Victoria Nodiff-Netanel carries a 32-key piano everywhere, including hospitals, schools, police stations and parties. But it’s not for her to play.
She has trained her nine miniature horses to run their muzzles along the keyboard, creating tunes that are as tumultuous as they are amusing. Music is one way the mares, part of Nodiff-Netanel’s nonprofit called Mini Therapy Horses, comfort people, especially hospital patients, in Southern California.
The horses are obedient and housebroken and can do tricks, like standing on their hind legs, giving high-fives and kicking small balls. They perform their trademark activity — playing the keyboard — for thousands of people in hospitals annually, including those who are being fitted for a prosthesis, waking up from anesthesia or recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder. According to a Los Angeles hospital, a patient in hospice once asked to see one of the horses before he died.
“Wherever you go, you’re bringing joy,” said Nodiff-Netanel, who added that she feels like Santa Claus on the job. “It’s pretty hard not to have a smile and feel joy when you see a little tiny horse — a beautiful little horse — playing a keyboard.”
Her obsession with horses began as a child, when Nodiff-Netanel played with stuffed and plastic horse toys, made paintings of horses and attended camps where she rode and groomed horses. She bought her first horse, Macbeth, as a student at the California Institute of the Arts and picked up dressage a few years later.
Nodiff-Netanel, who describes herself as “half-horse,” quit the sport in 2008 to paint full-time. But she wanted a miniature horse as a pet, so she bought Black Pearl, a cuddly foal with a black-and-white coat, at a ranch in Solvang, California. Nodiff-Netanel taught Pearl to smile, stand on her hind legs and pull a cart. She wanted to share with others the joy Pearl brought her.
Nodiff-Netanel’s first idea — inspired by her father, Arnold Nodiff, a Marine fighter pilot during World War II — was to take Pearl to a veterans hospital in Los Angeles. The hospital, Nodiff-Netanel said, was initially unsure about bringing a horse inside, but veterans flocked to Pearl during an outdoor fair. Pearl ended up visiting oncology, intensive care and psychiatric patients.
“It was so rewarding,” Nodiff-Netanel said. “I felt like: This is my mission now.”
She founded Mini Therapy Horses in 2008 and began visiting other hospitals in Southern California with Pearl.
Then, in 2009, Nodiff-Netanel was playing a piano in her living room when Pearl approached. Nodiff-Netanel had the idea to press a key and then push Pearl’s muzzle against the same key. Afterward, Nodiff-Netanel gave Pearl hay pellets as a reward. Eventually, Pearl learned to play a portable keyboard.
A few years later, Nodiff-Netanel began searching ranches across the country for more miniature horses — ones that would grow to be 30 inches or shorter and weigh between 100 and 225 pounds. She wanted mares who were sociable — a sign they would make good therapy horses.
Nodiff-Netanel’s nine horses now live in a barn adjacent to her house in Calabasas, California, behind a sign on a fence that says “VICTORIA’S MINIATURE HORSE HAVEN.”
To acclimate the horses to touch, Nodiff-Netanel and about a dozen volunteers hug them and touch their hooves. They familiarize the horses with loud noises by shaking cups of rocks and walking them near barking dogs, trash trucks and jackhammers.
The horses respond to Nodiff-Netanel’s hand signals: They smile when she wiggles her fingers in front of their mouths and stand on their hind legs when she raises her arms — palms up — in front of them. They learn the keyboard by mimicking experienced horses and starting to practice as foals. The horses receive peppermint-flavored treats or hay pellets when they make progress in their training, which can take up to two years.
In addition to visiting a handful of hospitals, the horses meet with children who recently left abusive households, first responders, grieving families, elementary school and college students, and people affected by shootings and natural disasters across California. For example, the horses accepted hugs from people who had been displaced by the Los Angeles wildfires last year.
The horses have been celebrities in Southern California since July, when an Instagram video of Pearl playing the keyboard for a patient waking up from anesthesia at a children’s hospital in Pasadena, California, was viewed more than 43 million times.
Nodiff-Netanel said that the horses sense patients’ emotions, so they know when to be playful or when to rest their heads against someone for a hug. Even the most stoic people smile when the horses play the keyboard, Nodiff-Netanel said.
Every week, she and her horses visit that first hospital, the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, with two rubber chickens that squeak when horses step on them with their front hooves. The patients, meanwhile, sing the 1934 ballad “Blue Moon” when the therapy horse named Blue Moon visits, and the theme song from the 1960s talking horse sitcom “Mister Ed.”
Pamela Keith, who helps oversee volunteer programs for the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, said patients look like “kids at Christmas” around the horses. The hospital plans to support the horses’ musical careers for years to come, she said.
“It’s almost like magic,” she said. “They come in, and just everything just shifts.”
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