Photos by Jim Coarse of Moonloop Photography and Blake Griffith of Slate Portraits

Tell me, how much hurt can a heart take?
Tell me, how much wind ‘til the walls cave?
You can just stay right there in the pain
Or listen to the voice that you hear when you pray
Tell me, how much hurt can a heart take before it breaks?

From the song “Rain the Rearview,” as performed by Anne Wilson

To listen to 28-year-old Krystal Greco describe the traumatic story that happened when she was 14 years old is almost like listening to a storyteller weave the parables and plotlines of someone else’s life.

While her manual wheelchair is not far from the conversation, it is hidden beneath the coffee shop table where she sits, a necessary machine but one that does not dominate but rather acquiesce to the veritable strength and temerity of the young woman it holds.

The machine already knows Krystal’s story full well. It has carried her through the darkest times and through the countless therapy sessions and stood by her bed at night when the young girl prayed for her recovery. It has guided her through the miraculous work of a new kind of therapy that got her back to the equestrian life she loved, and together with the companionship of a trusted dog, the machine has witnessed a young woman’s world transcend from heartache to healing.

It knows, too, that the story of how Krystal Greco overcame her life’s obstacles began on the early afternoon of March 7, 2010.

“In the fall of 2009, I was being treated for some low back pain and was kept out of school and had to wear back braces, but at the time, there was no diagnosis,” Greco began. “Sometime at about 1 p.m., I got out of the shower and that is when a disk between her T-9 and T-10 vertebrae on my spinal cord ruptured, and I fell to the bathroom floor. At first, I thought it was a muscle spasm, so I pulled my knees into my chest and started screaming in pain until my mother came for me.”

Krystal began to lose control of her extremities, and by the time her mother and stepfather had helped her to the car for the ride from North East to A.I. Children’s Hospital in Wilmington, she could barely stand. There, doctors diagnosed her with a ruptured disk, and transferred her to Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, where she underwent an emergency decompression of her spinal cord. After undergoing numerous tests, Krystal left Philadelphia with incomplete paralysis from the waist down.

At an age when young people begin to absorb themselves in all the drama and exuberance of high school, Krystal Greco was now alone in the universe.

Now I know what she was feeling
Oh, ‘cause I feel it too

When the storm rolls in and the sky won’t quit crying
And you’ve lost more tears than you thought you could ever lose
Oh, I swear somewhere out there, the sun is somewhere shining
So, drive, baby, drive, baby, drive ‘til it shines on you

It is not rare but somewhat uncommon for a young child to experience the first bliss of what will become their life’s gravitational pull, but in many ways, Krystal’s life began when she was first hoisted upon a horse for a pony ride when she was a four-year-old growing up in Laurel, Md. The connection was immediate, and she recognized it in the form of the unspoken language shared between human and animal. It led to more pony rides and summer camps and once-a-week lessons, which were followed by her volunteering at a local stable.

“It was the feeling of having communication with something way bigger than me, and creating a partnership,” Krystal said. “I was bitten by the bug at a very young age, but after my paralysis, I asked myself, ‘Will I ever be able to ride again? Was it ever going to be a possibility?’”

When Krystal was undergoing in-patient therapy at the International Center for Spinal Cord Injury at Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, one of her nurses had seen an episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” that was profiling The Freedom Hills Therapeutic Riding Program in Port Deposit, a short drive from her home in North East. By October, just six months after her spinal cord injury, she enjoyed her first ride at Freedom Hills through a form of physical therapy known as “hippotherapy,” in which a therapist uses the characteristic movements of a horse to provide carefully graded motor and sensory input that improves neurological function and sensory processing.

Hippotherapy has been used to treat patients with neurological or other disabilities, such as autism, cerebral palsy, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, head injury, stroke, spinal cord injury, behavioral disorders and psychiatric disorders.

Within five months of starting hippotherapy, Krystal began to see increased muscle strength and nervous system connections, and eventually, she was able to move her legs, her hips and her toes again for the first time since her paralysis.

While Krystal leaned on the grace and strength of her mother, her stepfather and father, her grandparents, close friends of the family, and the teams at Kennedy Krieger and Freedom Hills, “the other part of my recovery had to do with my faith, because I am Christian and believed – and still believe -- that God had and has a plan for me,” she said. “Everything happens for a reason. I may not know it yet, but he does. I can’t say that I haven’t had those moments of doubt and those questions and frustrations, however, because there were several roadblocks. I wasn’t recovering, and I wasn’t moving as quickly as I wanted to. I am human, and I am not ashamed to say that I had those feelings.”

Freedom Hills became her sanctuary, her therapeutic happy place.

“The largest part of my recovery was having somewhere to go where I am not focusing on my disability but how I can improve – what I can do to make myself stronger, a better equestrian, and gaining knowledge about myself,” she said. “That’s the thing about being an equestrian – we never stop learning.”

For the next few months, Krystal spent countless hours at Freedom Hills getting reacquainted with her equestrian life, sometimes in the same company as another rider who was working toward competing in the Paralympics in the field of para-dressage competition. Encouraged by her trainers to do the same, the 15-year-old entered into competition in the Therapeutic Division of the Devon Horse Show in 2011, run by the Thorncroft Equestrian Center in Malvern, Pa. Established in 1969, Thorncroft – commonly known as “The Barn” -- is one of the premier therapeutic equestrian centers in the U.S., and specializes in therapeutic horseback riding and other equine-assisted services for both children and adults with mental, emotional, and physical disabilities.

Back on the saddle, she continued to enter competitions – regularly placing near the top of the winner’s circle – that included the Maryland Challenged Equestrian Trials, as well as smaller shows and para-dressage competitions.

“That’s when I got the show bug, and these competitions I participated in told me that this is possible, that this is something that I would be good at it, and that this is something that I would enjoy,” she said. “I was beginning to really enjoy the training process and then see the results of that training reflected in show results.”

Then along came Teddie.

And you’ve lost more tears than you thought you could ever lose
Oh, I swear somewhere out there, the sun is somewhere shining
So, drive, baby, drive, baby, drive ‘til it shines on you
And leave the rain in the rearview
And leave the rain in the rearview

Founded in 1989 and headquartered on a 45-acre property in Cochranville, Pa., Canine Partners for Life (CPL) has been dedicated to training service and companion dogs to assist individuals who are managing a wide range of physical, developmental, and cognitive disabilities. Over the last four decades, CPL has placed more than 800 service and companion dogs nationwide, and when Krystal placed her first call to the organization in 2012, it was in the hopes of being matched with a service dog.

She first met Teddie in the spring of 2013 at graduate support class at CPL, and soon after, received the call that Teddie was going to become her service animal.

“I didn’t get a chance to truly bond with her until training that summer, but she struck up a bond with me immediately,” Krystal said. “She was super attentive, always wanted to work, always had a drive, made me laugh, always made want to try more, and she couldn’t have come at a better time.

“Besides having the emotional distraction of going to therapeutic training, I had feelings of isolation. I didn’t socialize anywhere outside of school, so getting Teddie opened a lot of those closed doors for me. She gave me the self-confidence that I could go out on my own and interact with others, and she gave others a better perception of a young girl in a wheelchair. I never imagined the full extent of how much of a difference she was going to make when I signed up to receive a service animal, but I didn’t know that she would become a huge emotional benefit, as well.”