Our Mission
To match people with disabilities with highly skilled, task trained miniature horses to help them live fuller, more independent lives.
The CALI Story
The CALI Corp exists because of one woman who would not take no for an answer.
Mona Ramouni, who has been completely blind since shortly after birth, was unable to get a guide dog when she still lived with her parents because, while Muslims believe that dogs are permissible as service animals, her parents were not comfortable with having a dog in the house. From the moment she first heard about guide horses when she was in her early 20s, she was determined to get one.
She worked hard for several years, saving all of her money to put towards this project. She was able to find Dolores Arste, a trainer willing to take on the immense task of training a horse to guide a blind person. It was Dolores who found Mexicali Rose, aka Cali, who was owned by Becky Montano. She had been a show horse up to that point, and had exactly the intelligence and disposition for service work.
Dolores did an amazing job training Cali and, from the day she and Mona started working together, the two were unstoppable.
Cali gave Mona the freedom and independence she had been seeking, allowing her to navigate easily in any number of situations.
Cali has been at Mona‘s side through jobs, moves, getting a Master’s degree, meeting her husband and starting a family, and now, starting this organization.
Taking an interest in learning how to train so she could work with Cali better, Mona quickly realized she had a knack for training animals. She began working with other horses and, wanting to give other people the same gift that had been given to her, trained a number of service horses over the years.
Now, inspired by Cali and driven by Mona‘s passion, the CALI Corp exists to help train and match service horses with disabled handlers.
Public awareness of and individual interest in service horses has been increasing over the years, but the only way to get one was to train it yourself or hire a trainer to do so. The CALI Corp is the world‘s first organization dedicated entirely to training and matching people with miniature service horses, making them more accessible to those who need them.
Image description: Mona, wearing a black hijab, a gray long-sleeved shirt, and blue jeans, stands outside on a grassy lawn. She is leaning down and affectionately touching noses with a small bay pony. The pony, Cali, has her head tilted up to nuzzle Mona and is wearing a guide harness. In the background, there is a house with a white exterior and a tree with bare branches. The sky is clear and blue.
About Our Trainers
Abrea Hensley
Abrea’s first memory of interacting with horses is riding in a lead line class on her aunt’s Appaloosa gelding named Taxi at the age of six. She had long been bitten by the horse girl bug before then, but that really kicked off her lifelong passion for horses. She began taking riding lessons shortly after that and purchased her first horse, an untrained four year old pinto, at the age of 14. Abrea put many hours into training that mare and they achieved her goal of winning the English Pleasure and Equitation classes at the 4H county fair during her senior year. In addition to that, her experience ranges from showmanship, to Western, to hunters, to dressage, and even encompasses raising and training a foal into a First Level dressage horse.
In 2010, Abrea’s mental health began to decline and she was subsequently diagnosed with PTSD, treatment resistant major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and panic disorder. As her conditions worsened, she gradually lost the ability to function even in simple things like grocery shopping, and her depression and anxiety became so severe that she struggled to make it to the barn to see her horse. In 2017, prompted by a memory of seeing a YouTube video about Panda the guide horse, Abrea began researching and exploring the idea of getting a miniature horse to train as her service animal. With the approval of her psychiatrist, she purchased Flirty in May of 2017 and began training her into a psychiatric service horse. It was a challenging process, and she spent a good deal of time studying service dog training techniques and working to adapt those to horses. Today, Flirty is a highly successful service horse who has accompanied Abrea on airline flights (prior to the revamping of the ACAA in 2021), to comic conventions, doctor’s appointments, shopping malls, grocery stores, and much, much more.
“Training Flirty is one of the most challenging and rewarding things I have ever done,” Abrea says. “I can’t imagine my life without her. She has given me back so much freedom and independence. I still struggle on a daily basis, but having her at my side makes it more manageable.”
A board member since the inception of CALI Corp, Abrea moved to Michigan in the fall of 2025 with the express purpose of being able to help in a hands-on manner. From doing barn chores to training the horses, Abrea has dived into the program. “Helping other disabled people experience the life-changing bond with a service mini horse and how they can positively help with a disability is an amazing opportunity. It has been a privilege to be part of CALI Corp so far, and I’m looking forward to continuing to help care for and train these wonderful little horses.”
Teagan Russ
Teagan likes to joke that her entire personality is horses, but that truly does express the amount of passion she has for these amazing animals. She has dedicated herself to learning as much as she possibly can about training, care, and management, always continuing to learn more to be the best steward possible.
“I couldn’t imagine doing anything more perfectly me,” Teagan said.
Teagan’s lifelong obsession with horses began when she was very young. Other than the odd pony ride here and there, her first true hands on experience with horses was doing a week-long summer camp, and subsequently spending as much time as her poor mother could be convinced of, at a miniature horse theme park starting at the age of six. She wasn’t able to begin taking riding lessons until she was eight despite her mother’s best efforts, because nobody would have her. Teagan was born with a severe visual impairment, and, although she could still see quite a lot, this intimidated many people, and they were not willing to work with her.
Thankfully, not everyone was so close minded. By complete coincidence, they signed up for lessons at a barn where the main riding instructor was Teagan’s teacher of the visually impaired at school, who worked with her on learning things like braille and orientation and mobility skills. Obviously, this made her the ideal first riding instructor for Teagan.
Over the years, numerous, severe health problems kept cropping up. Teagan missed several years of school, having to do all the work from home, was constantly at doctors visits, physical therapy, or the hospital, and for a time was completely housebound. Throughout all of it, horses were a constant. If she couldn’t get out to the horses, that was her motivation to keep going. When she was well enough, she continued to take riding lessons. When she was in a wheelchair for four years and had to learn how to walk again, the horses provided physical therapy as much as they did an escape.
During her senior year of high school, Teagan did an internship with a therapeutic riding center, which was just the start of a long lasting relationship. She worked primarily with the director, helping to run lessons, do outreach, fundraisers, and train horses. She bought her first horse at the age of 19, putting him in the therapeutic riding program where he gave lessons to other people with disabilities and other challenges for a number of years before his retirement. Things came full circle, and she even went back to work at that miniature horse park where she got her start with horses for a time.
Teagan is a huge advocate for disability inclusion and empowerment, passionate about equine welfare and ethology, and loves sharing her equine knowledge with others — all critically important components of her role at CALI Corp.
In her free time, she can be found playing with her dog, reading (usually about horses), participating in the model horse hobby world, or working with one of her own horses.
