My Little Ponies Profile on Deborah McCarley by Annamari Jaaksi
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he California sun is beaming high in the blue sky on a Monday afternoon, and everyone at the 4H Westwind Handicapped Riding Program is trying to hide in the shade as much as possible. There are seven horses waiting to get to work, with volunteers putting on saddles or helping the riders find proper riding equipment. In the middle of all the hustle is one woman who seems to be doing everything. First she checks the whiteboard to make sure each volunteer is paired up with a horse they’re experienced enough to lead, after which she checks that the rest of the volunteers are assigned to sidewalk one of the riders. She then confirms that if possible, the volunteers are paired up with riders that they’ve worked with before, so that the kids can get to know each other and hopefully connect. After this she moves over to the horses, and makes sure everything is moving along. She sees someone handfeeding one of the horses and kindly asks them to stop. It’s important to her that the horses don’t get mouthy with the kids, so handfeeding isn’t allowed. As soon as she turns around, another carrot is handed to the horse. Again, she tries to explain why this isn’t allowed and that she would love for them to feed the horses after the lesson in the stall.
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It’s hard to be strict enough that the message goes through, but nice enough that nobody gets their feelings hurt. he clock is ticking and it is almost four o’clock, which is when all the kids should get on. Of course, a volunteer cancels last minute or a rider doesn’t feel comfortable riding a specific horse. She understands, and tries to shuffle it all around so that everyone is pleased. Finally, all the kids are on their horses, and the lesson can start. She gets to sit down for a little bit and relax, unless there is something to do in the barn while the horses are out. Or it could be Thursday, where the same thing happens, except that she has to teach the lesson as well. And of course, people often forget that these horses have to
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be cared for during the week too. So, you can find her at Westwind Community Barn, at least six (but mostly seven) days a week making sure everything is okay with the horses and the 4H barn is up and running. Best part? She is a volunteer as well. eborah McCarley started volunteering with the 4H Westwind Handicapped Riding Program ten years ago, and she has had full responsibility over the program’s horses for four years. Even though the whole program only runs twice a week for an hour, McCarley has to take care of the horses’ need daily. On a normal day Deborah takes care of the barn, horses and equipment, and coordinates a lot of the lesson planning like matching a rider with the right horse.. However, things don’t always go as planned and “you have to organize and prioritize ‘cause you have your work list you’re coming up to do and almost every day you come and something new has happened that
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maybe has to rise to the top and you have to juggle a lot of things and make it work”(McCarley). In addition to working with the 4H program she volunteers at an elementary school with English as second language kids. She feels like it helps her with the 4H program, because “working with the kids in the third grade has given me insight cause there actually are some autistic class kids in my third grade class so I kind of see how other people handle particular situations” (McCarley). cCarley was born on the east coast, where she lived in a State Park in New York State. Ever since she has loved outside sports, like hiking and sailing. She studied biology in college, and now McCarley finds that “ because [she] was a biologist… it actually helped [her] with knowledge of how horses are
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ou know I’m not sure I’ve ever really seen her discouraged and down and I’m sure, well, there must be times, but she keeps a very positive outlook”. Wormhoudt
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working for medical things and how to figure out you know when something is really wrong, when do you have to really call the vet and when to follow through with the vets treatments” (McCarley). Deborah moved from the East Coast to the Silicon Valley 26 years ago to work with pharmaceutical company. Ten years ago she heard about the 4H program when looking for a volunteering opportunity for herself and her daughter. They wanted something they could do together, and their love for horses took them to
Westwind. At first, Deborah and her daughter volunteered one day a week, just like most volunteers do. Both McCarley and her daughter Shannon had experience with horses and loved to help as much as they could. Sandy, one of the other volunteers, remembers McCarley helping her when Sandy joined the program six years ago. Even back then McCarley had a way of giving people space to figure out a solution themselves, but helped when necessary. She had a sweet way of telling someone a better
way to do things, instead of just blaming them for doing something wrong. Deborah and her daughter soon started to clean the stalls and feed on Sundays, since a little extra help was needed. After a couple more years, the person who was responsible for the horses back then started taking longer trips and Deborah filled in. In addition, she often helped during the week because her loved spending time at the barn. When the person responsible for the horses moved around 2009, Deborah took over full time.
