Ep 15: Sheryl Barto - Smiling Goat Ranch

This can be psychological, this can be neuropsych, this can be physical, this can be all of the conditions that human beings have. These lovely equines, these beautiful horses that we work with, help us with. Thank you for being part of the adventure and we hope you enjoy today's show Welcome back to Equine Assisted World. I've got someone amazing. I always have someone amazing. Cheryl Bartow. Cheryl Bartow runs Smiling Goat Ranch. She'll be really ranchers in the western slope of Colorado.

She's an autism mum She's been running an extraordinary equestrian assisted I say equestrian assisted not equine assisted because she brings a lot of beautiful classical writing and education to what she does and with special needs and also to special horses. She's invested many, many years in acquiring this knowledge. And as a result does something rather extraordinary, not just for people with autism, but also people with trauma and people who are lost in the world.

And she does it in an area of Colorado that a lot of people are, are Less familiar with everyone's heard of Aspen. Oh, yeah, all these rich people in Aspen Well, they don't realize is that it's a whole hinterground on the Western Slope of very very ordinary people Living out their lives sort of ranchers people with jobs and so on all of these people end up with special needs kids and Someone's got a servant Cheryl Bartow is the person who and has been there for many years.

She's not just limited to the horses. She also includes mountain sports. She just includes ranch work, ranch life, life skills. I'm going to stop babbling. But Cheryl Bartow makes me babble because she's so awesome. Okay. So Cheryl, welcome to Equine Assisted World. Would you please tell us a bit about who you are and what you do?

And I am the product of a divorced family. And my mom was a single mom. My dad was still very much in my life. He was a veterinarian. But my mom said, you absolutely are not going to college to be a horse trainer and I ended up getting a degree in journalism and pursuing a career in public relations and gosh, for probably 25 years. I had no horses in my life. I I grew up showing POAs from like age 12 through 18, and then I was on the writing team in college.

I would take Supreme and the dog and I would be gone for 8 hours and I would

And that pony, I feel like saved my mental health going through, you know, the teenage years of having divorced parents and remarriages and step Brothers and sisters and all that good stuff that now seems very common. When I left college with my journalism degree, I had done an internship in PR for IBM at a federal systems division in New York State.

And I really thought, okay, I'm going to be a corporate PR person and I'm going to get a job in a corporation doing PR because I loved my internship and I had learned so much in the 6 months that I was there. At the same time, I still had a relationship going with my high school sweetheart. And he was in the Coast Guard and stationed in Hawaii and then in New England. And we always had had this dream of going to Colorado.

And I think, you know, Colorado had this magnetic allure of we were both skiers, wanted to be in the mountains. And I, my 1st job ended up not being with a corporation, but being with a local government association in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which is the capital of the state and pretty pretty city like, which was really not my jam, but I was hired to work on a local government magazine that represented the whole state.

So I was reporter, photographer, etc. And in the meantime, Two of my high school friends went to Aspen, Colorado after they graduated just to have fun. And I went out to visit them because we all shared this love of skiing. And I thought, Oh my gosh, what am I doing? I'm 22 years old. I'm quitting my job and I'm moving to Aspen, which is what I did. And I became a ski bum for a season. thinking I would go back to the real world.

And I ended up then getting a job in PR with the Aspen Skiing Company. So I stayed the summer. And once you experience a summer in Colorado, they always say you come for the winter, you stay for the summers. And this is a lot of people's stories here in Why is that? The summer is incredibly magical. The weather is spectacular. It's almost perfection. There's sunny days, everybody's out hiking or mountain biking, and you the ski areas have turned summer tourism into this incredible attraction.

And honestly, in Aspen on July 4th. They do an old town parade and it is more crowded on July 4th in Aspen than any day during the winter time. It's there's, there's a lot of magic to it. Yeah. And so I ended up marrying my high school sweetheart and we had two sons and The oldest son, James, is Our kiddo on the autism spectrum and he's very high functioning.

We got the diagnosis when he was 10 and as I mentioned earlier, we didn't know what was going on age 2 through 10, but we knew something was going on and. I had gone to specialist after specialist. We are three hours from Denver. We had seen three different doctors in Denver and people would say, gosh, this is, this is a puzzle. Is it ADD? Is it ADHD? And I would say, yeah, I see pieces and parts of that, but I don't. Think that that's it.

And then crazily, and I don't think I've ever shared this story with you in my PR world, I represented import beer companies for 15 years. And it was a really fun gig, which meant that I took us journalists to breweries throughout Europe. So Germany, the Czech Republic, Ireland, even Thailand. And one of these trips, I had a female editor and it was a magazine. I don't even remember the name of it anymore. But it was 1 of those, like, Maxim magazines and a female editor. And I was like, really?

I always thought men would be the editors of those magazines, but she and I are still in touch to this day and. She told me this story of her sister being diagnosed with autism and we were on a bus going from a brewery to town to tour and I got home and I started researching autism and I spent a weekend like just getting sucked in and realizing this was it and calling my dad, the veterinarian, and saying, I think we figured this out. And at the time.

