Therapy horse visits offer ‘good medicine’ for Tribal Elders

 

By Nicole Montesano

Smoke Signals staff writer

It starts with the route from Grand Ronde to West Salem, a particularly pretty drive on a May afternoon when everything is glowing richly green or bursting into bloom. But for the participating Tribal Elders, it’s the quiet hour in the barn, spending time with the horses, that they come for.

Once a month, the Tribe brings any Elder who wants to participate out to Horses Adaptive Riding & Therapy in West Salem, to spend an hour grooming and bonding with the program’s therapy horses.

“It’s such good medicine and that’s why we’re here,” Tribal Elder and Tribal Enrichment Coordinator Virginia Kimsey-Roof said. “(There’s) a lot of generational trauma.”

The horses listen, “and they don’t tell secrets,” she said, calling them, “a gift from God.”

Tribal Elder Nancy Renfrow agreed.

“I’ve always loved horses, so this way, I get to brush them and talk to them and snuggle them, all that good stuff,” she said. “It’s so relaxing.”

Renfrow said she participates every month. As a child, she said, “I’d go and bother my neighbor’s horses.”

Kimsey-Roof said that she loved being with the horses so much that a few years ago, she began taking riding lessons at the stable as well.

This day was particularly poignant, Kimsey-Roof said, as therapy horse Loki, who was a favorite among the Elders, had tragically succumbed to colic a week earlier. Kimsey-Roof blotted tears as she brushed tall Percheron mix Athena, who stood quietly, accepting tears and hugs. At the other end of the barn, Icelandic pony Thor enjoyed having his thoroughly mud-spattered back brushed clean, before blond and braided Piper briefly took his place.

After Athena grew impatient for the grain bucket waiting for her, she was returned to her stall to enjoy it. Next, Instructor Jessica Bauscher brought out Oldermann, a Norweigan Fjord who enjoyed the pampering from Renfrow and participant Brandy McKinney so much that he dozed off where he stood as they worked.

 Kimsey-Roof said she grew up with horses. Her father, the late Marvin Kimsey, “rounded up horses on the Warm Springs reservation” as a young man, she said, and later started the Spirit Mountain Stampede rodeo.

“Growing up, he always made sure we had horses,” Kimsey-Roof said. “They’re a comfort … this is my medicine.”

She said horses have made a big difference in her own mental health.

“I want to bring this back to our own people,” she said.

Kimsey-Roof is planning a Tribal Healing with Horses program. Details are still in the works, she said.

“I’ll probably never stop coming here; the people here are amazing,” she said.

In addition to the Elders, Tribal youth visit the stable for the horses’ healing influence, Kimsey-Roof said.