Optional Organizations:

Tar Heel Paws

Animal Assisted Therapy of the Triangle
PetPalsNC
Canines for Therapy (only physical disabilities)
Ears Eyes Nose and Paws
Horse and Buddy https://www.horseandbuddy.org
Camp Royal
Special olympics

Pre-Interview Info

1. List the group members.

Alyssa Poth, Hannah Spitzer, Abigail Lopez, Olivia H

2. Name of the organization/agency.

Horse and Buddy

3. Why did the group select this organization/agency?

Wanted to combine everyone’s interest in both working with special needs kids
and how animals might help this population of people.

4. What community does the organization/agency serve?

Aims to serve special needs kids in the area and help them with fine motor skills
as well as participate in something kids without disabilities can do too.

5. What assumptions and expectations do group members have about the

organization/agency and the population(s) served?

Although this organization helps directly with kids with special needs, it could
also help the families of these children by giving them something to look forward
to as well as something that can increase/enhance different abilities. By being a
resource for parents, they can help reduce parental stress and reduce the impact
of ambiguous loss as their child improves. In this way, it can help with feelings of
helplessness.

Potential Interview Questions:

Please vote or give your opinion on each question and add more questions.
 (we also have required questions marked by *. I tried to delete repeating questions)
● *Please describe your role in ____________ (name of organization/agency)
● *What do you observe as the primary services this organization/agency provides to the
community it serves?
● *Who do you observe as the primary population this organization/agency serves?
● *What do you see as some of the pressing needs/problems within the community, and
how does this organization/agency contribute to addressing them (for the community or
specific populations within the community)
● What do you wish you could accomplish with your organization?
● What are you constantly finding you need more of?
● How would you like to educate the general public about the importance of your services?
● How do you help individuals with lower incomes?
● How do you help families?
● What is the most memorable impact you feel you have?
● What is the most enjoyable part of your job?
● What is the hardest part of your job?
● What made you choose this profession?
● What type of education is required for this profession?
● If you had all of the money you needed, how would you use it to help your organization?
● If you had more volunteers, what would you have them do?
● *As a part of our class project, our group would like to donate around 8 hours of time
among us to assist with a task or need as our way of saying thank you for speaking with
us and helping us understand more about your organization/agency and its contributions
to the community. What might be a small project, task, or way we can best assist?

Hey Ms. Holly,

I hope all is well. I hate that I haven’t seen you in so long. I’m now a student at UNC Chapel Hill.
For my Family Studies class, we have a mini-needs assessment group project where we work
with a non-profit organization in the area. Immediately I thought of Horse and Buddy! Our
project consists of interviewing one of the program directors and then giving back in some form
or fashion, whatever you need the most assistance with. Barn work, horse show, new activities
we are open to anything!

Please let us know!

Thank you,

Alyssa, …
^^^ what do you guys think?
Sounds great to me! I fixed up a little bit of the grammar -H

Interview:
 Interview
Question: “Describe your primary role at Horse and Buddy.”

Mrs. Holly: “So currently, my primary role is the program director. So basically I am in charge of
running the program, of keeping everything running smoothly here. My boss, who is the
executive director, we joke, she keeps the lights on I keep the program going. I intake all new
riders, people who are interested contact me and I set up visits for them to come to the barn and
tell them about the program. I schedule all the riders. I schedule all the instructors. I help with
overseeing the volunteers but our volunteer coordinators do most of that. I kind of make sure its
running smoothly. Sometimes I go and talk at different locations tomorrow im going to talk to a
rotary about our program. And I oversee, especially since I’m an OT, I watch a lot of the rides, I
give any of the instructors, who none of them have that medical background, I will also give
them input if they need it for different seating possibilities, for children or adults who may have
some physical limitations. Also I’ve done this a long time so newer instructors may come to me
with issues that they have for some of their riders and any suggestions I could have. I’m also a
mentor so I can train new instructors whether they are for our program, or want to start their own
program so they have to start the whole process. I’ve also been known to get up on the tractor
and do some stuff on the tractor but my main thing is just keeping things running smoothly here.

