North Bay Spirit Award winner Kelley Holly gives abused horses a second chance

To Kelley Holly, no animal, however abused or neglected, is broken.

Her first pony ride at age 10 months planted the seed for Holly's devotion to horses in particular. For decades, the Petaluma teacher and riding coach has been committed to turning forgotten and abused horses into gentle champions for the young girls and boys she trains in the niche sport of vaulting.

There is Trident, a draft horse left to starve before the Humane Society rescued him and a companion goat which were tied to a tree and neglected. Trident kept his friend alive by dropping branches down for him to eat. The two were emaciated and inseparable when Holly brought them to her Tambourine Farm in northeast Petaluma, where she teaches riders as young as 18 months and as old as 70 to perform amazing acrobatics on horseback.

Then there was Remi, a pawn in a divorce battle. An embittered husband wrangled custody of his ex's horse and fattened him up to sell for meat in retribution. Remi was on his way to a slaughterhouse in Canada when Holly got a tip from a contact at an inspection station along the way who thought the horse was sweet and might have promise.

Called a vet

The inspector persuaded the driver to allow Holly to buy Remi for the price of meat. With no time to waste, she drove with her horse trailer to Willits, where Remi was being held in a Taco Bell parking lot.

“I brought him home and immediately called the vet and started him on a specialized diet so his liver would properly function,” she said. Remi has since lost 600 pounds and has been trained to work with Holly's 17-member Tambourine Vaulters team.

Zack came to the ranch suffering from scoliosis, or roach back, and a sore beneath his chin that wouldn't heal. The sore came from a too-small halter, but Zack also had a wire stuck in his tongue.

“He had been abandoned at a barn in the East Bay,” Holly said. After surgery at UC Davis, he was trained and is now being readied for competition.

Holly rehabilitates the horses with love, medical attention and gentle training, then uses them as object lessons that every creature has worth and can overcome obstacles. She wants her young charges to see that if those horses can survive and triumph in the arena, so can they.

Her efforts over so many years on behalf of young equestrians and abused and neglected horses have earned Holly February's North Bay Spirit Award.

A joint project of The Press Democrat (Sonoma Media Investments) and Comcast, the award honors everyday heroes, people whose good deeds or community service go well beyond normal volunteering. Recipients demonstrate initiative and leadership. Moreover, they go all-in for their cause.

“She's helping to teach the kids to see the potential in people,” said Sarah Johnson, a Cotati mother whose two children both learned vaulting under Holly. “She put work and love and time and patience into those horses, and they wound up champion horses. You don't have to (have) a horse with some fancy pedigree that cost $50,000 or $100,000. You can just be someone who works hard and trains and tries and gets there.”

A four-person Tambourine team went to a national competition and captured a first place performing with Remi.

“He was really good. We actually won a barrel for our team,” said Alice Brookston, 15, of Cotati. “Four of us got medals and Remi got recognized. He got a ribbon and got to walk in the parade.”

Holly's vaulting students are not allowed to say they can't do something. The penalty if they do? Pushups, the number determined by how many heard the remark.

“They may not be able to do it right now or they may say ‘I'm struggling with it,'?” said Holly, a petite woman with a mane of chestnut hair pulled back from a girlish face. “But we don't say ‘I can't,' because you can. You just have to figure out how.”

Jaw-dropping acrobatics

For nearly 40 years Holly has been keeping alive the art of equine vaulting, a mixture of acrobatics and gymnastics done on stationary vaults and on the backs of walking, trotting or cantering horses. She charges a nominal fee to her students to keep it affordable, drawing no salary and using the income to help defray the huge cost of feed and vet bills. Using rescue horses and training them herself allows her to charge less than other coaches.

She sinks half her paycheck as a teacher of honors biology and physiology at Casa Grande High School into supporting her animals and the Tambourine Vaulters team, which she organized as a young woman in 1983 so she could compete in a sport with few coaches and clubs compared to other equine activities.

Over the decades Holly has won the hearts of hundreds of young people, who gather in the covered arena at her farm off Liberty Road to learn acrobatics of jaw-dropping derring-do like something from a circus.

“Kelley is a super-caring person. She has such a huge heart and she always takes everyone under her wing and helps you reach your fullest potential,” said Amanda Neuweiler, 15, who has trained with Holly for eight years and is now working on advancing to international competition. “She helps everyone she can. If you have a goal, she'll help you achieve it.”

Jaimee Modica, whose daughter, Frankie, 11, started vaulting at age 7, described Holly as “an amazing woman who has completely dedicated her entire life to this cause.”

Her attention to detail, Modica added, runs from the large to the small.

“If she even becomes aware somebody has a hole in her outfit, Kelley has her fanny pack and whips out her needle and thread and sews them up,” she said.

The 56-year-old Holly brings to coaching a lifetime of competitive riding, including Saddle Seat, Western, English and Basic Dressage. After a long career in classroom teaching, she also knows how kids tick.

A background in both human and veterinary medicine - as a teen, she took a three-year course in vet medicine through 4-H, working under a large-animal vet - helps her ensure the safety of her riders and administer basic care for her animals.

