Inspiring Conversations with Monica Tapia of Healing Saddles INC

Today we’d like to introduce you to Monica Tapia.

Hi Monica, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Our story, Monica and Jody Tapia and Healing Saddles INC:

Jody has always lived around horses-team ropes, cowboys, trains horses, and the whole lifestyle. He is a retired police officer. I, Monica, am a practicing Speech-Langauge Pathologist and owner of a pediatric therapy agency in the Phoenix area. When we started dating 16 years ago, one of the first big conversations we had was, “ Someday we are going to combine what we do, with horses and give back to our community”. We just didn’t know when or how that was going to happen. Then COVID hit! Everything shut down. The special needs population I serve lost their routines and social interaction. We saw people struggling in ways no one was talking about. We were struggling too. In 2020 Jody and I looked at each other and said, “We have the land, we have the horses, we have the professional skills-why are we waiting?”. We officially formed Healing Saddles as a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit. Our idea is simple…create a place where children with disabilities could keep growing even when schools and clinics were closed, where at-risk teens could work through social-emotional challenges, and where first responders carrying PTSD could just breathe for an hour without having to explain anything. We were donated Ellie Mae (a retired ranch horse) who seemed to have keen interested in the population that would visit. We then realized that we were also helping the equine population as well. Ellie Mae just seemed so loving and so eager to interact with those that would visit. After she passed in 2023, we were able to use fundraising to purchase a therapy horse, Bella. She was a rescue that lived and worked as a therapy horse in Cave Creek. Bella is our main therapy riding horse, we have 3 other horses we use that are considered ‘ground’ horses. So, we started and stayed a small nonprofit. We continue to serve kids with special needs (autism, Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy and other disabilities), at risk youth working on emotional regulation and life skills, and active or retired first responders managing PTSD, burnout or the like. We are intentionally small. We decided early on that we were also not going to charge a fee as some other hippotherapy and equine therapy companies do. We fund Healing Saddles through our own personal monetary means and offset some of the expenses with donations. We enjoy hosting our annual Exceptional kids rodeo where we give back to our community with a day of fun and food. We love opening our gates and watch adults and children arrive with eager excitement displayed on their face and enjoy developing their skills and healing with our horses, cows and land!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I would say that finding reliable volunteers and fundraising is probably the most challenging as both my husband and I are used to giving and not taking. But we realize, it is not possible to maintain Healing Saddles without the additional and supplementary fundraising so we try our best. We have met great people along the way and have formed our own little community which is very rewarding. Other than that, it has been a pretty smooth road.

What are your plans for the future?
We are content as a small organization. We would love to be larger and offer more services however this is challenging given our other obligations and current life circumstances.

Pricing:

• $0.00

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Healingsaddles.org
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HealingSaddles