Article by Olivia Ahrens

Healing Farm I

magine a peaceful farm. Goats, bunnies, chickens, pigs, and other animals roam around this beautiful place. Now imagine the farm filled with smiling children experiencing the healing properties that animals bring. The non profit organization, Animal Assisted Happiness, however, is not imaginary. According to an article from Healthline, “Pet therapy builds on the preexisting human-animal bond. Interacting with a friendly pet can help many physical and mental issues. It can help reduce blood pressure and improve overall cardiovascular health. It can also release endorphins that produce a calming effect. This can help alleviate pain, reduce stress, and improve your overall psychological state.�

Animal Assisted Happiness delivers these healing powers by connecting humans and animals, and bringing smiles to children with disabilities. Not only do their animals bring joy to the kids, but the volunteers and workers also get to experience the joyful effects of the human-animal bond and see the happiness the animals bring to those

they are serving. As a volunteer for AAH, I have made friendships with people around my age, some older and some younger, that have a variety of disabilities. Despite our differences, we are all able to come together to share the healing process of animal therapy. I personally struggle with anxiety and depression; however, while volunteering for this organization, I can feel myself calm down and experience the moment. I always find myself with a smile when I’m around the kids I work with, as well as the animals. Their new farm is a beautiful, peaceful, yet playful environment where smiles are waiting to be shared. They have goats, pigs, guinea pigs, bunnies, chickens, horses, alpacas, sheep, ducks, and birds. Along a walkway going through the whole farm, you can find all of these animals in their own play pens and designated sections. As you make your way through, you will be directed with colorful signs made by kids and volunteers, that point you in the direction of certain animals.

Behind the Smiles

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nimal Assisted Happiness was established in 2009 by Vicki Amon-Higa and her husband Peter. The journey began in the couple’s own backyard in Los Altos.

As it grew, AAH moved to Gilroy in 2011, Full Circle Farm in 2015, and finally, their current location, Baylands Park, in 2017. They allow public visits to the farm on certain days, and children with special needs can make an appointment to visit the animals. Their mission statement reads: “Our mission is to enrich the lives of youth with needs through barnyard animal interactions at our Smile Farm and mobile visits, creating moments of joy and happiness throughout our AAH community. We provide barnyard buddies so children and their family members can ‘experience the smiles only animals can bring’. Our vision is a ‘Million Smiles.’”

Simone Haroush, the Program Manager for Animal Assisted Happiness, is in charge of many things on the farm. Impressively, she started off as a volunteer.

Simone recalls, “I met Vicki and Peter our daughters’ soccer. They played together and I started volunteering, and slowly I rolled into more hours and more hours and more hours and I loved it” (Haroush). Simone remembers seeing Vicki and Peter’s daughter bringing baby goats and other animals to the soccer field, and that’s how she learned about AAH. As the Program Manager, Simone oversees their three programs: Mobile Barnyard, Vocational Visits, and Private Visits. She mostly does Outbound Visits. She gets to the farm in the morning, loads up animals and prepares for the day’s visits. She also walks around all of the pens to see the animals and make sure they are all okay, even if there is someone already there. She then goes to one visit, gives the animals food and water, goes on another visit, heads back to the farm, and then normally returns once more.

Simone says that there are two main struggles in what she does: “One is the weather, and there’s nothing we can do about that. I don’t care about the heat, the rain is just wrecking havoc on the farm, I don’t want to take animals out in the rain it’s just not fair. The other is emotional. Emotionally seeing kids, they might not struggle but we see it as a struggle for them, but seeing their joy in petting animals make it kind of okay, but that can be a struggle” (Haroush). This emotional challenge is something that all volunteers and workers at AAH deal with;, however, it makes the impact they are delivering even more remarkable and meaningful. Simone’s favorite aspect of AAH is “the community that it builds. It builds with the youth volunteers, with the animals, for kids with special needs… or needs and I think it’s amazing. It does a lot and it says a lot about the people here that keep volunteering” (Haroush).

Close to Home

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ome volunteers bring deep experiences and professional backgrounds to their work at AAH. For instance, my own mother, Kimberly Ahrens, who holds degrees as a Registered Nurse (RN), Oncology Certified Nurse (OCN), Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT), and Certified Professional Coactive Coach (CPCC), helped facilitate animals brought into hospitals by the SPCA. Through facilitating these animals in hospitals, she saw how animals played a part in a patient’s healing process.

