Xenophon Therapeutic Riding Center

A wonderful send-off was given to Judy and Janet by the volunteers on Sunday, August 15, 2010. It was held at the beautiful home of Lee and Mary Andersen and hosted by both Mary Andersen and Mary Wunderlich. A huge thank you goes to both those ladies for their planning and hard work. As many of you know we are sending Judy off into retirement. There would be no Xenophon without her. Judy, we wish you much relaxation and many hours of bridge! Janet is heading off to Samuel Merritt University to study Occupational Therapy. Good luck with your classes, Janet. You will still see Janet “around the barn”, as she will still be teaching occasionally. Both of you have been an inspiration through your dedication and hard work. Thank you!

View the rest of the images here.

Tineke was born in The Netherlands, and came to the United States in 1965.  She has four beautiful daughters, ages 26, 29, 32, and 33.   While her girls may be out of the house now, it is by no means empty.  She has birds, a dog, cats, chickens, a llama, and a horse.

Tineke has been involved with horses for over 20 years, ever since her youngest daughter joined Pony Club.  She loves dressage and has competed successfully at 1st level.   When she is not training in the arena, she loves just being out for a trail ride.

What makes Tineke such an amazing instructor is that she is also a licensed Physical Therapist.  She loved physical therapy because it offered so many different settings in which to practice and offered her the opportunity to continue to learn and specialize.  In 1995 she attended a seminar on Hippotherapy.  With her PT degree, this was the perfect opportunity for Tineke to combine the things she loved, her career and horses.  At the time, she could not find a local hippotherapy program and so she came to volunteer for Xenophon.  She obtained her instructor certification with the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association and began teaching for Xenophon.  When a hippotherapy program was started at NCEFT (National Center for Equine Facilitated Therapy) in Woodside, she began practicing with them and then was instrumental in getting a hippotherapy program started at Xenophon.

Tineke now practices 2 days a week at Xenophon, continues to practice at NCEFT, and has helped develop a new program, at Access Adventure, a program started by Michael Muir.  She assisted  in starting  therapeutic driving, therapeutic riding, and hippotherapy at that Center.  In addition to all these things, Tineke and her husband, who is an orthopedic surgeon, are very active in Healthcare Volunteer Overseas.  This is an organization that offers education to professional healthcare workers in foreign countries.  Their travels with HVO have taken them to Vietnam, the Philippines, India, Cambodia, Uganda and Haiti.

Xenophon is very fortunate to have Tineke on staff.  We hope you will all have a chat with her next time you see her at the center.  She is a fascinating person with wonderful stories to share.

This season saw the addition of a second session of hippotherapy. Our wonderful therapist, Tineke Jacobsen, is now doing hippotherapy on Tuesday mornings in addition to Thursday afternoons. This allowed us to move 5 students into the program from out waitlist. Many of you may not know that Hippotherapy requires the horse to be driven from behind, rather than led. Cocoa and Kiwi have a taken a huge liking to the driving and are solid hippotherapy horses. Echo will be joining those ranks in the near future. A big thank you goes out to Mary Wunderlick and Judy Levine who went through extensive long-lining training and now come to “drive” our horses on Tuesday mornings.

Xenophon is off to a great start this season. Our first session began on June 7th and it has been non-stop ever since. We are teaching therapeutic riding on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, in addition to Saturday mornings.

Go to “HORSES” at the top of the site and check out Pooh – she’s the last one listed….

Xenophon had another amazing turnout for its pre-season volunteer training.  More than 50 people came and braved the cold and fog to go through the 3-hour training course.  You probably have seen many of these new faces at lessons.  We thank all of our volunteers, seasoned and new, for your hard work and dedication.  We couldn’t get by without you.

Following our volunteer training we had a horse handler training session.   Our horse handlers learned techniques designed to ensure the safety of our volunteers and students and provide consistency for our horses.  This consistency makes our horses’ job much easier for them.    We thank all of you who came and also thank our staff, who worked hard to put on a very successful day.

Twenty-three wonderful volunteers showed up for the annual Xenophon pre-season workday.  Donning gloves, vacuums, dust rags, clippers and paint brushes, the many hands made light work of sprucing up the center for the opening on the first week of June.

The Orinda City Council honored Judy for her years of service to the community. Many people came too. It was a great honor and much appreciated

After 20 years, Judy is retiring to read and eat bonbons.

Xenophon would like to welcome Mari Parino who will be our new executive director. Mari worked at Xenophon as program director five years ago. After spending time in Thailand and LA she and Sam are returning to the bay area for good. I am very pleased to be able to leave Xenophon in her hands.

We will also be welcoming Danielle Coburn as our new program director. She has experience in teaching, administration and fund raising, so will be valuable addition to Xenophon. Janet Alexander will be leaving her position as program director to return to school to become an occupational therapist. She will remain as an instructor throughout the summer.  Zette Thierry will be moving on to start her own business.

Heidi Koch had a little party for her horses with children and cake to highlight the occasion.  It was also a fundraiser for Xenophon. Fun was had by all!

“The Great Gatsby” and the roaring 20′s were back!

Guests donned festive finery and joined us for a lively evening.

All proceeds went to benefit our wonderful riding center.

Thank you to Clark Construction:   Our Corporate Sponsor

Your photographer had a great time at the gala. Congratulations to all who attended and contributed, and especially to Mari, for filling the very large shoes left behind by the amazing Judy Lazarus.

View the rest of the evening’s photos here.                   Thank you, Jim Pire