Founder Ellie Laks started The Gentle Barn after adopting a sick goat from a run-down petting zoo in 1999. Some two hundred animals later (including chickens, horses, pigs, cows, rabbits, emus, and more), The Gentle Barn has become an extraordinary nonprofit that brings together a volunteer staff of community members and at-risk teens to rehabilitate abandoned and/or abused animals. As Ellie teaches the volunteers to care for the animals, they learn a new language of healing that works wonders on the humans as well.
The saga of Laks and her animal sanctuary is enormously compelling. She grew up loving animals in a family that could not understand her empathy for “disposable pets.” Struggling to find her way, she fought drug addiction and then successfully started a dog-rescue operation in her spare bedroom. Determined to change the world, Laks rescued animals from a dilapidated petting zoo and then expanded to accept pigs, horses, and more on a multi-acre ranch outside Los Angeles.
With brutal honesty, she acknowledges the missteps in her first marriage that became a casualty to her rescue efforts, but then she recounts the happiness she found with a volunteer who became her soul mate. The two found enormous personal and professional success as they reached out to at-risk youth and became leading voices in the movement to extend rescue efforts to farm animals. Laks brings so much raw emotion to her narrative that readers will find themselves moved to tears over the lives of goats and cows. Intimate, powerful, and shocking in its revelations about the food we eat, My Gentle Barn is not easily forgotten. This is a book to talk about and return to; it’s a life changer, plain and simple.”
My Gentle Barn weaves together the story of how the Barn came to be what it is today with Ellie’s own journey. Filled with heartwarming animal stories and inspiring recoveries, My Gentle Barn is a feel-good account that will delight animal lovers and memoir readers alike.
ABOUT ELLIE LAKS
Ellie Laks is the Founder of The Gentle Barn Foundation, a national nonprofit organization that rescues and rehabilitates unwanted animals and heals people with the same stories of abuse and neglect. She is a celebrated animal welfare advocate, humane educator, and the author of My Gentle Barn: Creating a Sanctuary Where Animals Heal, and Children Learn to Hope.
Ellie founded The Gentle Barn in 1999. She invented her own “gentle healing method” that allows old, sick, injured and terrified animals to fully recover using a combination of Western medicine, holistic modalities, holding therapy and lots of love. Ellie is an expert in rehabilitating orphaned and sick animals, like puppies with Parvo and calves from veal crates.
In her work at The Gentle Barn, Ellie Laks she has hosted hundreds of thousands of visitors and developed programs for at-risk, underprivileged, and intellectually or developmentally disabled children. The rescued animals at The Gentle Barn also act as ambassadors of kindness and compassion for groups of war veterans, senior citizens, domestic abuse survivors, and those in recovery from addiction and gang affiliation.
She is a highly effective and charismatic public speaker who has presented at animal rights conferences, environmental conventions, ecofeminism summits, veg festivals, pet expos, universities, high schools, and corporate functions. Her message motivates audiences towards higher awareness, profound compassion, realizing dreams, and developing an enhanced sense of purpose.
To date, Ellie has saved hundreds of animals and hosted over 500,000 guests. The Gentle Barn is currently home to approximately 200 animals and has grown to include three locations; outside Los Angeles, California, Nashville Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri. Ellie’s goal is to open Gentle Barns in every state, so that everyone in America can have the opportunity to hug a cow, cuddle a turkey or give a pig a tummy rub.
