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.