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uring the past four years that Deborah has been responsible for the horses for, she has learned how to solve a lot of unexpected problems. Things break and horses hurt themselves, and someone has to take care of all of it. Often Deborah just has to figure out a way to solve the problems she faces, because “there are all these things you never think of, you show up and you’re like, how did that ever happen? And you’re like, I have to learn how to do that. So I’ve had to learn to do a lot of things and the things I can’t we end up hiring someone, but… (lags) We do what we can do ourselves” (McCarley). One time McCarley had a horse that needed to be kept in a small space because of a medical condition. She said it was important not to let the horse move a lot since it could possibly worsen the condition. However, all of the horses have a little opening behind their stalls so that they can move around freely. It’s nice for the horse to have more space, especially if they don’t have the opportunity to go out into pasture everyday. However, if you have to keep the horse in a small space, this becomes a problem. To solve that problem, each stall usually has a gate in the back so that you can close off the opening, but this specific horse didn’t have one. The 4H program runs on dona-
tions, so there isn’t a lot of money to be spent on problems like this. So, McCarley had to come up with a way to close off the opening using only the materials at the barn. She remembers trying to figure out a solution; “We have some scrap wood that we saved from when we had to redo the fencing and nailed the board across and then we have extra wire so just you know cup to one and twist it together and laid it across there. Wasn’t perfect, but it worked” (McCarley). Most of us can’t say that we had to build something able to hold a horse out of scrap wood. McCarley laughs and admits that it’s all new to her, too: “ I mean, I don’t have carpentry skills, so you just sort of piece something together kind of… I wish I knew what to do or how to do it better. But I end up doing a lot of research”. nfortunately, not all the problems that McCarley faces can be solved by doing some research. Deborah explains that “you have
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(McCarley). haron describes Mcarley as “...such a doer. She is absolutely a participator, not a spectator” and continues to say that “you always feel like Deb is completely there. She is not, kind of, sitting with you but thinking about something else. When she is riding, she is riding… When she is here with the 4H she is not thinking about what she has to do for anything else” (Wormhoudt). This is why Deborah is such a valuable and important part of the 4H program. Her goal is to make the whole program run more smoothly, but also to improve it by coming up with new games and ways to motivate each of the kids. Each of them is such an individual, and the same way of teaching doesn’t work for everyone. However, McCarley is very busy and hopes to find someone to help her at some point. Still, she sees herself continuing with the program for as long as she can. People are often surprised when they hear about her science background and wonder why she is volunteering at a riding program instead. Deborah’s answer is simple and clear - “I like it and I’m able to make time for it” (McCarley).
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all these personalities from all the horses you have to work with, to the riders, to the sponsors that are more long term volunteers with us, to the volunteers. It’s fun meeting everyone and lots of new people, but there is always someone you have to try to figure out how to encourage to do something a different way” (McCarley). She continues to note that you have to figure out a way to positively encourage someone, because you don’t want to lose volunteers. Deborah remembers times when there weren’t enough volunteers and she had to switch people around, but someone wasn’t willing to do what she asked. Each of the horses have different personalities (just like humans do) and
Deborah has to m a k e sure whoever is leading the horse in the program is experienced enough to handle any situation. One time she needed one of the volunteers with more experience to work with a new horse that had a little more attitude, but because this volunteer had been working with a specific horse for so long they didn’t want to switch. McCarley tried to explain the situation and finally got everything sorted out, but it’s difficult when there isn’t much time and the program needs to keep on going. She also has to deal with the horses’ personalities, which most of the time is fun. “You get to know their individual personalities, their likes and dislikes. Most of the time I enjoy working training with them. Sometimes its hard to be patient when they’ve developed a bad habit to work through it”
“I like it and I’m able to make time for it” McCarley
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