Children's hospital, Colorado had an 8 month waiting list to you have to in Colorado have a psychiatrist make your diagnosis and so 8 months later, we went to children's and they said, no, we You have a textbook case, a son with autism. And there were such emotions around that of relief of knowing what we were dealing with to sadness to, Oh my gosh, like I don't have a neurotypical kid.

And being in a small town, we were the only people James actually ended up being the first person from his high school graduating with autism. And so I took the path of Owning it and telling everyone and educating people when we got the diagnosis, he was going from elementary school into middle school. And I called the principal of the middle school. And I said, this is what I just learned. And he said, will you come in and do a presentation to the whole teaching team?

And so I came in, did a presentation to. The whole fifth grade teaching team, and it was amazing how they open their arms and welcome James and really made accommodations for him to get through middle school.

And then we get into high school and it's a completely different ball game, different Well, we're, you know, he has to advocate for himself and he needs to do X, Y, and Z. And it was for me as a parent, a huge struggle and dealing with bullying, dealing with being ostracized and not like, One of the gifts of autism, I, there are so many which I learned through you and the horse boy method is not really caring what other people think and, you know, I'm seeing where he's not getting invited to the

graduation parties or any parties for that matter. And he's blissfully happy with his world of, you know, us having a dog and that dog was his. Lifeline his, you know, looking back on all of this and not realizing how much the dog was his lifeline until I went through the horse boy method and understanding that animal connection with, with humans and special needs folks. So, gosh, then.

Yeah, my PR career is going parallel with all this whole journey and my career has really taken off and my business is doing really, really well. And I end up. going through a divorce because I was the breadwinner. And it was a lot. It was a lot, being the breadwinner and a special needs mom. And frankly, I look back on that Era and say to myself, you should have still made room for horses, but I felt like I couldn't financially or time wise.

And then while, when James was 15, this local autism group said to me, Let's have him come to our camp for this session. And that was when my son learned that he had autism, not until he was 15. He didn't even realize, and it didn't matter to him. He was very happy in his own world. And when they had so graciously offered to allow him to be part of the camp, I said, well, how can I give back to you?

And And that's when I offered to do the pro bono work for them and they were a growing organization. I think they are now in their 20th year.

They had video footage of my son, who we had gone with friends to Lake Powell.

With, of course, all my friend's kids are neurotypical kids and their kids are doing flips on the wakeboards and one arms and going sideways, you know, and James could never do that and he gets to this camp and he's the star on the wakeboard because he had seen what some of the other kids had done and he did what he could do to his level and like, the Photos of him and the grin on his face of the accomplishments that he had at this camp were absolutely priceless.

So then they, as an organization, evolved into wanting to do Big gala fundraiser, and that's when they decided they were going to bring in celebrity autism parents. And they brought in Holly Robinson Pete, who is the star of 21 Jump Street, and her husband is an ex NFL football player Rodney B. And then they brought in Rupert Isaacson, the founder of the horse boy. And I remember thinking, how can I have been a horse obsessed person and have never heard of the horse boy book or movie.

And I have a son with autism. And my conclusion to that was, well, I was a single mom running a business, raising a kid with special needs. And so. When I witnessed your demonstration of the horse boy method on a horse you had never met in a place you had never been to and how you were teaching geography and math from the back of a horse, I was moved to tears and I thought, Oh my gosh, this is my calling. And this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And, and I, and I think Rupert, that was 2012.

So I had no horses, no infrastructure, no no, nothing other than a PR firm and a new husband. Who had and I came home and I said, you know, I, how do you feel about having horses in our lives? And he had grown up in Wyoming on a ranch and he had 2 kids and he said, I'm open to it. So we had had a small property. Well, I should back up because I want to talk a little bit about the horse boy karma that I think has followed me completely on this journey. So James graduates high school and.

All he's seeing all of his friends go off to college and James absolutely was not college material, nor did he want to go to college. So I had researched a life skills school, like, where could he go? To learn some more life skills. So I had found one in Arizona and at the time because I didn't have enough to do, I was the volunteer journalism teacher at their local high school because I didn't like the newspaper and I thought it could be so much better.

And it was a way for me to get back to the high school. I did not want to be on boosters. I did not want to be in any sort of politics and I was like, why don't I try teaching this class? So I'm teaching this class. I did it for the three years. Both my boys were in the high school and a journalism fellowship came across my desk after you had been to Aspen for this event and you could apply for two weeks to Enhance your skills as a high school journalism teacher.

So I was like, Oh my gosh, university or Arizona state was on the list. And I thought I'll apply there. I will go. Then I can be down there with James while he's attending life skills school. And then I get a rejection letter from Arizona, but they said, we're happy to host you at university of Texas in Austin. And I was like, Oh, wait a minute. Isn't that where Rupert's whole program is based?

Well, maybe I should go visit while I'm down there and see if this is the real deal and see if it is what I think it is. And so I ended up going to Austin and in my two weeks we had a free weekend and I went out to visit Horseboy headquarters, which at the time was in Elgin, Texas. And I don't know if you remember this visit, Rupert, but I met Betsy, the foundation horse. And I also remember really having this fear, even though I was an autism mom. of other people's kids with autism.

