Cow hugging a moo-ving experience
People cozy up with 3,000-pound animals at The Gentle Barn to cuddle their troubles away
Athena is a miniature black Angus. Holy Cow and Madonna are both Holsteins. And Faith is a miniature Hereford.
Step up and meet psychology “doctors” Madonna, Athena, Holy Cow, Aretha and Faith, rescued animals who provide cow hug therapy at The Gentle Barn, a nonprofit in the Santa Clarita Valley.
For a donation of $200, anyone can get an hour session with the cows, hugging and healing their troubles away on the serene, 6-acre property that is also home to a slew of other rescued and abused animals, including horses, pigs, goats and chickens.
Ellie Laks, a co-founder of The Gentle Barn, explained Dec. 19 that the staff facilitates the interaction between animal and human, but the visitors and the cows do the work.
“Cow therapy is animal-assisted therapy meets meditation,” Laks says.
She acknowledges other types of animal-based therapies, but cow therapy has a unique aspect to it.
“Hugging a cow can bring a person back to the feeling when they were an infant being held on a caretaker's chest and hearing the heartbeat rise and fall as they breathe,” Laks said. “We feel very vulnerable and cared for and protected.”
Hugging a 3,000-pound, hairy cow can mimic that feeling.
“Hearing the heartbeat and the rise and fall of breathing, and feeling tiny and small against their giant, warm nurturing frame — it allows us to feel vulnerable and small and humble, and that's when the healing starts,” she said.
The meditative aspect of cow hug therapy also mimics the grounded, centered still and quiet that comes while meditating.
“When we are with the cows, our minds are clear of thoughts, and (this) helps us be in the present time, like meditation,” Laks, 54, added. “Next to cows, our thoughts go away.”
Not all of the 35 cows at The Gentle Barn are huggers. But all have been rescued from slaughter houses in California. They come scared and angry, Lake said, and then are healed before they start healing others.
The nonprofit started in 1999 when Laks learned a cow named
Buda was headed to the slaughter house. Since then, she has also opened a rescue operation in Nashville, Tennessee, and a third in St. Louis, Missouri, with a soon-tobe opened one in New York.
Allyson Viteri of Los Angeles didn't need healing when she experienced cow hug therapy.
She said cows were one of her favorite animals.
So her fiancé bought her a session at The Gentle Bar as a birthday gift this month, and they got to spend an hour alone with the “doctors.”
“One of the cows actually licked me (on my hand) and the tongue is so rough, I didn't realize that,” Viteri, 30, said. “I was petting her, and it was so sweet because it was after I had hugged her already. It was so special that I got that moment with the cow.”
The closest Viteri had ever gotten to a cow was at her annual trips to a fair. She never had the opportunity to get close to or hug one.
Viteri said she can see why someone with personal issues might want to experience cow therapy, but she said it's also enjoyable for anyone who just loves animals and wants to experience something unique.
“I was posting (my visit) on social media and all my friends said they never saw me more happy,” Viteri said. “They said I looked like I was at peace with the cows, and other people were seeing that shine through … and some people were commenting that they need to put that on their bucket list.”
For more information, go to gentle barn.org/.