Welcome
The Connecting Veterans with Horses (CVH) program started at the Jean Kvamme Center (JKC) for Adaptive Riding in Felton, CA in 2021 and is a 501(c)(3) organization that provides an equine therapy program for Armed Forces Veterans, Active Duty service members and their families dealing with Post Traumatic Stress.
Please help our program
We are fundraising now, we recently lost a $10,000 grant from the VA which would have went along way in starting our program. Your support and contributions will enable us to provide classes and lessons at no charge to veterans and their families. Thank you!!
About Us
Charlie Jenks
Caroline Fritch
Caroline Fritch
Charlie is the founder of CVH and retired from the US Army in 2016. Horses, breath work and meditation have helped him tremendously on his own healing path and he started the program to share both with other veterans, service members and their families.
Charlie retired from the Army in 2016 and was searching for ways to heal himself outsid
Charlie is the founder of CVH and retired from the US Army in 2016. Horses, breath work and meditation have helped him tremendously on his own healing path and he started the program to share both with other veterans, service members and their families.
Charlie retired from the Army in 2016 and was searching for ways to heal himself outside of the conventional medical system that was not working. He has always been drawn to horses and first started with learning to massage them, then other healing modalities, and followed by horsemanship and riding lessons. In the end the training was great, but he realized he just wanted to be with them. Charlie had also been practicing Qigong and meditation since 2008 after he started to experience his first PTSD symptoms and found a teacher while living in Hawaii. Even with all this training and practice it took until 2017 when a horse woke him up that he needed to commit more to healing himself. Horses are flight animals and as one great horseman told him "they are a mirror of us" as they live in the present and respond to us. By listening to the horse responding to him, he started to wake up to the fact that he needed to up his practice and spend more time with them. Many great things started to happen since committing to this practice to include improving his relationship with others and specifically his children. He found JKC in 2019 and first just started visiting the center and doing breath work and meditation practice in a stall with them. This grew to starting to riding lessons, and conduct weekly meditation classes for veterans in the round pen with a horse as well as providing other equine therapy training. His brother Mark also a veteran, took his life in May 2021 which is a driving force behind growing the program with the goal of expanding to other locations around the country. Mark's death motivated him to do more, he was a veteran who was not in the VA system and could have used help. He started this program with the idea that if he can just help one person, that is ok with him. The great thing is we continue to grow and the horses have helped a lot more than one person.
Caroline Fritch
Caroline Fritch
Caroline Fritch
Caroline is an established Certified Therapeutic Riding Instructor (CTRI) and Program Director with over 17 years’ experience in program development, management, certification, and accreditation. Her accomplishments throughout her career include thousands of hours of safe lessons, and responsibility for establishing and maintaining Premie
Caroline is an established Certified Therapeutic Riding Instructor (CTRI) and Program Director with over 17 years’ experience in program development, management, certification, and accreditation. Her accomplishments throughout her career include thousands of hours of safe lessons, and responsibility for establishing and maintaining Premiere Accreditation status through PATH.
Caroline created new program offerings like our Hangouts and Mini Camps which have proven to be very popular and effective at combining therapeutic riding with socialization and group activities which supports the broader needs of our clients. Before joining The Kvamme Center Caroline was instrumental in creating and implementing summer camps for special needs riders, after school programs for at-risk youth, organizing special needs horse shows, and being involved in the Special Olympics as an Equine Coach. Horses and helping people are her passions and we are fortunate to have her at the reins. Caroline and her husband recently relocated to California from South Carolina.
Kate Reid
Caroline Fritch
Kate Reid
Kate Reid grew up riding and has worked with horses in a variety of disciplines throughout her life. Her love for riding and the benefits she saw from being around horses and nature in her own life, along with a desire to help others, led her to the world of Adaptive/Therapeutic Riding in 2018. In 2019, Kate passed exams to obtain her PAT
Kate Reid grew up riding and has worked with horses in a variety of disciplines throughout her life. Her love for riding and the benefits she saw from being around horses and nature in her own life, along with a desire to help others, led her to the world of Adaptive/Therapeutic Riding in 2018. In 2019, Kate passed exams to obtain her PATH International Certified Therapeutic Riding Instructor credentials. Since then Kate has worked and volunteered at two Therapeutic Riding programs in the Bay Area and continues her journey to grow and learn in the field of Therapeutic Riding.
Kate is particularly interested in the mental and physical benefits of Therapeutic Riding for adults and Veterans. In her free time, Kate enjoys traveling with her husband and their cat and dog, yoga, and volunteering at the barn!
Our Program
Our program made the front page of the Santa Cruz Sentinel on Veterans day 11/11/22! and again in the year in Review on 12/31/22.
Free Weekly Meditation and Breath work with Horses Class. Every Friday at 10-12pm.
Once Monthly Weekend Meditation with Horses Class On Saturday at 10-12pm. Next class is 1/21/23 at 10am.
Riding and Horsemanship Lessons with one of our PATH certified instructors. There is currently a charge for the lessons and our goal is to provide these for free. We will be holding free Horsemanship Classes every Wednesday in January & February 2023 from 9:30am - 11:30am starting Jan. 18, 2023. Classes are drop-in, no RSVP required.
Contact Us
Connecting Veterans with Horses
9115 E Zayante Rd, Felton, CA 95018, USA
Hours
Open today | 09:00 am – 05:00 pm |
