Renee Bowser

I was born and raised in Illinois on my parent’s horse farm where we raised registered quarter horses. We bred, trained and I showed in Western competition. I also gave riding lessons to both children and adults. I have a passion for horses, their beautiful spirit and what they give back to us in love and understanding. Whenever I go riding I will say I am going for “my therapy”.

After college I moved out west and met my husband. We have been married for 40 years and have raised 3 young men. I am a retired Environmental Engineer having worked for the Idaho National Laboratory Cleanup Mission for over 19 years. After I retired in 2018 I wanted to do volunteer work but did not know what. I found out about Champs Heart in April 2019 and have not looked back. It was a perfect match.

At Champs Heart I am the Equine Director. I oversee the health and well being of our herd. This involves fitting our horses with the proper equipment, scheduling regular visits from our farriers, the horses health and behavior and vetting new horses for our program. I train the volunteers to care and work with the horses to enhance their experience and keep the children safe. It is important to know what the volunteer’s interests are. Some just want to interact with the children, yet they still need to understand the behaviors of a horse to keep the children safe. Others have good horse skills or want to learn horsemanship skills so it is my responsibility to teach them. Champs Heart gives to everyone, both the clients and the volunteers.

I also train and schedule our Program Leaders. During our program hours, 2 to 3 leaders are assigned to run the program. Their responsibility is to assign participants to horses, assign volunteers to be horse leaders and side-walkers and to keep all safe during operations.