Jay Porter in a weekly visit with a mentoring student. The mentoring program has been active for five years.

HIGH SPRINGS – For the past five years, men and women have given their time to mentoring students at High Springs Community School as part of HAWKS Mentoring Program.

Danette Drageset coordinates the program by matching up social and academic mentors with students from the first to eighth grades who have been recommended by teachers and staff.

“It is almost like working a Sudoku puzzle, really,” she said, “finding what works for the students and what works for the mentors.”

Volunteer mentors give their preferences for age and provide their availability to be matched with students accordingly. Students receive extra homework for things like spelling or multiplication tables. They also have the opportunity to talk with someone about positive choices and time management.

Mentors are people who are giving whatever time they have for the participating kids, Drageset said, and she is appreciative. Thirty minutes of discussion or study help can make a difference, she said.

“As much as or as little time as you have is all it takes.”

She said she strives to make the experience fun not just for the child but also the volunteer. If the same students and mentors participate year after year, she keeps them together in an effort to forge bonds between them.

“It’s cool to stay one with the same students and see them grow,” Drageset said.

She plans to have a mentors and students meeting by mid-September after the kids settle in to the routine of a new school year. Their interactions will be focused on organizational skills and talking and working through scenarios for constructive choices, goals and class behavior.

“The mentoring program is just extra time spent reinforcing basic skills that will help the kids be more successful,” Drageset said.

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Little Prince's hooves are the size of quarters, his owner says.  When people first saw the picture of him, they thought he was a child's stuffed animal.

HIGH SPRINGS – On July 22, 2013, the same day the new prince was born in the U.K., an unusual pure white colt with blue eyes was born at the ranch headquarters of Gentle Carousel Therapy Horses in High Springs. “Both births were overdue,” said owner Debbie Garcia-Bengochea. “When I checked on the time difference in England, both were born at about the same time as well,” she said.

“Because Liberty, the colt’s mother, was overdue, we weren’t expecting a baby as tiny as this. He was 14 inches tall at the shoulders and weighed only 10 pounds at birth. The average miniature horse foals are 20 to 22 inches at the shoulders at birth,” she said. “Our horses are much smaller than the average miniature horse.”

“He is totally healthy and doing great,” she said. The horse’s mother is also pure white, which is called a silver-black sabino. “It is a type of pinto, but without spots,” she said. “We have lab testing done on all our horses so we know what colors they carry. He is definitely not an albino.”

With all the media attention on the new British prince, it was surprising that the little white colt was seen by over 1 million people around the world on Facebook on Aug. 6. “Two different equine-related sites picked up the photo and between the two they received 1 million hits that day,” Garcia-Bengochea said. In addition, Google sent them a note recently saying they love their website. “We have stayed at number one in their search engine for the past two years with no advertising dollars. Just go to the Google search engine and type in ‘Therapy Horses’ and our site comes up,” she said.

“We subsequently received more than 10,000 name ideas from all over the world,” she said. “Who knew there were so many white horses in legends and books in different languages?”

People from France suggested he be named after the author of the book, “The Little Prince.” Because of his blue eyes, Native American names were also suggested. People in Europe wanted names that had to do with the royal family. Many people in the U.S. thought he looked like the Lone Ranger's horse, Silver.

“We finally registered his official name as Silver Sovereign. His barn name is the Little Prince,” she said.

Photos on their Facebook site of her husband, Jorge, holding the tiny horse led people to believe they had developed a tiny stuffed toy horse and the couple received orders for the toy from all over the world. “Although he looks like a little toy right now, he will eventually work inside children’s hospitals and hospice programs,” Garcia-Bengochea said.

“We expect he will grow to probably 22 inches, full grown,” she said. “Right now he walks around the house and I can hear his tiny feet on the floor as he prances around.” His feet are currently the size of quarters, she said.

“We try to expose our horses to as many different sights, sounds, noises and smells as possible during the first 24 hours,” she said. “He does not stay in the house, but we wanted to expose him to it as soon as we could so he wouldn’t be afraid of the different surface under him. We work with our horses to make it so they are not scared by sirens, unusual noises, wheelchairs, elevators and hospital smells,” she said.

During the training process, the couple takes their new babies, along with their mothers, to UF Health Shands Rehab Hospital on Northwest 39^th Avenue in Gainesville. They get used to being around wheelchairs and medical equipment.

“The patients, mostly spinal cord and burn injury sufferers, love it…especially when the horses are little babies,” she said. “The patients feel like they are giving back by helping to get these little guys trained.”

The Little Prince will start training at the facility around the first of September. Everything they do at this stage also includes the foal’s mother. “We use the building’s elevators to help get the horses used to things moving under them. Most hospitals we go to have elevators and often the elevators are full of people. The horses have to be unafraid and understand how to behave in an elevator full of people,” she said.

The younger the horse is when training begins, the easier it is for them to get comfortable with everything that is normally very “unhorse like.” “We are being the herd leader so they trust us and feel we’re in charge and they won’t get hurt,” she said. Handling the horses from the time they are born has made a very big difference in their ability to accept the myriad of different things they will be exposed to in a hospital setting.

“Ambulance sounds, bumping into wheelchairs, medical smells, cleaning products, walking on different floor surfaces and being confined in an elevator which is moving under them would all be very confusing to a grown horse not previously exposed to these sights and smells,” Garcia-Bengochea said. “Our training program lasts about two years. The babies are weaned at about 4 months old. We keep them with their mothers in the first stages of training to help them feel more secure.”

