Santa Rosa teen receives life-changing lessons on horseback

In the heart of Sonoma County’s Valley of the Moon sits a 6-acre ranch with a bright red barn, a spacious riding arena and a double-duty mission for good.

That’s where 16-year-old Martha Ockpenfuss rides and exercises Mr. McGoo, a 22-year-old Arabian horse who came to the ranch after his owners could no longer afford to care for him.

Ockpenfuss, a petite Santa Rosa High School student, says her experience with the animal has in turn helped her deal with emotional issues and feelings of inadequacy.

“I was really good at hiding my social anxiety, so it feels so good to be around a beautiful creature that isn’t going to judge me,” she said. “He calms me and teaches me about patience, respect and boundaries.”

Ockpenfuss is one of the thousands of teenagers, mostly girls, who have joined the Equine Assisted Skills for Youth, a nonprofit organization founded by Linda Aldrich.

“We’re dealing with many kids that come out of the foster care program and have issues of abandonment and attachment,” said Aldrich of Santa Rosa. “Because horses provide a ton of unconditional love, it’s a great place to start the healing process.”

She believes her EASY program, which can take years to complete, works better than talk therapy or pharmaceutical drugs for helping teenagers open up, connect and form relationships.

That belief comes from her personal experience.

When she was 8, Aldrich fell in love with the Howarth Park Pony Corral in Santa Rosa.

“I knew I had to volunteer there, and I convinced my dad to buy me a horse when I was 10,” she recalled.

That horse helped her deal with her own issues of anxiety, depression and an eating disorder - issues many of her young riders deal with today.

Now, decades later, she runs EASY, where she matches girls from ages 12 to 18 with horses.

Mariah Blevins is a perfect example of how the equine experience helped shape her life.

She started volunteering at age 12 and now, after six years of dedicated work, she recently has completed the program.

For her, the idyllic, peaceful setting had been a safe haven from what she described as a chaotic family with five siblings and little structure.

“The ranch really provided me with a place to spend time, make a lot of friends, work with animals and form a bond that was irreplaceable,” Blevins said. “You can’t get a bond like the one you can get with a horse.”

Through that experience, she learned how to work with the public and develop social skills that are now helping her in her current job working at a dog kennel.

She also is attending Santa Rosa Junior College full time, is on the soccer team and plans to earn a degree in sociology and eventually go into social work.

Like Blevins and the other teens in the program, the horses they ride also have had to deal with emotional difficulties. Many were severely neglected, abused or abandoned before they found their way to Aldrich’s ranch.

Right now the ranch features 12 Arabian, Quarter and crossbred horses and ponies.

Some are retired racehorses, while one was abandoned because it failed to make its owner’s polo team. Another - a pony named Lucy - was found in a field of broken-down cars.

The upkeep for these 1,000-pound animals is immense. Aldrich figures each horse costs about $6,000 a year to feed, groom and house. Yet she doesn’t fund the expense by charging EASY participants.

“My $3,000 feed bill is more than my monthly mortgage,” she said, adding that her nonprofit took a big financial hit last year because of the North Bay wildfires.

In fact, they forced her to cancel her annual fundraising event last year. But she acknowledges it could have been worse.

“We are grateful. ... We were literally surrounded by fire,” she recalled of the blazes in October 2017 that raged through Wine Country.

“The flames were racing down the ridge and exploding the oaks behind our property,” she said. “We had to evacuate all the horses and there was a lot of chaos and trauma at the time.”

Luckily, the ranch and all the animals survived, and this year she’s back in business and was able to put on her 12th annual fundraiser.

The event allows the participants to show off their equine skills, where they tack, lunge and run the horses before an eager crowd that surrounds the arena.

For Aldrich, watching the teens perform gives her a deep sense of satisfaction, knowing both human and horse get a second chance no matter what their circumstances.