Like would I be able to handle them? Would I know what to do? Would I be worthy? Could I really help them? Like it was, so it was weird that I was having this Awesome experience teaching kids at the high school, but they're all neurotypical kids. I have this autistic son and then I come to your ranch in Elgin and I remember this family from Mexico being there and they had three kids. You were working with the entire family and their little boy was severely autistic.

Watching him with the horses and you somehow had me jump in while you were doing this session and this little boy turns around and gives me the most giant hug and he was nonverbal and I thought, I get it. I think I can do this. And that's when I started your training program, and I think you ended up coming to Colorado Springs, which is a three and a half hour drive for us to teach the horse boy one course. And I came in to do that also with some fears around my.

Ancient horse skills that were sort of dormant and how was I going to be? How was I going to do this? And I think the other beautiful thing about the horse boy method and the approach and the welcoming by the whole tribe was. We actually can find a role for anybody who has the heart to do this. And even if you have a challenge rising to certain pieces and parts, we will help you get there.

And then I remember, I think the other piece I was so incredibly attracted to, because remember I wanted to be the horse trainer, was that. Horse skills were important to training the horse boy horse. And so I was like, wow, okay, now I get to kind of brush up on this. And that was the attraction for me to come back to Elgin and start learning dressage, which I knew nothing about. Zero about dressage. I grew up in the POA world with no lessons.

I was on that writing team in college that we had a coach that was like, yep, you guys look good. And so I, the dressage piece was. Extraordinarily intimidating, but at the same time, I was so fascinated because I'm also in addition to being a skier and a trail runner, very much when I was 35 started doing yoga and, I still marvel at now, after whatever it's been 25, 30 years of doing yoga, how much similarity there is between yoga fitness for the human and dressage fitness for the horse.

And looking at classical dressage and how it helps build the right muscles for the horse to be able to do their job and carry two riders. And it, there is just. So much synergy between the 2. It blows my mind weekly. And so, I remember also spending that week with you learning just how to hold a dressage whip and my arms and my hands being sore. And I'm thinking. Okay. I thought I was an athlete. I've been this skier, trail runner, mountain biker. I'm finding these new muscles. Holy cow.

And just learning about rhythm and timing and then looking at your herd and seeing So many different kinds of horses and how they all had a role just like the humans all had a role based on their abilities and their strengths and how they could help people. And to see you have Mustangs and quarter horses, and then the fancy horses, the Lusitano's, which I had never even heard of. I'm like, what's a Lusitano?

And seeing the different gifts that they had, and how you were teaching quarter horses and Mustangs, how to PF and Passage, I was like, okay, I'm in. I'm in 100%. It's really great.

And I remember thinking, I, I, I think this, I think this lady's going to go do it. Obviously, you know, we, any of us autism parents are trained by our children, you know, my biggest mentor, as everybody knows, is my son, Rowan, but, and obviously you're coming out of the same school, but nonetheless, not everybody, Decides to turn their life upside down in this particular way. Tell us about smiling goat.

Tell us about how you started because smiling goat I just need to say for listeners smiling goat ranch in colorado. You need to look it up It's a gold standard place in terms of they know the neuroscience They know the horse training. They know how to if the kids are not into the horse. Okay, we're going to mountain sports Oh, you're not into mountain sports. No problem. We're going to the goat. Oh, you know, it's got no problem We're going to the water. Ah, you're actually into the wildflowers.

No problem. There we are this Completely holistic approach that you guys have. It's very rare, but of course it's very effective. Can you tell us how Smiling Goat began? Why the name Smiling Goat? It's a great name. And yeah, the evolution of this and where you're at. And, and spoiler alert that yes internships are available. And they do take people you know, At this amazing place in Colorado. So you might just want to think about that as you're listening to this while driving.

So how does Smiling Goat come out of this?

A hundred?

And one is still alive. Gates is still with us. A foundation

But anyway, getting back to the property itself that had zero animal infrastructure, so we built sheds, we built fencing, we built we ended up getting this lovely man, Brian Cole, shout out to you with Medallion Landscaping, who installed a creek into Hooked up to the irrigation ditches that all the ranchers use in Colorado. So we had running water. It ended up being this cute little nirvana on three acres. And I also lived there.

And part of the Horseboy Karma magic also was in year two of Smiling Goat, we pitched a there was a call for civic projects by a group called Brewing Fork Leadership, which is kind of like Shark Tank. It's a bunch of I don't know. Business people from all businesses that get randomly put into groups and there's five groups and they interview nonprofits and decide which one they want to take on for their civic project. And the property happened to have this cool little cabin on it.

So I now have a blended family with two kids that are younger than my kids and then my boys who are in high school. And The house is small, but the cabin was awesome. And the boys are like, yeah, we'll live here. And every man that walked into that cabin said I'd move in here. It was just a cute long place with like 2 rooms and a bathroom. So. I, we get picked by Roaring Fork Leadership and they're going through their coursework and they interviewed me for two hours.

So I have Smiling Goat running for a year and I'm doing it all myself. With volunteers. So because I have kids in high school, I'm the newspaper teacher. I'm able to attract these volunteers, pony club girls, like everybody who wants to work with horses. And so, and I'm still keeping my day job going. So I still have PR clients and I'm still juggling. So I'm basically working. I don't know. Seven days a week, 80 hours a week, but I'm loving it. Like Smiling Goat was not seemingly work to me.

