Anyone who has spent time on the backstretch of a racetrack can attest that it is its own small town. It's not just a work space for many people, but also where they live, albeit temporarily. It can also be a place where people struggle. It's no secret that backstretch work is arduous and dangerous, and that many backstretch workers may deal with food security or access to medical care.
It can also be a place where people triumph over their personal demons.
“There's a lot of addiction, a lot of trauma,” said Sally Mixon, founder of Abijah's. “It's a community, like any other community.”
Mixon has found a way to combine the needs of two worlds – Thoroughbreds retiring from the track with injuries that may preclude ridden work, and the people who cared for them. Mixon founded Abijah's on the Backside at Canterbury Park in 2020, combining her background in Thoroughbred racing with her training as a professional counselor and work as equine trainer at Acres for Life.
The organization's name is a reference to Mixon's first horse, and is also a Hebrew word which translates to “The Lord is my Father.”
Abijah's uses OTTBs to do non-mounted therapy through what's called an equine-experiential mental health model. The technique can be helpful for people who don't fit well with traditional talk therapy and are dealing with addiction, anxiety, or trauma. The client may work with a horse hands-on or simply observe the horse's behavior in a paddock and use the horse and its setting as a metaphor for their own challenges. By using the horse as a storyboard, trained therapists can help the client rewrite the story and take control of their narrative.
Mixon said it makes sense to use Thoroughbreds for this kind of work because they're so sensitive to their surroundings compared to other breeds.
“These Thoroughbreds are so intuitive,” she said. “They pick up on what's going on internally in a client, stuff we cannot see, and they play that out externally. It's crazy. I still am amazed. I feel like my job is just to bear witness to miracles, honestly, because these horses do things that blow my mind. And they're different with every single client.”
Mixon recalled one client who stepped into a paddock with several therapy horses during her session. They all looked at her and laid down.
“She had tears in her eyes and said, 'How do they know?'” said Mixon. “She said, 'I didn't want to get up today. I thought about killing myself.'
“You can't lie with [horses]. They show up in these ways where it's incredible. It would have maybe come out differently in traditional talk therapy, but she could have kept that secret.”
Abijah's also works with first responders and former military members and their families.
“We view the horse as the best story editors,” said Mixon. “They come in at certain times and shake things up. And depending on how they show up for that client, they become a character. A parent, a spouse, self, addiction, trauma, anxiety, whatever. Then they begin to have this relationship with something they hadn't been able to have a relationship with.”
For one police officer, the horse in her therapy sessions represented her post-traumatic stress disorder. The horse would approach her and mouth her clothing, refusing to let go. On her last session, she entered the paddock and didn't see the horse…but PTSD was hiding around the corner of the run-in shed. PTSD came running around the side of the shed and galloped toward the client. The client yelled at the horse, who stopped and laid down quietly at her feet.
“That client experienced being empowered and not being taken over by PTSD,” summarized Mixon.
These metaphorical experiences can often break the cycle of trauma by exposing a person's body to a new set of stimuli. Traumatic experiences are often difficult to let go because the brain goes into hyper-recording mode, making vivid memories of what all the senses are taking in. Mixon explained that work with horses can give the brain a new set of sensory inputs to hang onto, and that can drastically shift the way a person is feeling.
Mixon has first-hand experience with the healing power of horses. She grew up a fan of racing after watching Winning Colors win the Kentucky Derby in 1988, and later became a counselor in part because of her own struggles with anorexia. Traditional talk therapy didn't work for her, but working with horses, combined with a strong sense of faith, did.
“Horses were what saved my life,” she said.
Now, she's able to offer the service with the full support of Canterbury Park and the Minnesota HBPA. The four horses in the Abijah's program are housed in the barn of longtime trainer Bernell Rhone and initially used a paddock that was constructed in the three-and-a-half furlong chute, which was fenced off and is no longer used. The Minnesota HBPA kicked in funding to get the program going, before grant money began helping sustain it. As Canterbury continues to undergo construction, vice president of communications Jeff Maday said the facility will eventually move closer to the receiving barn on the front side, where it can be easily accessed at all times of day.
As Abijah's has trained personnel and counselors on its structure, Mixon says it's now able to offer 45 to 50 sessions per week, or 2,500 sessions per year. And it's designed to be scalable; she envisions a world where multiple racetracks keep space for a program like this one, providing more jobs for OTTBs and allowing backstretch workers to have continuous therapy resources available to them wherever they go.
Maday said he also can see the program expanding to other tracks. Finding space is the biggest difficulty from the racetrack's perspective, but the Canterbury program has only required a small paddock and a round pen in addition to the stalls with Rhone.
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If you appreciate our work, you can support us by subscribing to our Patreon stream. Learn more.“I think the buy-in from the horsemen's organization and the owners made a real difference,” he said. “It's a good chance to talk about retired racehorses, which is a topic that's very prominent right now.
“The horsemen need to believe in it too and help spread the word.”
Mixon also uses the resources at Abijah's to prepare retiring racehorses to join other therapy programs. While there are a number of Thoroughbred-centric therapy programs in the United States, Mixon believes the breed can be a valuable resource to a lot more who just aren't familiar with the racing industry. She invites personnel from other therapy groups to observe training at Canterbury and get a crash course on the needs and talents of Thoroughbreds, or can also travel to them to help them connect with their local racetrack. In this way, the Abijah's impact has already gone beyond the number of horses in its program.
As for Mixon, she admits the pressures of mental health work can be challenging, and require her to practice good self-care. For her, that means getting up before sunrise to gallop horses for trainers at Canterbury. Not only does it provide her a needed outlet, it has helped her make key alliances to launch the program.
“I started proving who I am and getting trust with the backside workers, and that opened up doors to them wanting and needing support, and that's kind of how it started,” she said. “I had to be back here and do it, and be one of them.”
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