Berkshire Horseworks

Haley Sumner, founder and executive director of HorseWorks, is not a cowgirl. Nor was she born on a farm but today she is using her special connection with animals to change the lives of at-risk youth, families, inmates and veterans.

She is a city-born Jewish girl whose only early connection to nature was the farm camp to which her parents sent her each summer. “We worked with the animals,” she said. “No one wanted to deal with the geese—they were nasty—but I did milk cows and delivered foals.”

She said the experience had an impact on her during her formative years but her education and career took her in a different direction. After taking a degree at Northwestern, the high-energy entrepreneur owned and ran a bicoastal public relations and strategic marketing firm for more than 20 years.

“I operated my firm from New York and Los Angeles, devising global campaigns and immersing myself in corporate culture: entertainment conglomerates—working with all the bad boys like Howard Stern, the William Morris Agency, Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump —sporting franchises, consumer products, educational systems, hospitals, hotel and restaurant chains. But my heart was always in the nonprofit world, so we would do a lot of pro bono work for organizations like NYU Medical Center, Rock the Vote, Save the Children, the Make a Wish Foundation...”

After a particularly challenging period in her career, she felt she had had enough. She left LA with her rottweiler, Brando, to drive across the country to the Berkshires, where she had spent some of her childhood. Along her meandering way she contemplated what she wanted to do if she was no longer in LA or the PR business.

“We crossed the country in an RV and I stopped for a while in Louisville, Kentucky for some contemplation,” she reported.

While there, she attended a horse auction and observed a yearling filly sired by Storm Cat, one of the all-time leading sires in the racing world. “She was a baby, one of his last babies and she wasn’t really beautiful but she looked smart,” Sumner said.

Sumner bought the horse and named her Definitive Whim. “That’s my motto in life, ‘Enjoy life, experiment, make decisions and follow your heart,’” she said. She moved to Kentucky and began to learn about racing.

She started equine therapy work as a volunteer for Central Kentucky Riding for Hope, and that’s where she first learned about the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association (EAGALA), which helps persons with mental health and behavioral challenges.

EAGALA Programming is not a riding or horsemanship program but rather emphasizes non-mounted activities with horses that require individuals or groups to discover and apply certain skills.

Participants learn about themselves and others by connecting with the horses and then observing and discussing the team dynamics, behaviors and patterns that arise. What happens in the arena are often metaphors for their lives, families or group interactions.

Sumner says she certified in EAGALA therapy for her own personal growth and because she thought Definitive Whim might become a therapy horse. But the filly had ideas of her own, following literally in her father’s winning footsteps and placing in the top four runners in 75 percent of her races. Sumner would prep the filly for her races by playing You are So Beautiful while Brando would give her a smooch in the paddock.

Life was good again. Sumner was volunteering with horses, pursuing a master’s degree in social work and working to support Barack Obama’s first campaign for president. But then the bad times returned. Definitive Whim was given an injection incorrectly and had to be put down, devastating Sumner.

Grieving, she changed directions again. She left Kentucky and her plans for a career in social work and returned to the Berkshires where she assessed the needs of the community and its need for mental health services.

“There is so much need here,” she said. “I met Carl Dunham who owned the Berkshire Equestrian Center and he let us use the farm’s training facility to work with various foster care and state agencies. I owe him everything for giving us the start.”

She also acquired her first rescue horse, five-year-old, blue-eyed Spirit. She was immediately smitten by the horse but Spirit was not so easily won over. She placed a chair in a field and waited. Three weeks later, long after all his pasture mates had greeted her, Spirit came over. With the winning of his trust, Berkshire HorseWorks was started.

“We use all rescue horses, donkeys or mini horses,” she said. “It gives them a second life.”

Today’s herd includes “007,” also known as “Dubs, a sweet, laid-back pony; Zephyr, a shy guy of imposing stature and gentle eye; Spirit, the soulful rescue horse from Montana who doesn’t trust easily; Gunnar, a 19-year-old grey Arabian cross who loves to work with therapy clients; Bolt and Rodeo, sweet Sicilian mini donkeys who are relatively new to the herd, and Star, who Sumner describes as a “love bug.”

Horses are prey animals, explains Sumner, and for horses “everything is about observation and perception. Horses will not even come close to you if they don’t trust you. They are highly intuitive; they need to know if they can trust you or not in that moment. So, if there’s an incongruity in what the client is saying and doing, in their verbal and nonverbal actions that horse is going to call you out.”

She formed Berkshire HorseWorks in 2013 using the Equine Assisted Learning and Equine Assisted Psychotherapy models and found a seven-acre hillside ranch in Richmond MA to house her non-profit.

“Our mission is to transform lives through powerful interaction with horses,” she said. “We are a woman-owned organization, trying to respond to the needs in the community while also trying to be proactive with what is happening in the rest of country. Right now, we’re looking for the volunteers and board members we need to expand our capacities.”

She has already stretched her organization in different directions, some of which help support the others. If, for instance, a local business organization books an extended retreat for team building, that money goes directly to fund programs for the at-risk population.

The EAGALA model can be applied to different modalities. Sumner explains that equine therapy is predicated on the ideas of cognitive behavioral therapy. “It’s solution-focused which means we believe that clients have the answers if given the space to solve a problem themselves.”

And it is not necessarily only about the resolution of mental health issues. “It can be used for corporate team building, family therapy even bachelorette parties—how do you re-recreate friendships after a wedding.”

She noted that herds of horses are naturally hierarchical and that there are hierarchies in groups of friends, families and businesses. “There are parallels with human social hierarchies—who is the alpha, who speaks, who makes decisions is all in their body language,” she said. By interacting with the animals participants can work out the comparisons in a safe environment, can learn empathy and find solutions.

The different therapies can even be used in ways that are not obvious. “We try to be nimble and flexible, to anticipate, respond and be proactive for things happening in our community,” she continued. “As an example, we worked with school districts last year and started a reading program with the students and horses because of low literacy rates.”

Post Covid the non-profit decided to provide recreational activities. “People needed to get outside, to touch horses, to do team building together as well as donkey play and mindful hikes with horses,” Sumner said. “We always start by bonding with the animal on the ground. They groom the horses before they jump on.”

Berkshire HorseWorks has also started two “ranching” programs, Ranching Life 101, which offers an authentic ranch adventure for youngsters that provides developmentally appropriate experiences.

The second program is for families that provides Berkshire HorseWorks with a hands-on workforce. This allows the nonprofit to continue providing equine assisted psychotherapy and therapeutic programs for those at risk in the community. It is patterned after family volunteering vacations where parents, siblings and other members give back as they learn, work and play side by side for a common cause.

For more information about Berkshire HorseWorks, contact Hayley Sumner at <a href="mailto:Hayley@BerkshireHorseWorks.com>charlotte.penrose@gmail.com ">charlotte.penrose@gmail.com or 310-488-9777. Berkshire HorseWorks, Inc is a recognized nonprofit organization under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code.