It was wonderful to wake up, have the animals there, be back to my farming roots with my dad feeding animals. I'm loving it. And this leadership group looks at me and they said, Cheryl, you cannot sustain this. You are going to burn out. And our recommendation to you is building extra housing in your cabin to house interns. And I was like, wow, that is brilliant.

So we had I think on a parallel course had approached University of Denver and their Human Animal Health Connection Institute, and they have a graduate student program for students. Shout out

And so it was a bit of a commute for some students, but students that were looking for internship during their summer quarter. We were a really great fit for them and on. And it my younger son, Mark ends up going off to college and James is still at home. And so the idea from this leadership group was your son can have his own.

Sweet, if you will, in the cabin that we build out for you and he can have the college experience and have roommates living with him and beautifully with the horse boy karma. It's people who wanted to work with special needs. So they end up coming to live with us. Taking an interest in James's obsessions, whether it's maps, movies, or rock music, like they would all connect with him. It was really, really beautiful.

I think There are and in this group were 3 construction people, like, 1 was a high end builder who built all the fancy homes in Aspen. The other 1 worked for. The hospitality group of Aspen skiing company, and the 3rd 1 worked for a builder that did like commercial construction. So it, I was like, blessed with this amazing group and then they have you come and do a final presentation, like, All their teams and they said, Cheryl, can you please bring animals?

And I said, heck yeah, I would love to bring animals to this. So we brought our mini horses and they did a grand entrance because I had never taken them inside before and they jumped the threshold in a very grand way. So we got a standing ovation. It was, it was a really, really cool thing, but it reminds me, you asked me, how do we get the name smiling goat? Before we actually launched the program, we had built the infrastructure for goats and rabbits.

Basically building on your idea, Rupert, of having the small social animals around as part of the program. So I thought, okay, we'll start small with this before we bring in horses. And this lady was moving back east and she had three goats. She was an empty nester. And she and her husband had the most adorable, sweetest goats. So we get these three goats that are massively overweight Nelly, Lester, and Hubert.

And they are as sweet as pie and The boys and I are sitting around our kitchen table brainstorming. We also had two dogs that were black and they were obsessed with the dogs and they said, why don't we name it black dog ranch? And so I'm like, let's Google it. I swear to you. I think there were 10, 000 worldwide black dog ranches. I'm like, we can't do that. I'm in marketing PR. We need a good name. And Lester. The one goat there are pygmy goats.

He, oh my God, Lester and Nellie were the biggest characters. And Lester had a little quirk where he almost smiled and That's how we got the name was Lester. And believe it or not, Lester is still with us. I honestly thought last winter was going to be his last winter because our winters are pretty significant here. The beautiful thing about the Roaring Fork Valley though, is everybody's skiers and kids love snow days because school's out and their parents will drive them to the ski areas.

So the world really doesn't stop in the winter here. We get beautiful. snow and then great sunny days the next day. It's not endless gray. So anyway, but winters can be cold and harsh and I was really concerned Lester was not going to make it. So we started incorporating more of Lester's lunchtime is what we call it. And Lester's lunchtime is where our kiddos and young adults feed him lunch.

We're And we have a brain injury lady, Miss Kara, who is an adult, and this is her favorite thing to do, is come to the ranch and feed Lester lunch. Lester has never looked better in his entire life. His coat, his weight, like, I'm like, okay, I don't know how much longer we have Lester, but I think when the animals feel purpose, it's just like humans. Their lifespan lasts longer. So that's how we got the name Smiling Goat.

Yeah. And then, so I did not hire an employee for Smiling Goat until 2020. And again, you know, I always say, It really, like, life has worked out so perfectly that I had all these years of being and still being a PR person. During COVID, I get this email from a woman, completely cold, Outreach that says, I'm a certified recreation therapist.

I'm working for a local recovery organization and they brought me here from Washington and they now have found they don't have enough hours wondering if you do and at the same time on the horse boy international chat and I think it might Isaacson sent out. Is anybody a certified recreation therapist? And I think I chimed in something like, no, but I have one that wants a job. What's up?

And it turns out in certified recreation therapy you have to be supervised by Another certified recreation therapist, so you cannot so I can't supervise a college student who's interning as a rec therapist. It's a very strict licensure process with rec therapy. So what ended up happening was the intern that had contacted Rupert was a trick rider with equestrian chaos out of Alabama. And this young lady, Kaylee was already through college and had horse skills. She wasn't just a rec therapist.

And so I was like, okay, universe. Am I supposed to be listening to this? Is it time for me to get an employee? And I ended up going out to four donors. And said, Hey, I have this opportunity for a two for one. If we fund this salary I not only get this rec therapy person, we get a therapist on our team, which we really needed. She has horse skills and we get this intern who we'll have for 15 weeks who also has horse skills. And they all said yes. And we have never looked back.

Like I. I lost sleep at night worrying that I would not be able to continue to fund that salary. And it has just worked out like a dream again, the horse boy karma magic. And so we had Brooke here for 15 weeks and Brooke taught us mounted archery. And I Oh, my heaven. So that's an addition to our program. And we can actually long line kiddos that don't have riding skills and the horses understand what we are trying to do.