Safest equestrian sport

The sight of a child standing up or doing handstands on a moving horse is enough to make a mother's heart stop. Holly has had students as young as 3. But according to the American Vaulting Association, it is, statistically, the safest equestrian sport and produces fewer injuries than riding a bike or climbing on playground equipment.

Holly, nonetheless, said bumps and bruises are inevitable with vaulting.

“There are injuries. I try and mitigate those as much as possible and never give a kid a movement until I feel they are physically ready or emotionally ready,” she said.

Falls will happen. “When they fall they have to be taught how to roll so they don't stick an arm out and break an arm or leg. We always talk about what you're going to do if you lose control and how do you get out of this safely.”

Modica said Holly is so calm and skillful, she never feels nervous watching. “It's all so organized and clean and controlled.”

Holly studied pre-med and spent a year in medical school at UC Davis, dropping out only after her father, Clyde Harvey Holly, died suddenly of a brain aneurism suffered during a Valley of the Moon Riding Club dance, leaving her to care for their 3-acre Sonoma farm and support her emotionally stricken mother.

Her medical training helps her understand the physiology of the sport for her students' greatest success and safety.

“Since I know how the muscles and the joints work I can explain it to them so they can feel it within themselves and then do it,” she said.

“What I teach in my program is that these are 1,000-pound animals and you have to have control of yourself and your emotions. And you have to do everything correctly so that you don't get hurt.”

Life of riding

Holly discovered her life's passion riding the ponies at Berkeley's Tilden Park near her El Cerrito home.

“My dream was to ride on the free ones, but I was really short. So they made an exception for me when I was 3. I was hooked. I knew this is what I want to do.”

She got her own horse at 5, which her parents stabled down the highway in El Sobrante. By the time she was 9, her father, a dog trainer who also worked for Chevron USA, decided they needed a farm. In addition to horses, the Hollys had cattle, sheep, dogs, chickens, ducks, goats and a big vegetable garden. Holly put herself through college selling rabbits to local restaurants and at fairs.

She rode competitively throughout her childhood and was a standout member of the Valley of the Moon Riding Club. She was introduced to vaulting at camp when she was in junior high school and took it up seriously in high school, joining a Point Reyes club and later driving to practices in Santa Cruz and in Oregon during the summer.

At 18, while a student at UC Davis, she revitalized the school's vaulting team and back home in Sonoma, launched the Tambourine Vaulters, officially registering the club in 1983.

“There weren't any clubs in the area. I wanted to do it and I thought this would be something that others would enjoy as well. In order to do team events at that time you needed at least eight people.”

During her own years of competition she won multiple medals, including golds at the national level. She has twice been the American Vaulting Association National 2-phase gold women's champion.

But perhaps her most rewarding accomplishment has been helping other vaulters achieve their dreams.

“I wanted to do this as a nonprofit. There are a lot of clubs which charge almost five times what we do, just for lessons. But I want to keep it so kids with multiple kids in the family can still participate or people who wouldn't be able to afford it to still have the experience of doing an activity with horses,” she said.

“I really feel it helps them in so many different ways. It helps them in school. It helps them socially. There's just a lot of positive that comes out of it. And if you exclude (kids) because of money, you're doing a detriment to the whole community.”

Her $120-a-month fee includes a minimum of eight practices a month and three-hour practices five days a week in summer.

She has worked with many children with special needs, including those who are visually and hearing impaired and children with autism, ADHD and cerebral palsy.

“They become just another part of the group and their disabilities are not emphasized. We've had kids with lots of different type of learning disorders. We don't point it out.”

Resilience

Holly has had her disappointments, but like a good rider, she takes her falls and gets back on the horse. A heart condition that came to light when she was a teenager sidelined her for while. Her father's death was a blow on many levels. She knew she couldn't manage the farm and continue medical school, so she redirected her dreams, earning a teaching credential at Sonoma State and later an administrative credential.

“Life is what you make it,” she said. “The only thing you can control is how you respond to things. That is how I grew up and how I look at things. Yes, this has taken place. But there's got to be a positive in it, and the positive has to come from me.”

She brings her fascination with animals and anatomy and physiology into the classroom, hatching chicken eggs, keeping a classroom rabbit and training her golden retriever to be an educational therapy dog for students with special needs.

Her tender side extends to all creatures great and small. Her menagerie at home includes a cockatiel named Hedwig, who got into the school and injured its eyes and a wing flying into windows. Students brought the bird to Miss Holly, hoping she could fix it.

“Now she's completely blind but she's a very happy bird,” Holly said.

Her greatest devotion is to her horses, especially those with special needs. She looks for those who project a compassion and “a certain willingness, an eagerness to learn.”

During the 2017 wildfires Holly helped evacuate people and haul horses. Last fall during the power outages and the Kincade fire, she delivered water for livestock, filling up from her own well or anywhere she could find potable water for animals.

Claudia Sonder, an equine vet in Napa Valley who has cared for Holly's animals for 20 years, said she has “a heart of gold,” going above and beyond to care for horses others might have given up on, including by financing expensive surgeries.

For Holly, it's about far more than the spectacle, sport, ribbons and medals.

“It's very much a family,” she said. “I think for me that's what the team is about. It's creating bonds among all the kids and the families. It's a sense of community. I will keep coaching vaulting as long as kids want to come.”

Staff Writer Meg McConahey can be reached at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com.