Justine grew up on a horse ranch in Hollister and in a house
full of drug addicts.
San Martin – Justine grew up on a horse ranch in Hollister and in a house full of drug addicts.
She participated in barrel racing and other rodeo events as child, but by the time she was a teenager she had given up tacking and riding arenas for drugs and alcohol. She ran away from home repeatedly and got in trouble with the police.
“Before I got put in a group home, I did what I wanted to do,” she said recently. “I got in trouble a lot. Before I got sent to a group home, I lost a lot of myself.”
But never her love for horses, so she leapt at the chance to join DreamPower Horsemanship and spend a few hours a week tramping around on horseback. She never imagined that what she thought of as playtime would save her life.
“Of course I wanted to join,” said Justine, who didn’t want to use her last name. “I thought I was just going to ride. I didn’t know it was going to be ‘therapy’ therapy.”
But therapy is what she got. When she arrived at DreamPower in May 2004, Justine wanted to ride, but experienced or not, she had to start with the basics like everyone else. She had to work up to riding with lessons in grooming, leading and haltering. And as she learned about how horses communicate with people and each other, she began to understand her own behavior.
“Justine got no special treatment even though she had the skills,” said Martha McNiel, the therapist who started DreamPower in San Martin, in 2002. “We told her she was going to have to do therapy work to ride. It was a reward for doing the therapeutic work.”
Justine had just gotten clean after two years of drug abuse. She was often agitated, constantly searching for a rush.
McNiel worked with Justine to teach her the value of moving slow, to relax, and think before she acted. Like most kids who go from a life of delinquent independence to a group home, Justine had trouble adjusting to all the rules thrust upon her. She often thought of running away to return to her old habits, but the horses kept her desire to flee corralled.
“There were a lot of times I thought ‘to hell with this place,’ but I never ran,” she said of the group home she lived in for 16 months. “It (DreamPower) gave me something to look forward to each week.”
Justine is perhaps DreamPower’s greatest success story. She’s been clean for 20 months, lives with her brother in Hollister, and now works with other kids in the program. Aside from McNiel, DreamPower’s entire staff is volunteer, but McNiel is trying to secure grant funding to make Justine the program’s first paid employee. Justine wants to become a veterinarian after graduating from high school next year.
“Justine is very gifted working with horses,” McNiel said. “We’re trying to help her pursue that in a formal way so she can support herself doing that.”
Today, Justine is such a confident rider that she prefers a blanket to stirrups and reins. Young and inexperienced riders need the sense of security the tacking provides. Some older riders can’t do without it, but not Justine. Horseback is where she belongs.
When she turns 18 she’ll be allowed to work with other kids from group homes, but in the meantime she helps other clients learn to ride. She said working at DreamPower has taught her how lucky she is in life compared to some of the people she works with at the ranch.
“I feel like I’m doing something positive for someone who wants to have interaction with animals. I’m not just doing something for me; I’m doing something for someone else,” she said. “Before I got put in a group home, I lost a lot of myself. Coming here opened my eyes to a better future. Once I was lost, but now I’m found.”