And they, I swear to you, help line up the kids so they can hit the targets. It's priceless. And so we're also going to build this piece out further for our veteran program and doing archery from the ground and then graduating them to archery from the back of the horse. And this is where your old schoolmaster horses really come in handy. They, they get it and they They end up helping the people, which I never understood that concept.

I remember Rupert, you saying to me when you were 1st, teaching me dressage is that with all the repetitions. The more you do it, your horses will then become so good that they will help you teach new people how to do it. And I remember thinking, is that really possible? Am I Cheryl Bartow really capable of this? Will this happen? And then Gates, our gentlemen horse was the first one to do that. And I had a DU student who actually had had a little bit of dressage.

And it was amazing to watch how that all took off. Really amazing. And I also remember the other piece of advice you gave me was don't worry, the good horses will come. I really thought that that was going to be such a hard piece. And Boy, it really has not. And the horses we have are so incredible. We have six of them and they all bring such different talents and gifts to the program.

And I, like, I, I just pinch myself on like, how wonderful they are in teaching other people and how kind they are with understanding what their jobs are, the professionals that they are.

And at the same time, you're willing to abandon the horse in a heartbeat if that's not where the kid is at. And it's so interesting that, you know, your average therapeutic riding place would not call itself after a goat. You know, right. Or your average dressage place, because you guys are practicing a lot of dressage, would not call itself after a goat. And what I love about that is, is, is that really projects a humility that says to a child or a family coming in, this is not the horse place.

And therefore, if you're intimidated or scared or not interested in the horse or whatever, therefore this is somehow not for you. Or if you're the person who's interested in, in the horse training side of the dressage that well, this is the dressage, you know, very important and serious, you know, no, no, I mean, it's, it's, it's called smiling goat. There's something that's so democratizing about that. And the roots in nature. There's also, of course, a whole other set of skills.

And I think it would really benefit listeners if you could go into this. So a lot of people now, obviously, the equine assisted world is a growing field. When I got into it, when you got into it, it was much more fringe. Governments were not. getting behind it outside of, you know, certain countries. Now that's changed. Particularly since COVID suddenly now we have found ourselves drawn from the hippie margins, you know, somewhat into the mainstream. And this is a good thing.

So a lot of people now are starting equine assisted practices. And of course, as soon as they do this, they run into the challenge of how do I not burn out? How do I fund it? Okay, maybe the government will pay for the kids to come, which of course they didn't when you and I began, but that's still not enough to, you know, keep the whole place running. What are your thoughts on the following? How do you not burn out?

You're an autism mum, still have your day job, you're running the ranch, you're dealing with a very large number of families coming in, needing a real broad range of services, not just the horses, How do you not burn out? And then the second part of the question is, as a PR person, if that's your parallel profession, what's your, what are the like the five tips that you would give people who are, who are running programs going, shit, you know, how do I, how do I actually sustain this?

What are those? So let's, let's start with the burnout one. How do you not burn out?

Oh, and it stands for ostrich, which is my maiden name, which I hated growing up, but my father is, was a past president of the American veterinary association. And he was. Dr. Ostrich. Yes, I kid you not. And but his name was very recognizable and he was a first generation college student, immigrants of Russian Jews. And his brothers and sisters are all small business owners. Every one of them from lawyer, interior design, construction company, and a very driven group.

So I feel like some of it is in my DNA and I will say that yoga is really Like, one of my self care things, like, I don't, I try to practice three times a week just to, but I can only do early morning classes and it seems like where we live in the Roaring Fork Valley, the earliest class is 7 a. m. and sometimes, like, I've already been up for three hours and I've jammed on a bunch of things because I have to get it done.

The other piece I would say is to me doing the horse training is not work and being with the horses is also very, very therapeutic for me. And I think like some people just think I'm a little crazy because of the different hats that I wear and You know, I sleep hard every night, 7 hours and they say, like, sleep is also 1 of those rejuvenation things we need. That's how mother nature made us.

And so, and I do spend a lot of time in nature, like, our, our society now is so technology focused and being on social media, I'm forced into it because of PR, but at the same time, like, social media has served smiling goat really, really well. And so, like, there's, I feel like. My life is so interconnected that there's not really separation of church and state. But I also think because I'm so passionate about Smiling Goat, I will do anything to advance whatever the goals are.

And To me, it's what drives me. It's what lights me up. It's not a, Oh God, I have to go do this. Also learning to delegate and letting go. The other piece, I think when I was that little girl POA person, nobody could touch my horse. It's my horse. It's my horse. And only I can make this horse canter. And Where did I hear a quote that what good is my horse if another person can't ride it? Right?

So it's letting go and trusting your tribe, trusting, training them to a point where you are confident in the decisions that they're going to make and not second guess their decisions. And so, like last week, Sunday, just this past Sunday, I had to drive. Three and a half hours to Denver to pick up a calf hutch for my goats in our new location. So for those of you who aren't ranchers, a calf hutch is like a gigantic dog house and we needed something for our goats for the winter.

And I have a pickup truck and I needed to drive to pick this thing up and one of my volunteers had texted me and said, Hey, I, we were talking about Gates, our gentlemen horse. He had three weeks ago, poor guy, cellulitis in one leg and an abscess in the other leg, both back legs. So literally, like, I have pictures of him soaking one leg, icing the other leg. And honestly, this is where that term, it takes a village comes into play, like, yes, I'm doing some of it.