Question: What do you observe as primary services this organization provides for the
community it serves?

Mrs. Holly: So we provide so much more than even I initially realized. First and foremost we
provide what I call recreational, therapeutic recreation for children and adults who can not
participate in typical recreational sports. A lot of our riders can’t do typical soccer or volleyball,
but they can come and they can ride and its their sport. While they are doing that they are
getting a lot of the physical strengthening, coordination, balance, motor planning, sensory input.
A lot of them are coming to us for anxiety so they are getting kind of a relaxation. When you ride
you kind of have to focus on what you are doing so all of your other problems kind of go a way
for a little bit. And so obviously we service the special needs community. But what I’ve learned
over the years is that we also serve our volunteer community. I mean young folks like you guys
that have volunteered with us. I have a lot of people that their time spent here has kind of
guided what they wanted to do with their own futures, including my own children. So in that way
we are serving not only the special needs community but also their families. So many parents
tell us that this is like a safe haven in many ways for them. First of all their child is immediately
accepted, I mean their are just no questions they are just a child or an adult to us. And then the
parents also get to network with other parents or they get to have some down time maybe they
just read a book while their child is riding. They too get to kind of decompress and relax while
they are out there. So you know initially, I got into this thinking I was just hear for these special
needs riders but there's really a lot more people that we touch.

Question: “What is the primary population that this agency serves? So I guess you have kind
of touched on that.”

Mrs. Holly: Yeah I can talk a little more about it. So there are a lot of children with autism. So
we don’t advertise our program, it’s just word of mouth. And those parents with children with
autism have a really close network. There is the autism society, they see each other at doctors
appointments, they ask ‘Hey what have you tried that works?’ So by a lot of word of mouth, we
tend to get a lot of children with autism. We also tend to get a lot of kids with cerebral palsy, so
they are here more for the motor benefits of riding. We also have a lot of children with random
genetic disorders and some of them are very rare. There are quite a few that are just fragile X or
just a lot of syndromes that are out there, some Down Syndrome. Recently we have also been
getting a lot of, especially teenage girls that are having problems with anxiety. Sometimes
maybe they have some ADHD as well. But they are girls that wouldn't necessarily go on a ride
in a normal group lesson, and not necessarily feel like “everyones better than me”. It would hurt
their self esteem almost to be in that setting. So they ride here in a one on one in our setting
and we are going at their pace and we understand where they are and it really builds their
confidence a lot. So it is a wide range of populations. I would say the majority are autism and
cerebral palsy and then the other. And then the age range that we serve is 3 to 86. She actually
just stopped. Judy actually just stopped riding because her back has been bothering her and her
doctor recommended she stop. So 86 was currently our oldest rider. Well she might be back we
don't know for sure but for right now she had to take some time off. But I had another 80 year
old email me recently about seniors riding here. So if we think it is safe we are willing to give it a
try.

Question: “What do you see are some pressing needs or problems within the community and
how does this organization contribute to addressing it?”
Mrs. Holly: There isn’t a lot out there for folks with special needs. This area has more than
some areas but there isn’t a lot out there, that’s what some of the parents are saying, as far as
recreational activities. Especially ones that give them a lot of therapeutic input. There just isn’t
a whole lot. There’s Miracle League baseball and I know there’s a rock climbing activity that
Duke does for special needs. But they’re kind of few and far between. Whereas for a typically
developing kid, there’s so much. So it really provides something for them to do outside of
school, to feel like they have something else going on, some other extracurricular activity that’s
good for them and I’m hoping a lot of our parents feel like it gets their kids away from social
media. Not just social media, but also their Iphones, Ipads. We have parents that are happy to
get their kids away from that.

Question: “What’s the hardest part and what’s the most rewarding part?”

