Today we’d like to introduce you to Sally Iwanski.
Hi Sally, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
In 2006, two friends, my husband Gil and I decided to bring our miniature horses boarded in Lockhart to Austin and start our own miniature horse therapy organization. We were all helping a similar non-profit in Lockhart, but she did her visits on weekdays, and I worked full time. I was helping her with her website, email, fundraising, volunteers, sounding board. I was also a working board member. When her mission changed to bringing other animals besides horses, we decided it was time to start our own! On our last day with her, boarding up our 2 minis at the time in my husband’s Ford Explorer Sport (don’t do that -scary!) was a turning point for us! And my retired 30 yr Army retired husband found out going home that he was a “horse whisperer”. Seriously, he heard our MasterCard say “but we wanted to bring our friends with us” –and he looked at me and said “did you hear that”? “Here what?” I asked. “MasterCard just said the other minis there wanted to come with us.” And I said, “No,I didn’t hear that – but so glad that you did and the little horses talked to you 🙂 And really that was the Beginning. Our friends met with us for several weeks deciding if we wanted to start a Club or a Non-Profit and how we wanted it to run. By the time the name came to us at a meeting in Georgetown, we had 4 co-founders, Ellen (our finance person who lived in Bellville, Candy who had 2.5 minis, the mare was pregnant at the time, Phyllis in Dripping Springs who was mini shopping, Gil and I had MasterCard and SeanMonet and we lived in Austin. The name “Minis and Friends” jumped out to us and thus we became Minis and Friends. The first year we focused on Austin getting to know us and how we worked. We had guidelines for the organizations we visited (such as no open-toed shoes, no feeding or riding, etc.) and we trained interested people in mini handling – i.e. holding a leash (lead) properly, making sure the halter didn’t pull up into the eyes, etc. We did parades in Dripping Springs, North Austin and the 4th of July Parade with the Northwest Austin Civic Association (NWACA). We quickly learned not breaking formation from the parade was very important… the whole parade stopped. Minis and Friends has always used mini-vans such as the Honda Odyssey because of the wide frame for visits, not trailers and we became known in Austin for this. From that first year following to the 19th year, we worked on weekends, almost every Saturday when I could book a visit. I would call children’s shelters, rehabs, other non-profits and ask if they would like a visit from a little horse, no more than 30″tall? You can probably imagine the excitement of the community! Most people have never seen a miniature horse, let alone meet one.
And so this is how we started and how we continued to work all those weekends. We visited other non-profits free of charge and helped so many young children and adults who needed happiness, smiles, and more visits from the little horse therapists (what I called them). We fit our 3 minis: MasterCard (our first boy – Golden Palomino 30″ full grown), SeanMonet (Black Mini 32″ full grown – we told everyone he was our Texas-Irish-French mini) and Remington (Palomino Paint 27″ full grown) right behind our seats in a system Gil developed to keep them standing straight and safe. By the time 2019 rolled around we had 12 miniature horses and 3 mini-owners on our team. And an amazing volunteer team of 12 who stuck with us through COVID and now. We were all Volunteers.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I was working full-time until 2023 – so it was crazy working all day at SEMATECH (23 years) and then going home and ending up on the computer till midnight or later, working on the everyday needs of Minis and Friends. As the Co-Founder/Executive Director, I kept the non-profit running for the most part. My husband Gil was a huge part of helping all of this to keep going forward. He would go to the boarding ranch to feed the mini, clean, etc., come home, pick up our youngest daughter from school, and then go back to the boarding ranch for the 2nd feeding. He quickly discovered that the little horses were his best friends and he need them as much as they needed him.
We learned a lot over the years how difficult volunteer teams can be – for 1) working together and making the visits great ones for those we visited, no matter if they had a bad week or not. After a visit, the whole weekend was better; this is the effect the little horses gave back. We learned during the 7 years we worked at Dell Children’s Medical Center Healing Gardens, that when the helicopters flew over, I would “yell, Hold Your Horses!”… that was a true statement, because even a 160 lb mini would want to jump away from their handler.
