Rancho Escondido Behavioral Therapy originally started as a group of add-on services that we offered to our riding students for whom riding alone was not enough. Given some of the challenges that some of our clients faced, it became obvious that some sort of NON-equine therapy would be appropriate to meet their needs.

Today, we are still evolving, but we are at least able to offer a baseline level of therapeutic coaching and counseling.

Our staff consists of Ms. Kimber, who is NOT a therapist, but who has a graduate certificate in Autism and has been working with children with diagnosed behavioral disorders for over a decade.

Madeline Laiz, MSW: Madeline is working on her licensure as a Clinical Social Worker and has a Graduate Certificate in Social Work for Military Families;

Ms. Lauren Smith, R.N. Ms. Smith is working on her Master’s as a Mental Health Nurse Practitioner.

Ms. Reesa, who is a Family Nurse Practitioner, will start seeing clients in 2022.

Mrs. Christine Durfee, LPC, is a Licensed Counselor and will start seeing clients at Rancho Escondido in 2022

All of the above practitioners have extensive experience working with both people and horses and our new facilities allow us to offer a varied, wholistic approach to helping people overcome their challenges.

Please visit this page frequently. We have begun the process of getting established with the various insurance authorities in New Mexico and we hope to be able to accept insurance in the near future for many of the services that we offer.

In the mean time, one of the new buildings that we built on our new site is an Autism classroom and is designed specifically to offer Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) Therapy to children with Autism. This “therapy classroom” has all of the features of a typical academic classroom, with the addition of some special learning aides that are specifically useful for children with Autism.