As someone who has been in a wheelchair for sixteen years, she has realized a deeper connection to what AAH has brought to her life. After a seventeen-year-old drunk driver hit our car in Denver when I was three weeks old, my mom was paralyzed from the neck down. Fortunately, she regained function in her arms, but is still unable to walk. When she was in the hospital when she first got hurt, she missed her dogs very much because they were still at home in San Francisco. Kim’s night nurse brought in her Yorkshire Terrier and placed it on Kim’s head to try to help relieve her sadness from the separation from her and her dogs. To this day, she says, “I think that little Yorkie in the ICU helped me more than any animal has ever helped me because I didn’t even feel like I was in my own body and I love my dogs so much and that Yorkie helped me reconnect with love.” (Ahrens). This is one personal example of how an animal has helped Kim in her life, which lead her understanding the power that animals have on people.

Despite her disability, she has persevered and continued to be an amazing mother, wonderful friend, loving wife to my father, and one of the strongest and most inspiring women I know. Even after having to leave her career in nursing, she has gone on to become

a Happiness Coach, teaching her clients how to take positive steps in solving life’s hard moments. Overall, AAH really aligned with her values and interests of animals and helping people. She learned about this organization through bring in National Charity League with me, which is an organization where mothers and daughters volunteer together to help serve their communities. Animal Assisted Happiness was one of the philanthropies that NCL served and worked with. Being the animal lover that she is, she jumped to the opportunity to get trained and become a volunteer. Ever since learning about it, she has come to Mountain View High School when AAH visits the special education students, and helps the kids with the animals.

Backed By Science

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e all have heard that animals provide therapy. There are therapy and emotional support animals, and organizations such as Animal Assisted Happiness that support this. However, what exactly do animals do? What do they provide? In Pet Therapy, Anna Zernone Giorgi examines the benefits and healing properties that animals bring to humans: “Pet therapy builds on the pre-existing human-animal bond. Interacting with a friendly pet can help many physical and mental issues. It can help reduce blood pressure and improve overall cardiovascular health. It can also release endorphins that produce a calming effect. This can help alleviate pain, reduce stress, and improve your overall psychological state.” Giorgi also explains that animal therapy may provide benefits such as the following: making you happier, lessening depression, improving your outlook on life, decreasing loneliness and isolation by giving you a companion, reducing boredom, reducing anxiety due to its calming effects, and helping children learn empathetic and nurturing skills.

As a volunteer at AAH, I have noticed a wide variety of disabilities in the people who the organization serves. Simone says, “We don’t ask what the disabilities are, whether they’re invisible or visible. We see it all, whether it’s the autism spectrum, kids in wheelchairs,

whatever disability they have, anything goes.”

(Haroush) The fact that they don’t ask about the specific disability is something that’s so miraculous and beautiful about AAH. They don’t need to know the disability or ability of a child in order to help them; they just bring animals to the children and help spread happiness and smiles to all. When Fraser Met Billy by Louise Booth is a book about a boy named Fraser, who has Autism, and how the transformative power of animal connection from his cat, Billy, impacted his life. The author is actually the mother of Fraser, and in the dedication of the book, she writes, “I know somewhere out there, is me five years ago, someone who is facing the same enormities, despair, and isolation that I faced when I gave birth to Fraser in March 2008.

This book is written for that person. I want it to help them see that there is hope at the other end of what seems like a very long, dark tunnel. You can get there, I promise.” In this heartfelt introduction, Booth relates to other parents who struggle with having a child with a disability, and provides them this book as an example of hope in these types of situations.

Animal Assisted Happiness does the same: by providing children with animals, they provide them unconditional love, without judgement, and without hesitation or fear.

About the Author

Olivia Ahrens is a student at Freestyle Academy and Mountain View High School.

She chose Design as her elective because she has always had a passion for fashion design and interior design and wanted to advance her skills and see if the field would be a good fit as a career choice.

Outside of school, you could catch her hanging out with friends, cheering at football games, and volunteering for El Camino Hospital and National Charity League. Some things to know about her are that she loves young children and has been a Red Cross Certified babysitter for about eight years. She has also been a member of the MVHS swim team for the past three years. Her freshman year, she was a captain of the JV cheer team, sophomore year, was on varsity, and in both years, was on the school’s competitive cheer team that went to nationals in Los Angeles and got 1st place both years in a row. She loved cheer and it was a huge part in her life, but after hard consideration, she decided to stop junior year to focus more on school, volunteering, and preparing for college.

She can’t wait to see what the future holds and she looks forward to apply what she has learned at Freestyle to the rest of her life!