Mrs. Holly: Rewarding first: smiles. The kids, they come here, not just kids but adults as well,
they just seem happy to be here. Occasionally we’ll have a child with autism that’s not happy to
be here, they’re whining or fussy, but for the most part they’re so happy they’re here, they’re
thankful, and their parents are thankful. Doing something for someone else like this is a real
feel-good kind of thing. And so we always answer that question with the smiles we get to see
on a daily basis. It’s definitely the best part about this. The hardest part is probably, well, we’re
a nonprofit. Keeping funded, you know, keeping the money in so we can keep the lights on and
keep being a program out here is probably one of the toughest things. And the other really
tough one is, I’ll be honest, I’ve probably been to more funerals of kids than most people.
Because people with special needs have bad seizures, get sick a lot. So the death rate of
children with special needs is a lot higher. So that’s a really hard part as well, to go to those
services.

Question: “What kind of education level do you have? What kind of education level would you
need to do this kind of work?”

Mrs. Holly: So I’m a little different from most instructors that you find, even owners or directors
of a therapeutic riding program because I have a bachelor’s of science in occupational therapy.
And yes it was only a bachelor’s when I did it. I went to Tuss University right outside of Boston
and I have that degree and worked in the hospital system for a while. But to be an instructor,
you really don’t even need to have a college degree but you have to go through the process of
becoming a therapeutic riding instructor. So you need to be able, to have riding experience.
You wouldn’t be able to teach a history class if you didn’t know history and it’s the same thing as
therapeutic riding. Because some of our riders are walk-trot-cantering and if you aren’t at that
level then it doesn’t work out. So to become an instructor it’s at least a 6-month thing. You
need to have 25 hours of instruction underneath a certified instructor and then there’s a test that
you take. So you could be an instructor if you had the proper riding experience in a place like
this. To be a director or an executive director, I do think that some sort of college degree is
necessary. Especially for the executive director. Our executive director has a master’s from
Duke in business and I think that’s one of the reasons why we are still here. Because she has a
really good business sense to keep things running for us. There are other positions like a
volunteer coordinator that works in this kind of field and it requires certain skills but not
necessarily educational background. Organization skills and flexibility and a lot of other things
like that. So if you were to poll other program directors and executive directors you’d find a lot
of different backgrounds. Some of them would have a therapist background like I do and some
would have psychology backgrounds because some programs gear more towards equine-
assisted psychotherapy. I think you’d find a wide range. I’m glad that I worked in a hospital for
a while and I got my experience and for me, later on in life, this was a really good change of
pace to work here and build this program up from the ground.

Question: Have you been here since the beginning of Horse and Buddy?

Mrs. Holly: Pretty much. My executive directed worked at a barn that had three or four kids with
special needs that would ride. It was not a nonprofit, it didn’t have a name it was just a barn that
was willing to do this. She took that over and then six to eight months I came along as a
volunteer with her. She realized I was a pediatric OT with riding experience. So as the program
grew, my role within the program grew. First i was volunteer then i was an instructor then an
instructor with program director 10 hours a week, then that grew into a full time position as they
were able to pay me. Still I would make more money as an OT than I would at this nonprofit but
fortunately I have a husband with a good job and he supports my doing this and it’s a passion.
But yes i have pretty much been with it since the beginning

Question: What sparked the creation of this organization?

Mrs. Holly: So a lot of different things. Like I said there was already a few kids riding at a barn
when my executive director came along. She had gone through a personal tragedy that had
brought her out of the corporate world to working at a barn for a little while, she needed a break.
She stumbled upon this, had always wanted to start a nonprofit. So she took that little group of
people that was riding and started to move towards becoming a nonprofit and getting more
riders to the point where we got this land purchased for us after we had an article about us in
the newspaper. A man forth and said i would like to buy this land so you can build a barn and
expand what you want to do. So after a couple of years working at different barns we were able
to build this facility here. We don’t own the land but we own all the buildings on the land and we
are about to start process of capital campaign to buy the land from him. He’s willing to sell us it
for about half of what it’s worth, which is still close to a million dollar since it is 35 acres and
because of the location the value of the land has just skyrocketed since he bought it. And that’s
the story. You will hear similar stories as i was just training a lady to be an instructor since she
wants to open a program out of Clayton and she also had some kind of personal tragedy and
wants to reach out to other people with similar experiences and share how horses had helped
her with her healing. So lots of times you hear those types of stories on how programs get
started.

