A healing place: Sunrise Horse Farm helps people deal with problems

By: Cindy Hodgson, Herald Times Reporter

REEDSVILLE — Sunrise Horse Farm was developed to be a place of healing for children and teens, but it turns out the benefits of the farm near Reedsville know no age limits.

Michele Jaeckel, Valders, read about the farm for disadvantaged young people not long after her 17-year-old son, Josh, died in a car accident in August.

She loves horses and children and thought the program sounded "like a beautiful thing" so she called the farm and began volunteering there.

"It's really helped," Jaeckel said.

She bonded with Ryan Blashka, 18, the first young person to start coming to the farm after it opened in early October.

Jaeckel meets Blashka at the horse farm every week.

"We're just buddies now," she said. "I see a lot of qualities that Josh had in him."

Blashka, a junior at Reedsville High School, said his mom read about Sunrise Horse Farm in the newspaper and asked him whether he wanted to participate. He said he knew it was something he needed to do because he had problems interacting with people.

"This helped me a lot with being around people," he said.

Blashka said he is no longer "solo."

At home, school and in public, "He's more social than he was before," said his mom, Kim Blashka.

Mary Ellen Kiel is the primary founder of Sunrise Horse Farm, located east of Reedsville.

Kiel said Blashka and two other young people who started coming to the farm last fall continued through the winter.

Blashka said he didn't have any experience with horses but he's "good with animals automatically." Now he knows how to brush, clean, walk and feed them.

Not only have his interpersonal skills improved, his grades have improved dramatically since he began spending time at the horse farm, Kiel said.

Being there helps him focus better on his schoolwork when he gets home and even in school the next day, Blashka said.

He has bonded especially with a horse named Sadie.

As a volunteer, Jaeckel's role is to be an encouragement to the young people who come to the farm, but it's not a one-way street for her and Blashka.

"We both help each other out," she said.

"It's the best thing that could happen," Kim Blashka said about her son's time at Sunrise Horse Farm.

Dawn Horswill of rural Manitowoc said she called the farm the day she saw the article in the newspaper. She thought it would be a good experience for her daughter, Makayla, 8, whom the Horswills adopted a couple of years ago. Horswill said she thought it would help with some of her daughter's issues from the past, such as helping her learn to relinquish control and come to realize she can be a child.

It also teaches children to be kind to animals, she said, which is an issue often faced by children from troubled circumstances. Horswill said she thinks the horse therapy program can help children with reactive attachment disorder, which is characterized by difficulty in bonding.

"The neat thing is just seeing the horse and the child bond together," Kiel said, referring to all of the participants.

Each participant works with the same horse each time in order to foster the development of a bond between the two, Kiel said.

Sunrise Horse Farm has seven horses.

"They've all been donated to us," Keil said "We really have some great horses."

The program is designed for participants to spend 90 minutes at the farm once each week, although the frequency varies. Participation is free, and the program is run entirely by volunteers.

Participants help with feeding, brush the horses, lead them, and some eventually ride the horses. They learn natural horsemanship, which stresses the relationship between the person and the horse and involves communicating with body language, getting the horse to respond because that's what it wants to do.

The 17th participant signed up last week, Kiel said. She has four volunteers and three more starting soon.

"It's been going wonderful, just wonderful," she said.

For information, call Kiel at (920) 772-4135.

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