60 volunteers including six trained psychotherapists help children grow
Published in the June 24 – July 9, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Robert Airoldi
Photo by Robert Airoldi
Instructor Seldy Nelson (hand in the air), handler Christina Bless (blue sweatshirt) and Cassidy Andrews from South Valley Community Church Youth Group work with Roland Chiang, 11, riding Holly.
For many youngsters in the South Bay, DreamPower Horsemanship lives up to its name. The riding and teaching facility’s annual DreamPower Children’s Camp offers a host of activities for developmentally disabled children that help them gain confidence, self-esteem and for some a calmness that eludes them during their daily lives.
Vonya Armanino from San Jose has her 8-year-old daughter Adrianna and 6-year-old son Anthony in the program. Anthony is autistic and her daughter just loves attending with her brother. Both are attending their second camp.
“Really, this has just been fabulous for Anthony to interact with others,” Armanino said. “I’ve seen growth. His verbal skills have evolved and he can stay with a group without my involvement. It’s such a great place. This camp is wonderful.”
Working with horses provides a wonderful opportunity to engage in therapeutic activities outside of a traditional therapeutic environment, said Martha McNiel, the camp’s founder and director.
Reaching for a ball while seated on a calm horse can help make physical activity fun for a disabled child.
Learning to halter a horse in an open pasture can make an urban teen who has issues listening to authority figures pay attention.
Seeing how a horse responds to body movements and tone of voice can help reinforce the power of calm, assertive behavior over a tendency toward aggressive or anxious engagements.
And of course it opens the heart when a person of any age or ability begins to feel the mutual respect that happens when a horse and person come to know and trust and communicate with each other, whether in the saddle or on the ground.
McNeil runs the 17 campers this year with 60 total volunteers through five stations for five days. They include horseback riding, a friendship circle, creativity time, working with miniature horses and learning about nature.
Photo by Robert Airoldi
Registered Therapeutic Riding Instructor Melissa Abbey helps Kaitlyn Machado on Tulips (the 2011 PATH International Region 11 Therapy Horse of the Year).
Rachel Chiang from Fremont brings her special needs 11-year-old son and her 9-year-old daughter to the week-long camp. Roland is in his third year attending and Chiang said there are not that many places to bring low functioning children, so it’s been a blessing.
“He’s moderately autistic and gets really excited in space,” she said. “As time went by he is more eager and has become more familiar (with the program). It helps having his sister here. There’s such a wide variety of activities, and his sister loves it too.”
The camp sits on about 10 acres of leased land from WoodMyst Farm in southeast Gilroy, just off Highway 152. It’s been there since 2012, after moving from California Stables in Gilroy.
McNiel, 55, the owner and operator, started the operation in August 2002. She’s a licensed marriage and family therapist and was working with children in an office setting and owned horses and one day thought to herself: why not get the children outside and on a horse. She was working on her doctoral dissertation on Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy focusing on how children might be helped working with horses on therapeutic goals.
“It’s more effective and more fun for the kids, and the therapist,” she said.
The facility includes two fenced-in riding areas, a small circular riding area, stables for the 12 riding horses and five miniature horses, a covered picnic area, a small group counseling gazebo, tack rooms and a grooming area. In the farm area are goats, chickens and ducks and her dog Rucker is a certified therapy dog and the program partners with Operation Freedom Paws.
Photo by Robert Airoldi
The program includes 17 different programs including therapeutic horsemanship lessons, equine facilitated psychotherapy, confident rider clinics, the camp for children with special needs, farm friends, horses for heroes, equine wilderness journey, equine facilitated groups, and training for psychotherapists.
Born in Oklahoma, McNiel was raised in Saudi Arabia when her father worked as a pediatrician for the children of oil company employees.
She returned to the United States when she was 10 and lived in Iowa until she moved to Texas to attend Baylor University. McNiel came to California in 1982 after graduating. Here she spent two years working a government service project helping undocumented refugees from Central America. When the stint was up, she decided to stay.
“I just had one opportunity after another,” she said. She worked as a campus minister at a San Francisco Baptist Church. She went back to school and earned her degree in psychotherapy and has been practicing since 1998.
Now she has six licensed psychotherapists and eight pre-licensed volunteers who work with the children. DreamPower has people from ages 3 to 85 involved in its various therapy programs, including three on-going veterans programs — one for women, a pre-Sept. 11 for those who fought in wars prior to that date and a post-Sept. 11 for those who fought since then.
About 30 percent of the funds to operate the facility come from fees paid by attendees, the rest from grants from nonprofits like the Gilroy Assistance League and from donations.
“If I won the lottery nothing would change,” McNeil said. “I love what I’m doing. It’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.”
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