But yes, when people offer to help, I'm accepting it. And so, on Sunday, 1 of the volunteers says, so Gates is now at hand walking status. She's like, can I also hand walk the donkeys with him? So we have too many donkeys that were donated last year and so she brought her daughter. The daughter's boyfriend and her, and she's from Sweden and lives in our valley and works for one of my real estate clients.

And they sent me these beautiful photos of them hand walking gates and the donkeys while I'm picking up the calf hutch. And then a third group was going to the other location where two other horses are, where that horse. Petey, who you have met Rupert, he's my master fancy and delusion fourth level dressage horse that yes was donated to the program and is an amazing animal. He had scraped his legs and needed dressings. So I'm driving to Denver.

I get photos from Newcastle, photos from Basalt, and everybody's being taken care of. So does that answer the question? I don't know. It's like, it's Also, I think you've

I think there's 11 rodeos in the summer before winter hits and the town did this amazing event this fall called the main event M A N E and they showcase different horse disciplines and smiling goat. And so we got to do a back riding demonstration and a classical dressage demo. And then they asked me, do you have other disciplines? So I brought in a Rainer to do raining and sliding stops and raining patterns. And then they hired a Mexican. Rodeo group that was the women's side saddle rider.

I had had the three quarter horses to start my program. We were growing. I was like, I need three more, but I don't want to just like take anything. And I put quietly the word out and a woman who has a horse rehab program in Grand Junction said, Oh my gosh, call so and so, she has cancer and needs to get rid of six horses. So I went up with my veterinarian and my first working student. Lily and we looked at these six horses and they wanted me to take all six, but I didn't have room for all six.

So we took three. And Dakota Prince and Leia and Dakota, I need to do a DNA on him the're. Some kind of draft, 'cause PMUs they picked. The big horses so that they're, they could harvest more urine. And Takoda has some kind of draft in him, but also something else. He's the most graceful, incredible dressage horse. But he has that draft horse, steady Eddie as they go mentality. We taught him how to pull a cart during COVID and I mean, he does sensory work. He does back riding.

You can do anything with this horse. He does not like to be a leader on the trail rides though. He does not like going through water obstacles, but anyway, back to the main event, they asked us to do a back riding demo. And I asked Kaylee, our rec therapist, I said, will you do the back riding while I narrate? So, we show up with our pool noodles.

And what I didn't realize, like, I thought there'd be, you A mixed age group to play tag, to show the game of tag, and now we teach kiddos on the spectrum the concepts of tag. So we had Kaylee back ride with a young girl who was neurotypical because she really, really, really wanted to do this. So we said, okay, Mela, you can be our back riding kiddo. We'll give you a pool noodle.

Well, my team had brought all of our pool noodles and you can imagine at a public event where there are 300 people, there are lots of children. We had eight kids in the arena. All with pool noodles playing tag with Dakota while I'm narrating and I'm telling the audience who is not, they're not, they don't know horses. Like you do not realize how spectacular this is. There are eight kids running at Dakota with pool noodles tagging him and Kaylee's doing walk to counter transitions. Absolutely.

Beautifully. I need to send you the videos. They're spectacular. And I was so proud of our horse and him doing this so gracefully, so kindly. And so like there wasn't one moment that he balked, bucked or spooked. And that says a lot. There is music playing. We've got an announcer system. 300 people watching, like, it was pretty special. And then Petey and I got to do the classical dressage. I was living my best life, like, he's doing passage and Spanish walk and flying lead changes.

And I was like, who knew that at this later point in my life that this would be happening. It was pretty special. Yeah. And we just got to promote Smiling Goat.

Tell people that when he meets them, his obsessions growing up were cars and trucks. So as a 4 year old, he could tell you every make and model on a road trip that what was going by you from cars to semis to whatever it was. And taking a page from the horse boy method is let's figure out how we're going to turn an obsession into a vocation. How do we do that?

And our first autism families, I don't know if you'll remember this Rupert, but they came to the demo at the rodeo grounds, little miss Mia and her parents, Maribel and Diego Latino family, bilingual Diego, very into cars and trucks and worked at a body shop and James would come out whenever that family was on the property and start talking with Diego and I was like, okay, this is cool. Well, then we had two different families, Latino boys who were obese. Nine year olds that weighed 150 pounds.

I, I couldn't get them on the horse myself. So I would say to James, Hey, Carlos is coming today. Will you just help me get him on to Dakota? And of course, Dakota was trained to stand next to you. We have a giant homemade mounting block. That's more like a platform, like a diving board platform. James would come out and help me.

And so there were little ways where he participated and then one time I was out of town and there was a storm and Adobe, our other quarter horses only 14 to jump the fence spooked in the storm. So she was out. James called me, said Adobe's out, and Adobe's a mare mare. She's beautiful. Loves James, like has always loved him. Like just, so he would often help me halter horses, move pastures help with turnout. And when she got out, I told him go get Gates. Go get Gates.

