Alicia Esteve Head knew she had found a lifelong love when her mother first took her for riding at the early age of three. During her early years in multiple countries since, Alicia and her horses have enjoyed all life has to offer, including the sunshine, the change of seasons from winters to fall to spring to summer, the mountains, ocean, and desert. This proved to be a great breeding and training ground which enabled Alicia to concentrate and prepare her horses for many competitions. Since moving to England and the US, Alicia has bred, raised and trained many horses that have gone on to compete and achieve multiple awards. Through her love for horses, Alicia also contributes to many causes such as lending her horses to equine assisted therapy programs for children with special needs. As well as for various events that help raise money for cancer research. Alicia has seen firsthand how loved ones battled cancer, so this is very important to her. It brings people together and it helps support great causes, all the while helping to create awareness in the greater community.
While her professional career takes most of her time, Alicia always finds time to ride on the weekends and occasionally escapes the City to ride on week days as well. Her love for horses and horse riding is her passion in life and hopes to someday trade in her stilettos and laptop for a full time horse ranch where she can provide a habitat for rescued horses.
Alicia Esteve is an avid rider who always finds to the time to help horses in need. She has been known to hook up a trailer to her car on a Friday night and travel the distance to save horses that are abandoned, abused, neglected, unwanted or about to get auctioned to slaughter houses. Until her own ranch becomes a reality, she works with a number of non-profit volunteer organizations to find homes for these horses. She finds it an incredible rewarding experience.
Alicia enjoys working with these horses to rehabilitate them so they can find permanent homes. She finds the rehabilitation process a very emotional endeavor. Many require one-on-one attention until the horse can learn that human touch can be a positive experience.
While Alicia regularly pursues other interests in her life, there are few things she can ever imagine doing with her life, and there never was.
ALICIA ESTEVE HEAD: HOW A DAMAGED HORSE CAN HEAL A DAMAGED PERSON
Rehabilitating a horse takes time, money and a lot of work. But when the horse begins to trust human touch again, the results are incredibly rewarding.
A few years ago I met a therapist who had attended an equine assisted therapy program in a spa in Arizona and had witnessed firsthand how profound the interaction between a horse and a person could be. When she came home, she started thinking about how she could incorporate this experience into her practice. The first order of business was to find a horse that had the right temperament and was trained enough to be able to sustain regular contact with her anxious clients.
She got my number through a common friend and we set out to have coffee so I could listen to her proposal. She was so passionate about it that she immediately caught my attention. And I immediately knew which of my horses would be the perfect candidate.
When I first crossed paths with him, he was about to get auctioned for meat. He had had a brief racing career, but his owners had given up on him before he could shine. His rider abused him, starved him, beat him, and inflicted cruelty in many unimaginable ways. I found him through a website and drove thousands of miles to save him. I paid just a few hundred dollars for him, after all horse meat is not that expensive.
When I first saw him he looked depleted. He has in a holding pen with some 20 other horses. I could tell he hadnt had any water or food in days. He was terrified as if he knew what was happening. I had to bid for him and out bid the kill buyers. These buyers buy the horses per pound for their meat.
Once he was mine, I loaded him as quickly as I could into the trailer (with a lot of help) and left that horrible place behind. As I drove way, I shed tears for the horses left behind. Stallions, mares, some heavily pregnant, young horses, old horses, all destined to become meat for human consumption.
It took nearly a year for him to trust me and let me ride him. When I rescued him I had just came back from a trip to Hawaii, so I decided to name him Ku`u Lei, which means my beloved.
KL (for short) is now an old and happy horse. I no longer ride him and he spends his days catching the sun and enjoying the pastures. And a couple of times a week, he helps heal people. The helps people change and learn to feel again, just as he was once transformed and learned to trust humans again.