Healing with horses HOW ANNA'S CHANGING LIVES

Her love for animals is making a real difference to struggling kids

- HOW ANNA'S CHANGING LIVES

Ona peaceful Miranda property, retired racehorses have a new lease of life where they're not just horses, but also healers at the equine rehabilitation and therapy centre AnnaRehab. At the heart of it all are Anna Baigent and her mum Maria, who together turned the trauma of a serious brain injury into a safe haven for horses and humans.

It all started in 2014 when Anna, a vet tech working in the racing industry, was unexpectedly injured at work.

“People assume I must have been kicked or fallen off,” explains Anna, 32, still in disbelief. “But I was standing in the safe zone, clipping a horse up. She had itchy ears, and shook her head from side to side and conked me in the occipital arch behind my eye, and broke it.

“I have a head injury because a horse had an itchy ear! It was such a small thing but sometimes really big injuries come from small things.”

Later that night, Anna drove herself to an after-hours medical clinic and quickly learned how serious it was.

“I had a bleed in the back of my brain that had been bleeding slowly for 12 hours with the pressure on my brain building up.”

After multiple scans, X-rays and a lumbar puncture, it stabilised.

But life was dramatically different as Anna struggled with unpredictable mood swings, memory loss, seizures and migraines.

“I was really angry in the first years after my head injury,” she admits.