To her with gates and I bet she'll come to you and he did and he got her and he was so Empowered that he did this without any help and that I was if I was there I would have done the whole thing. So yes, he has participated but has been in a very Ancillary way. And just to add, I'm so proud of him. He just celebrated seven years with FedEx as a van driver. He has been a driver.

He goes in 45 minutes early every day for seven years because he doesn't like how the package handlers arrange his truck. And I said, why don't you just tell them how you want it? He said, no, it's way easier if I just go in and do it myself. So for seven years, that's what he's done. Yeah. Yeah. I

I mean, you might end up in some sort of white collar job at some point in your life, but if you don't know how to do the real jobs, what kind of skills can you build? And, but now people have been sold a kind of bill of goods, particularly more and more with social media that, you know, you've, you've got to live a certain lifestyle and blah, blah, blah, blah.

One of the gifts, as you said, of autism is That's not a thing that kind of judging yourself by others yet run the same, but I think back to myself, you know, coming out of college, I didn't have a job that was not a manual job, whether it was construction or horse training or window cleaning or whatever I needed to do to keep body and soul together so that I could become a writer. I worked only manually for, I'd say, almost 10 years.

And then little by little, I began publishing things and so on. And it gave me. Well, all the things you'd expect it to give me. Of course, James is lucky because he's coming out of the ranching background, and who knows where he'll end up. But the skills involved in being a FedEx driver, that's huge. Huge, huge, huge, that the responsibility is massive, the just killing people on the road, let alone, you know, all of the logistics involved. It's,

Animal buddies on his route, so he tells me about the Calico cat and he'll send me selfies of the cat on his shoulder because it jumped in his truck and he's got other dogs that he knows and all their breeds and all their like, he's connected with like, The pet shop owner that's next to Walmart and it's, it's been perfect for him. He also says he wants to start his own business someday. So maybe he will, he thinks he wants to be a tow truck driver.

And I said, well, maybe you should ride around with one for a while and see, you know, he originally wanted to be a long haul trucker. And after life skills school, his after school care person was married to a truck driver. So I said, Hey, Deb, do you think Chris would let James go with him? She's like, absolutely. So James went on this adventure with him and when he came back, he's like, Oh, I didn't realize like how much work that it's not just driving.

Like they have to load, they have to unload, they have to like show up at 4am at places. Like it really opened his eyes. And it, I think, you know, I said, you probably should do that with a Toe truck driver too. I have no idea what it's like to be a tow truck driver, but I'm guessing like I've called to be rescued a few times and I'm imagining there's a lot of problems goes on with that.

But they are very alive and well, and he just got married to another fellow ROTC captain, and she is a pilot, and she flies C 130s, and I think one of the things They are cargo planes and she does search and rescue. So in theory, she could be rescuing Mark's unit if they got into trouble. Like it's, it's kind of crazy. And they just got married October 10th. I'm like over the moon. She is an amazing human. Her, First weekend visiting with us. She volunteered.

She got out there and helped me do sensory work with a family. Like she's an amazing human. They both are. And I think for Mark being the younger son of having a special needs, older brother, Almost moves you into the older child's position in the family and Mark is a very stoic human with an enormous heart and doesn't show a lot of emotions and Ella, his wife, which is so fun to say his wife She brings out the absolute best in him and she is super outgoing and very, very driven.

She is studying for her master's while she's getting all her hours in for flight school. They both are stationed now in Tucson. He just got transferred to Tucson and Mark is, he's a really deep, you know, Deep thinker, and I really believe that growing up with a special needs brother, he, I don't think I realized the level of compassion Mark has because of. That experience, and I'm so incredibly proud of both of them there. I could cry

How do I now get funded? Like you've addressed and faced all these things single handed. You know something about PR. What's your advice to us?

Honestly, with smiling goat, it is almost impossible to run into somebody who's not affected by autism. Or has a veteran in their life or somebody who is in recovery or affected by trauma. Like we're humans and this is what connects us all. And the other big piece of advice is taking names and keeping track of them and having lists. And this is where It's easy to let that slip. And here's an example. Was it 2 weeks ago? 3 weeks ago?

The Arc of the Central Rockies did something similar to that Virginia medical conference you were at, not that Virginia medical conference you were at, not White at that level, but they basically invited pediatricians from Denver to Grand Junction to come for a, a medical conference talking about neurodiversity.

And they asked us, Smiling Goat, along with several other Therapeutic services to, so a syndicate was there, for example, the other autism group and they asked us to be there for the lunch hour where the doctors could come out, go around the tables and understand what resources they could refer their patients to. And so I met. I think I got 11 names from that. I would engage in conversation with people. And then, you know, two of them were doctors from Children's Hospital in Denver.

And I thought, I said to one of them, Do you remember so and so? He used to work in your unit. He was a special needs dad, a nurse practitioner who moved out of town. And he said to me, Cheryl, I would like to figure out a way where we can diagnose kids in a ranch setting rather than in an office. Yes. And how much nicer, right, would that be than having kids having to go into the scary doctor office? It's freaking brilliant, right?

And I said to this doctor, so I have her name in my, I never go anywhere with, this is so old school notebook, but my little spiral ring notebook, I had every one of those doctors and nurse practitioners write their email addresses down. So I will be following up and saying, Hey, so great to meet you. So that's the other thing is follow through is another tip. It's like, if you have to make notes to yourself to follow up, it's so I have this 11 people.

