“When we are infants and we’re held on our caregivers’ chest, we can hear their heartbeat, we rise and fall with their breathing, and we feel small, humble, and vulnerable,” said Ellie Laks, founder of The Gentle Barn. “And once we grow, there’s nothing that simulates that except for cow hug therapy.”
You heard that right: hug a cow, it could be good for you. And good for the cow!
On “Do You Work Here?,” Mike Simpson visited The Gentle Barn in Santa Clarita to see what animal therapy is all about.
Laks, who founded the rescue and rehabilitation organization in 1999, said the Santa Clarita farm is smaller than their other two locations in Tennessee and Missouri, but it has more animals than either.
“We have approximately 135 animals,” she said. “We are home to horses, cows, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, peacocks, llamas, emus, donkeys, and dogs. We take the worst of the worst. We rehabilitate them, we resuscitate them, and then they have so much to teach us and so much to offer us.”
When animals are brought in – usually from hoarding or cruelty situations – the Gentle Barn team starts with a quarantine, veterinary checkup, and medicine. But Laks said an equally important task is “rehabilitating their hearts.”
“We’ve got to show them that they can trust people,” she said. “Most farm animals don't trust people when they come in, and so we have volunteers and staff sitting with them, playing soft, gentle music, coming and going, leaving cookies when they leave, and showing them that we're a different kind of human and that life can be good.”
Once the animals warm up to the volunteers, they’re introduced to the rest of the herd, and then acclimated to the farm’s steady stream of visitors. The Gentle Barn is open to the public for private tours, school field trips, and of course, cow hug therapy sessions.
Listen to the full episode above to hear about The Gentle Barn’s other residents, including a family of pigs, a peacock that was found wandering the suburban streets, and an emu named Earl. And don’t forget to subscribe for more.
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