By Jay Privman
The Thoroughbred, Joell Dunlap fervently maintains, wants to please. People in the autism community, she equally believes, are looking for ways to connect. The place where both needs are met, for the horses and people, is Square Peg, the Northern California-based charity she has run for more than 20 years.
Square Peg, which receives financial support from CARMA and is accredited by Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, has therapeutic riding programs with horses capable of being ridden, and also has programs where horses who can’t be ridden are matched with people who connect with them. It’s win-win.
“Alleviating social isolation is critical for a person’s well-being, and for a horse’s well-being,” Dunlap said. “We are primarily about engaging, having social connections. And no matter the need, we have the horse for you.”
Dunlap, who worked on the racetrack as an exercise rider and assistant trainer after first encountering horses in the hunter-jumper world, came to this endeavor after viewing the needs of a son who is, she said, a “kinetic learner.”
“School was easy for me, but not for him, because of the way his brain processed things,” she said. “He taught me about learning. He had to tear it apart, feel it.”
She founded Square Peg in 2004 based on the theory of, she said enthusiastically, “it will have horses, and there will be healing, and it’ll be great!”
The initial start-up focused on therapeutic riding, and that program continues to this day. But over the past 21 years, Square Peg has widened its scope to include job-training skills. All are for the autism community.
“Some have very light needs, and we have some people who barely speak. Both are considered autism,” she said. “The job-training program has become the most successful, and the most fulfilling. As an adult, you want to be useful, feel important, be paid and have connections. It develops people who never believed they’d have jobs.”
The horses are the entry point, but not the end point. “We have one person who grows plants in our herb garden, another does our feed, another does our billing,” Dunlap said. “We tailor to individual interests, and try to develop those interests, showing them they have value.”
Square Peg has two facilities. The original site is in Montara, about 15 minutes north of Half Moon Bay. A second facility opened seven years ago in Sonoma.
Among the former racehorses in programs at Square Peg are Maven, an 8-year-old gelding who won 6 of 23 starts, including a Group 3 stake in France, and nearly $300,000; Microrithms, an 11-year-old gelding who won five times in eight starts on the Southern California circuit and earned more than $180,000; and Clever Royal, a 14-year-old gelding who won 7 of 39 starts and nearly $290,000 and was re-homed through Square Peg and is beginning a hunter-jumper career.
“I will bang on and on about the suitability of the Thoroughbred,” Dunlap said. “The animal walks around and basically says, ‘Hi, how are you?’ The reaction from the people with them is, ‘He likes me!’ These horses want to please.”
Since it receives support from CARMA, Square Peg will be one of the many beneficiaries of the annual CARMAthon fundraiser, to be held Saturday, Aug. 16. It will be hosted out of Del Mar racetrack that day, and broadcast by FanDuel TV.
For more information on Square Peg, visit squarepegfoundation.org
For more information on CARMA or to donate, visit carma4horses.org. Donations to CARMA are tax deductible (Tax ID #80-0146395).