Question: Are you able to help clients that are low income?

Mrs. Holly: We do have a couple ways we try to do that. One, is we have a partnership with a
program called “First in Families” and there’s one in each county (some counties will share) and
there is one in Wake County that help provide money for parents with children with special
needs. There are certain guidelines they have to fit into. But it is generally for things that are not
covered by insurance. Because this is not covered by insurance. It’s not a therapy there is not
necessarily a therapist doing therapy with these kids. We do have a couple riders that I see as
an OT here. It’s called hippotherapy as opposed to therapeutic riding, so they are the only ones
that can use insurance. The session has a totally different goal and outcome than what we are
doing during therapeutic riding. We also have our own scholarship that we try to help pay for
some of the riders. It all depends on how much money we have in our scholarship fund at the
time. But we have been able to help quite a few riders with being able to afford. Because that’s
important to me. I don’t want people to not be able to do this because of money but
unfortunately a lot of the time that happens to be the case. That’s the other thing, i think once
we own the land we will be able to put more money into our scholarship fund because right now
we have to focus on buying the land so Horse and Buddy stays here then we will be able to put
a lot of donations into scholarships.

Stopped at 17.22

Question: Are all of the horses donated? Or does Horse and Buddy purchase them?

Mrs. Holly: That’s a great question. And you’re going to find that you’ll get a different answer
from every program. Some programs buy their horses, we have never purchased a horse. For a
long time, all of our horses were donated. Because we felt that- so the two options are to
donate, or to do a free lease. Which is where someone says I want this horse to still be mine but
I’m not using them right now, here you use them. When you’re done with them, I want them
back. We were always a little afraid to do that because we were like that gives them the option
to take this horse whenever they want and we would be stuck. We’ve now.. We have a
combination now. We have the majority of our horses are owned by horse and buddy, they were
donated to us but three of them are free leases. People that are like- they basically they love
their horse but they don’t have time to ride their horse and they think their horse would be great
at this. They give them to us with the promise that they will go back to them. I mean even with
the donation, we always go back to the original owner and say- we’re retiring your hose, would
you like them back? And if they say no then we find them a good home. But there are programs
that will buy horses because they are specific horses that they want- Feurds are great, halflings
are great in this kind of programs. But we have been lucky and we go through a process. We
can’t just take any horse. A lot of people call and say, well I have this horse and he’s just a little
bit lame. Well I can’t take a lame horse I mean we walk and trot it- people don’t understand that
we’re not just grooming this horse and loving on it I mean the horse actually has to be able to
work. And then I’ll get people who call who are looking to donate their horse because they can’t
afford their horse anymore- very often it has nothing to do with that they think this horse would
be good for what we do. It’s more that they desperately need home and they heard that we take
horses. When someone calls us if it sounds interesting on the phone, we’ll go visit the horse and
we’ll throw toys and we’ll throw balls at it and we’ll trot it with a sidewalker and we’ll do all the
kind of things that could happen here and if they're kinda chill and they just kinda look at us like
we’re crazy and they don’t really get all excited about what we’re doing than- and we’ll get up
and ride them- then we’ll bring them back here and we give them sixty days to try them out. And
then after the sixty days they either become ours a donation or they go back to their owners.
Honestly, more horses get turned away than stay. They have to be really chill they have to not
really react about things and when they do spook it cannot be a “get out of here run for your life”
kind of reaction. That is some of the main struggles of the program is finding horses. Along with
volunteers.