Horse Illustrated Magazine

In her younger days she was an avid horseback rider, but now Terry Lee is in her 70s and terminally ill. Her dying wish was to see a horse again. With no family to fulfill that wish, Lee’s doctor, Elizabeth Mann, a Fellow in Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at Mount Sinai, sought to fulfill it.

“She had no idea it (a miniature therapy horse) would be in her hospital room, but being able to be with a horse again was something that was really important to her, and so I wanted to make that happen for her,” Mann told LittleThings.com.

The miniature therapy horse, named Magic, came from Gentle Carousel Miniature Therapy Horses, an organization that has worked with “more than 45,000 children and adults in hospitals and hospice programs, and with families who have experienced traumatic events,” LittleThings.com reports. Among other things, the group visited survivors of the Newtown, Conn. Sandy Hook Elementary School
shootings.

Magic’s visit to Lee was a dream come true for her. Mann told Gentle Carousel Miniature Therapy Horses, “I never saw Terry as animated or full of life as she was during her visit with Magic. She said it herself at the end of the visit: ‘my heart is bounding out of my chest.’” Lee passed away just days after Magic’s visit.