Kathy Rutan-Sprague
Kathy grew up in the California State Parks with her first horse at age six. She broke her first horse at age 11; rode every day over the mountain trails and in parades and after graduating from high school in 1966 she went to Panama with her family. In 1967 she returned to the States to pursue her education and to start her own family. Following a passion to teach and to heal, she studied nursing and became a registered nurse in 1971. Her interests were always in healing, families and teaching. Her nursing career included years of medical-surgical, labor, delivery, nursery and intensive care nursery. My pediatric experience was that ranged from intensive care to hospice care, where supporting the families of terminally ill children, while providing for the full care of the child were rewarding challenges. Her home care experience, as a case manager, allowed her to bring healing and create an environment of “normality” for ventilator dependent spinal cord patients, much like the injury that was suffered by Christopher Reeves. Subsequently, the last five years of her 36 year career as an RN were devoted to serving residents of an inpatient mental health in Red Bluff, where she later retired in November 2007.
During her first marriage Kathy returned to Panama, where two of her four children were born. In the five years she lived there and benefited from group therapy to try to save the marriage. She learned to fly single engine aircraft as a form of therapy. After a cross country trip with kids, from Panama to California, and then east to New Jersey, she pursued advanced ratings as a pilot to become a Certified Flight Instructor in 1978. She returned to nursing in 1979 upon returning to California as a single parent of four. Nevertheless, she still managed to work part time as a flight instructor as it was on of her greatest joys in life. Coincidently, her current husband, John was also a pilot at the time.
It is important to note that her work at Travis Air Force Base with both well babies and the littlest fragile premature babies caused her to seek a way to teach parenting skills to women BEFORE they became mothers. She imagined helping to empower girls before they chose the man who would father their children. Attempting to teach these vital things were impossible in the nurseries; therefore, she wanted to create a new type of school, where girls were valued and respected and social skills were taught and lived. And now, her current path illustrates how she has been blessed by working with horses in her childhood. This is Kathy’s time to pay it forward.
Kathy and her husband bought two horses in 1992 and began to study with the masters; Pat Parelli, John Lyons, Ray Hunt, Tom Dorrance. As both Kathy and John discovered that Horsemanship and Parenting had much in common, they started Day Star Ranch to become a rural learning center with an amazing horsemanship component. They moved to Tehama County in 1998 and offered horsemanship to the local ‘at risk’ kids. In 2001 they were incorporated as a non profit in California. Since then they had been ‘growing the herd’ of horses specifically suited for this work, since 1992. In 2003 they learned of EAGALA – Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association and were excited to sponsor several trainings in Red Bluff with their founders. In 2004 we became voting members of the Tehama County Health Partnership and had a contract with the county to provide support for some of the mental health clients. Most recently, Kathy, her husband and their friend and partner Suzanne Campbell started Cloud Nine Ranch Enterprises in 2005 to be a host ranch for Day Star by providing the best herd of horses for the Day Star Ranch activities.
To learn more about Kathy Rutan Sprague, visit her website: www.cloud9ranchent.com