My Nonprofit Reviews

I have been working at the Carriage Barn for several months now. I do whatever is needed – sometimes cleaning out the stalls, opening big bales of wood shavings to replenish the ground cover in the stalls, filling the water buckets for the horses, putting hay in the feeding bags – things like that.

Sometimes I am present and assist when patrons come to ride in the arena. It is gratifying to see children, many of them with some kind of problem, verbal or physical, enjoy getting into the carriages and being driven around the arena. While their normal life may be any but “normal” in their home situations, while they are at the Barn, they laugh and have and good time.

I am most touched when I assist in the arena when a very handicapped woman – let’s call her Shelley – about fifty years old - comes to ride in a carriage a couple of times a week. Shelley was an avid horse woman but had a terrible accident a few years ago that left her, after many agonizing operations, paralyzed from waist on down. She was depressed with her situation for a long time but then she discovered the Carriage Barn, that caters to people like herself, offers them a new path to renewed enjoyment of life.

Shelley drives up in her van, wheels her automatic wheelchair away from the drivers spot and lets herself down a ramp, grabs her helmet, and comes wheeling into the barn. There, her favorite horse K.C. is being readied for the riding. Once in the arena, volunteers transfer Shelley, via a hoist, from her wheelchair into a carriage. Her hands are so crippled that she cannot open them – they are curled up but there is just enough room to pull the reins through. She enjoys herself driving around for an hour, making K. C. go through various configurations which we, the helpers, set up for her.

I did not know her in her depression phases. I see a lovely, spirited and cheerful woman doing what she loves to do. Did I see nail polish on her fingers?? I think the experience at the Carriage Barn has brought some kind of normalcy back to her life. I leave the Carriage Barn humbled and grateful and with great sense of peace.