At one time we had 23 miniature horses working in the greater Austin metro area and 9 mini-owners. Never again! I had to go to work, and know I would have to deal with irritated mini-owners who couldn’t get along together. The final solution was to tell the trouble-maker owners to go start their own non-profit if they couldn’t work well with us. Three broke away, and one started her own in Wimberley, one started showing miniature horses, and the other joined up with a mini org in Hutto. Perfect solution for us and them. We finally ended up in 2014 with 3 mini owners (to include us) and 12 mini horses. In those days, we would have more volunteers join us for visits than what was needed (we worked in 2 person teams, a Front End protecting the minis’ eyes, and a Back End protecting the mini back legs from anxious wheelchairs and walkers, but they loved visiting with the children and seniors,
Also during this time, in 2011, I had bilateral mastectomies from cancer and had to heal for 6 weeks. Minis and Friends kept me on the high road during that time, and the weeks flew. MasterCard, SeanMonet and Remington helped greatly – they would come to me and put their heads in my lap as if to say “we will take your pain away” and they did! What an amazing organization we had created for everyone in Austin. On the last day of the 6 weeks off, my job at SEMATECH moved to Albany, New York and ha, I was the first one of our team of 60 staff to say “HR won’t move my little horses, so give me those redeployment papers”… I went on workman’s comp and great benefits during that time. I did work Minis and Friends most of my medical time off and then as normal every Saturday morning 10-11:30… We told the volunteers it gave them back their Saturday afternoons.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My dad was an Army Warrant Officer and he kept us moving all over the Southern US pretty much till I graduated from high school in Huntsville, AL in 1970. I moved to Denver, CO and went to school up there and stayed there until 1`985, working for a non-profit called “Laradon Hall” just two miles from the Bronco training field. Those were interesting years working with special needs adults at a residential school. I also worked as the Denver Area Special Olympics Awards Chair for many years and had lots of amazing stories during that time. As stories go, I finally wound up in Austin working for Tracor (now BAE Systems) and then SEMATECH when it opened in 1989. I was an Executive Assistant for the 23 years with them, working for the Technical Vice President who was an assignee from IBM. SEMATECH had over 400 staff who were from 14 member companies that paid $20,000 each for a two-year technology exchange. Some stayed and became full staff, others returned home. After 2011, I was unemployed for two years and then found a job with Systems Made Simple (SMS), an IT Company out of Baltimore. The job was a contract job at the Veteran Affairs (VA) Financial Service Center in East Austin. I completed the contract we had at that time and then SMS sold out to Lockheed and Lockheed to Leidos. Geez. They were all contracting jobs so everytime you finished a contract you had to find a new contract to work for or be laid off. During the next 10+ years, I worked with Leidos as a Project Analyst for 2 different VA contracts and moved to my final VA destination at the VA Advanced Technology Center off Woodward to work on database and Excel roster of 800 people for 6 years. I left them before the last contract ended at 71 — all that Excel made my eyes go bonkers! COVID had passed and we were all sent home to work remotely and that was okay but I couldn’t wait for the weekends to get out of the house! When I became a Project Analyst it was computer work, and then I would come home and work on Minis and Friends. Weekends were a delight to get away and be with the little horses and those we visited.
At work all those years, the people who worked there knew about Minis and Friends. I brought them to our Health Fairs which were a bigger hit and I smiled the other day, because a friend who also stayed in Austin, reminisced about meeting MasterCard and SeanMonet at the Health Fairs… she said she was in awe they were so little.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
I define success as the commitment to seeing a project through to completion, regardless of the obstacles or ultimate outcome. Through my work with Minis and Friends, we brought our miniature horses to wherever they were needed across the Greater Austin Metro Area, Williamson County, and Hays County. In 2014, I was honored to be recognized by KVUE as one of five adults for Outstanding Community Service in Austin. I insisted that our team of volunteers share in that recognition, as our success is entirely a product of their dedication. During an interview with KVUE at Dell Children’s Medical Center, the cameraman joked about the sheer scale of our efforts, asking how I managed it all. My answer remains the same: it is simply my love for these mini horses that drives everything we do. Gil was awarded recognition and a $1000 check from Recognize Good in 2015 as a Legend awarded to Minis and Friends. So you can see that success played a huge part in both of our lives and marriage because of the little horse therapists.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.minisandfriends.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/minisandfriends/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MinisAndFriends
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@minisandfriends6475/videos
- Soundcloud: https://tinyurl.com/tefnyeyv
- Other: https://bit.ly/4uFEWRB