The Little Prince’s first exposure to the public will be at the Oleno State Park’s Literacy Festival in September. “Both he and his mom will appear at the beginning of the event at his first meet and greet,” she said. He will not stay through the event. “We try to introduce them to different things gradually, so they feel comfortable,” she said.

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Volunteers cleaning tile. The makeover of the historic building took a little over a month to finish.

HIGH SPRINGS – The High Springs Woman’s Club building has a fresh coat of paint.

Renovations to the inside of the historic New Century’s Woman’s Club building in High Springs are finished, after beginning July 10. The work was done by organization members with aid from spouses. Together, they logged in 693 volunteer hours to complete the project just in time to host their first event in the revamped building.

High Springs Chamber of Commerce members were the first invited guests as the Woman’s Club hosted the Tuesday, Aug. 13 chamber meeting in their light and airy building. In honor of the special event, chamber members were treated to a light dinner, dessert and drinks on the round tables.

“It was a labor of love,” said Carole Tate, Woman’s Club spokesperson, referring to both the chamber dinner and the renovation project.

Woman’s Club members earned money through several fund-raising projects, and made monetary contributions of their own to help pay for items needed to complete the renovation project. Events like Pioneer Days and city-wide yard sales helped raise the funds, Tate said. “We have been saving up to do this work for some time. It was at the very top of our list of items we wanted to address,” she said.

As an example of the work that had to be done as part of the renovation, “11 volunteers scraped carpet and two layers of tile off of the floor. Jack Phillips planned the restoration, ordered all the materials, did the repairs to the ceiling, walls and wood trim and built the alcove shelving,” Tate said. “He has been a tile-setter for 50 years, and with the help of G. Cox, Tony Sellmen, Ernie Adkins and Toby Pugh, Jack set all our wood grain floor tiles in a herringbone pattern. He and his wife, Windy Phillips, spray painted the walls and ceiling, and Windy painted the doors, moldings and other surfaces. They used all original wood for the repairs to the walls and trim as well,” she said. “This renovation project would not have been possible without Jack Phillips.”

The 1925 building now has a new lease on life, Tate said. The Woman’s Club plans to host a Brunch Membership Drive Sept. 5 at 10 a.m. Anyone interested in finding out more about the 55-member club and the many services they provide locally, nationally and internationally are invited to attend.

An open house is also planned for Sept. 15, from 1-3 p.m. “People can stop in for a visit and see the newly renovated building,” Tate said. “It is a great opportunity for our members to show off all their hard work and invite people to see the lovely, updated building,” she said.

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The Warriors division of Irish Water Dogs takes North Florida veterans on nature excursions.

HIGH SPRINGS – Tony St. Angelo, currently in his mid-30s, joined the U.S. Army in 2004, working at Arlington National Cemetery. Even though he never saw combat, he still had personal battles to fight.

“Everybody individually has their issues,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be combat-related.”

St. Angelo said he’s gone through dark times, but asked not to be more specific than that.

For him, his healing came in the form of a program he learned about at the Gainesville Veteran’s Hospital.

Irish Water Dogs Warriors was started about three years ago in Jacksonville, Fla. The program takes veterans on a trip to nature the first Sunday of every month.

“Being on the water is incredibly healing,” said David McDaid, founder of the program. “I’ve seen miracle transformations with this program.”

Veterans who were physically or mentally injured on or off the battlefield and veterans who just want to enjoy a day on the Santa Fe River show up. Current and former service members fighting post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), addiction or dealing with bodily damage go kayaking, fishing, hiking, snorkeling or spend the day shooting nature films and snapping photos.

After five months of running the High Springs chapter from Jacksonville, the organization opened a headquarters in Alachua County in January.

McDaid started the Irish Water Dogs about seven years ago as a commercial venture for outdoor. When he decided to use his network to help veterans, he set up the first chapter of the nonprofit Warriors division in Jacksonville. Soon after, they expanded to Tampa, Miami, South Carolina, Virginia and Idaho. Now, there are 16 chapters spread across nine states. Across the country, the Irish Water Dog Warriors takes out between 1,100 to 1,200 vets each month.

“Each chapter focuses on something that is unique to the geography,” McDaid said. For High Springs, the rivers and springs are the heart of the activities.

In the morning when the vets arrive, they are unsure about the day, he said.

“We ask them what they want to do that day,” McDaid said. “If they want to go fishing, we buy them bait. By the end of the day, you can see the transformation. It’s high fives and fist bumps.”

People of all ages have come for the outings, he said. “We have guys in the program that are 19 and 20, all the way through vets from Vietnam and Korea. We even have one that is 89 years old. He’s a World War II vet.”

When Tony St. Angelo started participating in the program about five months ago, he was able to finally branch out into a passion he’d had for a long time. He was interested in nature videography, and said he always had a dream of being a National Geographic videographer. McDaid said he got him a camera and a waterproof bag to take with him on the excursions.

“I’ve made tremendous progress,” St. Angelo said about his videography techniques.  

Being on the water has helped him learn to enjoy what life has to offer, he said, helping him through personal problems.

McDaid has seen similar progress among others.

“Being outdoors has consumed them,” he said. “To find something that consumes them that is not anguish or hurt is an incredible thing.”

Each chapter of Irish Water Dogs Warriors is sustained largely by that community, and individuals or businesses can donate or sponsor their chapter, McDaid said.

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