Joy

Joy is the healing master at the school, meaning she is responsible for the healing curriculum, even though most of the other masters are healers as well, in one way or another. Joy is a veterinarian who specializes in working with rescued horses, as well as a “horse whisperer.” She rehabilitates problem horses and trains certain horses as therapy animals. Most of the clients she and her horses work with are trauma survivors in one way or another. Many have physical disabilities or are on the autism spectrum. She cannot teach veterinary medicine, but she does teach various aspects of emergency medicine and veterinary nursing, as well as the intangibles of healing both humans and animals, such as bedside manner and how to cope with the pain and death of patients.

Joy is tall and slim, with long, grey-brown curly hair. She is rarely in uniform, preferring jeans and a Western-style shirt, and spends most of her time on campus with the animals and the students who help her care for them. She is forty-four years old when the story starts, and lives off-campus. She is divorced and has a grown daughter. She is an animal communicator, and takes seriously the idea that animals can be healers as well as patients, and that everyone, human and otherwise, is both in need of healing and able to heal others.