At Horses Help SWI, our mission is “to provide equine-assisted therapeutic services in a safe and inclusive environment for individuals with physical, cognitive, emotional, or social challenges.”

Our organization was founded in 2021 by Linda Heithoff Borman, a Council Bluffs native who now lives in Scottsdale, AZ—where, in 2010 she established Kachina’s Place Equestrian Center in nearby Cave Creek, subsequently serving for a decade as its first-ever President and Executive Director.

In January 2021, Linda was on a return visit to Council Bluffs to visit her 48-year-old brother Joe, who had Down syndrome and dementia.  While working with him on memory exercises, she discovered that he was particularly interested in pictures of Linda’s horses; upon seeing these photos, his face lit up and he delightedly began repeating their names.  His housemates, also adults with disabilities, likewise found these pictures fascinating.

In response to the group’s obvious interest in horses, Linda searched for equine-therapy services in the Council Bluffs area serving persons with disabilities, only to find that no such options existed. 

Joe died in 2022.  To honor his memory, and to ensure that this community could access such programs, Linda began looking for the right property, people, and horses to establish her own groundbreaking equine-therapy facility right here in Council Bluffs. 

She soon identified a beautiful, secluded “horse-friendly” 20-acre property conveniently located just southeast of town that fit that the bill perfectly.  Linda subsequently hired longtime area non-profit executive Kori Nelson to be Horses Help SWI’s first-ever Executive Director, and the two then worked on assembling our herd of about a dozen qualified therapy horses—both full-sized and “minis”—which you will meet elsewhere on our site.