School, which says it is one of just two government schools in Namibia for children with intellectual disabilities. “We have a learner that likes to talk a lot. When we come here, she knows she has to keep quiet. She sits in her place.”

"Some of them you see they are more open, they are happy. Some of them were very scared when they started with the horse riding but now they are very excited. When they hear we’re going to the horses they are very excited and just want to go by themselves,” Louw said.

De Meyer said her program helps with fine-motor skills, gross-motor skills, muscle strengthening, coordination, balance and posture, all important for kids who struggle to sit at a desk at school and learn.

One simple exercise de Meyer has children do when they ride is to let go of the reins and stretch their arms out straight and to the sides, using only their torso and lower body to balance as a groom leads the horse around the paddock.

Some of the kids break out in smiles when they let go and look like they're soaring.

"We make the world different for these kids," de Meyer said.

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Merci who participates in the "Enabling Through the Horse," therapy program outside Windhoek, Namibia, pets a horse on Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

Immanuel Hoxobeb assists children participating in the "Enabling Through the Horse," therapy program outside Windhoek, Namibia, on Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

Susan de Meyer assists children participating in the "Enabling Through the Horse," therapy program outside Windhoek, Namibia, on Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

Susan de Meyer, right, and Immanuel Hoxobeb assist children participating in the "Enabling Through the Horse," therapy program outside Windhoek, Namibia, on Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

Immanuel Hoxobeb assists Alicia who participates in the "Enabling Through the Horse," therapy program outside Windhoek, Namibia, on Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Israel’s air force struck near Syria's presidential palace early Friday hours after warning Syrian authorities not to march toward villages inhabited by members of a minority sect in southern Syria.

The strike came after days of clashes between pro-Syrian government gunmen and fighters who belong to the Druze minority sect near the capital, Damascus. The clashes left dozens of people dead or wounded.

Friday's strike was Israel's second on Syria this week, and attacking an area close to the presidential palace appears to send a strong warning to Syria's new leadership that is mostly made up of Islamist groups led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

On Thursday, Syria's Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri harshly criticized Syria’s government for what he called an “unjustified genocidal attack” on the minority community.

The Israeli army said that fighter jets struck adjacent to the area of the Palace of President Hussein al-Sharaa in Damascus. Its statement gave no further details.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said the strike was a message to Syrian leaders. “This is a clear message to the Syrian regime. We will not allow a withdrawal of forces from south of Damascus and any danger to the Druze community,” their joint statement said.

Pro-government Syrian media outlets said the strike hit close to the People’s Palace on a hill overlooking the city.

The clashes broke out around midnight Monday after an audio clip circulated on social media of a man criticizing Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. The audio was attributed to a Druze cleric. But cleric Marwan Kiwan said in a video posted on social media that he was not responsible for the audio, which angered many Sunni Muslims.

Syria’s Information Ministry said 11 members of the country’s security forces were killed in two separate attacks, while Britain-based war monitor The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 56 people in Sahnaya and the Druze-majority Damascus suburb of Jaramana were killed in clashes, among them local gunmen and security forces.

The Druze religious sect is a minority group that began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria, largely in the southern Sweida province and some suburbs of Damascus.

Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.

Syria's security forces are deployed at a highway where they found bodies of Syrian Druze fighters who were in a convoy heading from the southern Sweida province towards the capital, at al-Sor al-Kobra village near the Sweida town, southern Syria, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)