So for me being in PR, plugging in 11 emails is not a big deal, but for some people that could be a project. So creating like some kind of either an Excel spreadsheet or a MailChimp database where you're storing these names so you can segment your list. Here are your doctors, here are your volunteers, here are your donors, here are and it's knowing like I am a little obsessive about my lists, but I really believe it is it pays off. The other tip is the news media.

that are in your marketplace, make friends with them, invite them to your, see your organization in action. I guarantee you'll get a story and that's free publicity. And it's not hard.

Yeah Yeah, yeah but you know, we make gods of the media, don't we? So I think a lot of people are quite intimidated to approach. For sure. What's the best way for them to approach their local TV, radio, whatever.

We were asked to table at a volunteer fair For the local public radio station in Aspen, I was like, yes, of course. So we go up, we take a goat with us, we're at the booth. And so I have a very simple marketing booth. It's not, it doesn't even need to cost money. It's a table. With a tablecloth, we have a brochure and I literally, like, we print out sign up sheets. Like, give me your email. What's your interest? Would you like to be on our mailing list? Would you like to be a volunteer?

And you engage in conversation with people. Well, guess what? One of their arts and culture reporters was walking around. She came up to us and said, I've never heard of you guys. I'd love to come down and do a story. So she came down and did an NPR style story where she was, We had a family that said it was okay for her to be there. She's interviewing mom and dad. She's interviewing the child. She's interviewing Kaylee about being a rec therapist.

I mean, I could not have dreamed of a better piece and it was right before one of our fundraisers. It was brilliant. The other tactic I will sometimes use, especially when you're, So, newspapers, radio stations, everybody's changed since covid. They are short staffed and sometimes they don't have time to come see your place. So, we were part of Horses for Mental Health Month last May and I wanted to kick off the month, of course, with this big media splash.

So I typed up a news release and the news release was like. the perfect story of what I wanted to see published. In Aspen, believe it or not, we still have two printed newspapers that are free. And everybody reads them. And we landed on the front page with a photo that I supplied, Kicking Off Horses for Mental Health Month, on one of them. And then the other one, because they're competitors, but they're free. Took a different angle, but we had already had a relationship with both papers.

So that's also part of it's don't think of it as once and done, but think of it as building a relationship. And I swear you bring a person onto your property and they meet your animals. They'll fall madly in love and they will. We put them through the horse boy sensory work. Try this. See how you feel. See how this makes you feel. It's well worth your time. So those would be my main tips to get you started. I also, we do a lot of grant writing and it's with our local municipalities.

So that would be the local cities and towns. And then the counties, they all have health and human services grants and, they are very generous. If you put together the right story about your funding needs. And so we have been funded by 2 counties in our valley and 3 towns consistently for 9 years. So,

And I know you have to one things I wanted to ask you before I let you go is can people contact you for mentoring? Because you've really shown what can be done. When you have to hold down a job. Okay. Some of the time that you've been doing this, you've had partner. Sometimes you haven't. Sometimes you've been single mom, you know, also your special needs mom. You've had to hold down multiple careers at the same time.

But you made a real go of it and you are without a doubt, we've seen it the cutting edge of this work in the Western states. You know, there's you there's obviously Joel Dunlap up out at Square Peg and some others, but you know, there's people who really stand out as the gold standard. You are definitely out there. And how to. Integrate these other worlds of therapy, rec therapy and so on and so on into that the horse training side the funder Can people come and train with you?

Can people reach out to you for consultancy? can people allow Cheryl Bartow to mentor them because I As you say this is a growing field and I meet so many young people now who are wanting to go into this But they're lost. They don't quite know how all for people that are running their show, but are wondering, and they're a little bit stuck, how do they get to the next, how do, what, what can, can you do things for them? How do they contact you? Can they, can you mentor them?

I'll shut up and let you answer now.

In like the horse piece or the running the nonprofit piece or running the business piece. I am here to help. I would love to on the smiling goat side. We do have an internship program and a working student program and with the

Really so, with the internship program, that's really driven by the universities themselves. So we have agreements right now with 7 different universities nationwide for either social work or recreation therapy, and then the working student program can really be anybody who wants to focus more on the horse side of things. But also still helps deliver sessions to our kiddos and our veterans. And those. Are they can be designed based on your needs and your timeframes.

We get a lot, we've had a handful that of gap year kids. So, that works. It could even be post college if, if somebody wanted to do that. I'm always willing to look at anything and, and see if it's a good fit. So.

And I would love to see it go all over the world, which I feel like you have started that already.

Oh, and by the way, the horses for mental health week or month that you referred to also for people looking for mentorship, do check out our previous podcast with Lynn Thomas, who runs that if you are running a program and you need some help with your PR, that's exactly what the horses for mental health thing. Is there to do and it's there to help you get your story out So do check out the lynn thomas thing because this happens every year.

Listen to what she has to say on that podcast and and Profit from it But absolutely. Yeah

These include easy to do online courses and tutorials that bring you and your horse joy. For an overview of all shows and programs, go to rupert isaacson.com. See you on the next show. And please remember to press, subscribe and share.