**Thank you for all of your support so far**

I have agreed to run 100km in one month (November 2025). I’ll be doing this around work and family commitments so it will involve a lot of early/late running just as the weather has decided it’s winter! Candles and hot baths will have to wait…for now.

I will be running to support ARC Hippotherapy, a group our daughter attends, and which is, in short, a charity that provides specialist physiotherapy on horseback.

Why?

Our daughter, now four, was diagnosed with autism and some global developmental delay early in 2024. Up to then we could see her speech and movement had been delayed but as an outgoing, loud and fun toddler the diagnosis came as shock for us as family.

Until her diagnosis, we had very little understanding of how her diagnosis would affect her strength, physicality and coordination. Autism can affect movement and muscle tone and has thrown up some difficulties for her with gross motor skills, like balance and coordination, and fine motor skills, such as handwriting and object manipulation. This can impact motor development from infancy through to adulthood.

At this point it was incredibly difficult for us to know where to turn or how to best help her. Enter local charity ARC Hippotherapy – a group associated with Riding for the Disabled - who we became aware of by chance late last year, and who offered her a place at the weekly hippotherapy classes held at Aberdeen Riding Club early in 2025.

Due to her condition, regular riding lessons are not possible for her at the moment, ARC Hippotherapy provides a huge opportunity for her to participate in the equine world and provide support and encouragement every step of the way. We now have a child who has a hobby she loves, with animals and people she adores, which, on top of all of this, helps her build her muscle tone, motor skills and focus in a way we thought might never be possible.

What is Hippotherapy?

Hippotherapy is a form of physiotherapy treatment which works with a horse’s movement to build strength and particular skills of the participant. The goal is not to teach horse-riding skills, but rather to work with the horse as a dynamic base of support, which enables the participant to learn to control and co-ordinate their responses. The physios apply neuro-developmental and sensory integration techniques to help develop balance and postural reactions.

Essentially, our daughter is asked to complete certain tasks (e.g. hand the hoop on the hook) while riding her horse, often while singing at the same time (which is another skill of all the physios!).

ARC Hippotherapy

Our (wonderful) ARC Hippotherapy group is run entirely by volunteers which includes qualified physiotherapists, administrators, horse enthusiasts, trustees and horses! Participants do pay a small fee for each 30 minute session but this goes nowhere near covering the costs of:

• riding school hire;

• use of exceptional horses;

• a huge amount of specialist equipment, for example participants need specialist saddles which cost upwards of £400, and different tack is needed according to individual needs;

• training and administrative costs including insurance for all volunteers.

Like many charities, costs are escalating and I would love to give back to a group that has given us so much over the last six months or so, and we want other families to benefit as we have.

Note that the firm I work for does provide match-funding for fundraising activities, so the more we raise on this page, the more it will match!