The healing power of critters

The little girl is severely handicapped. She sat in a wheelchair blankly staring at a pen of friendly farm animals.

Someone put a lamb in her lap and she awkwardly cradled it, pulling the soft white face with big brown eyes close to her own, expressionless gaze.

A few moments later, the girl's mother began crying.

"What's wrong," Rene Gardner asked?

"She's never spoken before," the woman replied. "Look," she said. "She's trying to say something."

The little girl struggled again to utter the first discernible word other than guttural sounds anyone has heard come from her lips.

"Lamb."

Gardner said that's when he began crying, too.

"It's the healing power animals can have, he said, and it's the reason why I started this farm in 1997."

The experience of the little girl in the wheelchair is not the only miracle Gardner said he's seen on the farm.

"I can tell you of many more," he said.

Critters for Kids is a therapy ranch on the shore of Bitterroot Lake near Marion.

It's a 501-3C, nonprofit organization that rescues abandoned, neglected and abused animals of all shapes and sizes.

It's a destination for families with handicapped children and troubled teens who come to find solace with these animals on a quiet farm.

It's a place where people from all walks of life come to get away from the city and think away their troubles while brushing a horse, bucking a few bales of hay, or mending a fence.

"Everyone is welcome here," Gardner said. "It's a good place for the animals. It's a good place for people."

There's more than a hundred animals on the farm, he added, and the people visitors are like an extended family.

Some of the animals "have dozens of owners, if not more," Gardner said. City kids "adopt" them and give them names and come often to pet and care for them as if they are their very own.

And the animals react in turn, recognizing familiar friends.

"It's therapy for the animals, too," Gardner said.

"We take pictures of the kids with the animals so they can remember. We foster this kind of involvement."

Sometimes, Gardner will let a kid actually take a horse, sheep or milk goat home with them for good, but only after Gardner gives the prospective new home a thorough check.

Then, once he adopts one of his animals out, he returns to the critter's new home to check on its progress.

"I want to make sure the new owner is responsible," he said.

"If they can't take care of it, I take it back. You have to remember that many of these animals have already been through a hard time once before."

There's a cabin on the lake that Gardner occasionally allows a child and a family member to stay at for a weekend in the summer.

A relaxing weekend on a beautiful mountain lake away from the hassles of everyday life.

The farm has undergone its struggles, just like the people who often come to visit. Gardner's house that he shares with his disabled wife and the barn burned down in 2002.

But with the help of volunteers the farm continued and Gardner expects everything to be back to normal by next summer.

"There is always some type of work to do here, and we can always use donations," Gardner said.

The biggest need is hay. A dollar donation, for example, buys a quarter bale of hay.

Adults young and old alike are able to find self-healing working a farm dedicated to disabled and disadvantaged children, he said.

People can come out and feed the animals, drive a tractor, or help build something.

"We love to teach people," Gardner said.

Some of the troubled teens who visit the farm come just to work up a sweat and focus on creating a better life for themselves.

"I asked one teenager who was coming here a lot once why he talked to the animals so much but not to people," Gardner said.

"He said, 'because you can tell an animal any secret you can't tell anyone else.'"

For more information about Critters for Kids, call 253-8653, or write to Gardner, P.O. Box 1012, Marion MT 59925.