It seems that the world really needs a huge hug these days. After the Gentle Carousel Miniature Therapy Horses Charity page posted a photo of a beautiful black little girl with a therapy horse, they couldn’t believe their eyes when the next day, they received tons of backlash from mean spirited people who commented on the photo.
The picture, which shows a young toddler wearing a mask next to therapy horse Sparkle, was captioned “How do we change the world? One random act of kindness at a time.” But netizens would be shocked to find out that the therapy page’s management actually had to remove comments from racist netizens. They shut the abhorrent comments down by writing a post about how verbally attacking a helpless toddler because of the color of her skin is just wrong.
They wrote in their statement, “It is time for a heart to heart talk. Yesterday we posted a photo of a beautiful child in hospital care with our therapy horse Sparke. While many of you shared the photo and made wonderful comments, we had to delete more unkind comments directed at this child than we had ever had to deal with in over a decade on Facebook.”
The post then went on to say, “Some of the comments were because of the skin color of the toddler in the photo. Those people were banned and will never be welcomed on our page again. When our horses make a hospital visit they do not care about a patient’s race, politics, finances, or religion. They love unconditionally. Some humans could learn a lot from little horses.”
To make matter worse, some people had even made comments about the fact that she was wearing a mask, which some claimed showed her political views. And for Gentle Carousel team to actually have to defend her by explaining that “the face mask given to her by medical professionals,” as well as how “seeing an adult or child wearing a mask does not mean they are making a liberal or conservative, left or right, Republican or Democrat statement,” is just completely ridiculous.
Thankfully, not everyone was mean spirited. In fact, a number of Facebook users cheered the training center crew on by saying that they made the right decision to delete “the haters and whiners” from the page.
One netizen wrote, “How could anyone have anything negative to say about this? Beautiful little girl and beautiful mini.” While another said that it was “a beautiful picture of two beautiful babies.” And after seeing the photo, there’s really no way why anyone should disagree.
In an interview conducted by Bored Panda with Gentle Carousel’s Education Director Debbie Garcia-Bengochea explained that they had never had anyone say such nasty things before. She shared, “The therapy horses are loved by children and adults, and our social media has always been a positive and safe place for people of all ages.”
She also shared that Sparkle was a 14-year old horse that had been trained with the therapy group since he was just a foal. Ms Bengochea said, “He works with Gentle Carousel’s literacy program inside schools, libraries, with mentoring programs, at literacy events and at education resource centers in high crime neighborhoods. The program has a special focus on at-risk readers. Sparkle also works inside hospitals, hospice programs, and assisted living programs.”
She went on to share, “The therapy horses work no more than two days a week and live with a lifelong herd where they can run and play over many acres. They live a very natural life. Sparkle has a best friend named Circus that he has lived with since they were both foals. They do many reading programs for children together.”
The Facebook post went on to receive over 13 thousand reactions, 1.8 thousand comments, and at least 2 thousand shares. And this number continues to grow as people see the photo of the adorable toddler and the gentle therapy horse, Sparkle.
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