Bobcat Compact Tractor Preps Customer for Lifesaving Work

Therese Swift puts in plenty of 15-hour workdays. She handles high-pressure jobs and keeps calm in crisis. Many nights she works until daybreak, and still she presses on with her new Bobcat® CT4045 compact tractor when she arrives home.  

But Therese is not a contractor; she’s a mobile crisis clinician. Even so, her machine is just as critical to her professional work — in an unexpected way. Caring for people in a mental health crisis is a demanding assignment. To balance the pressure that comes from those calls, Therese relies on the emotional support she gets from spending time with her horses at home. And recently, she needed to find a new machine to help her care for them. 

Horse Drawn 

According to Therese, she was born wanting horses. They were the subject of all her childhood books and the motivation for her first summer job, which was detasselling corn. By age 14, she had saved enough to buy her first horse. She has had one ever since, including the time away at college.  

These days, Therese owns five horses and five mules several miles southeast of Aledo, Illinois. They are her passion and a source of comfort and strength. Whether her professional work ends at dawn or the middle of the night, she heads right out to her horses.   

Protect the Stable 

Recently, problems with her 1972 tractor from a different manufacturer took away from the relief she found caring for her horses. Constant breakdowns left the tractor stranded in the pen with its bale spear exposed. The idle machine was a threat to the horses’ safety until it was repaired or towed from the pen. Therese realized if she wanted to enjoy the benefits of her horses, she needed a new tractor.  

Tractor Shopping 

The search started in a Goldilocks-like fashion: some tractors were too big, some were too small and some dealers were too pushy or patronizing. “I ran into a lot of, ‘Hey, there, little lady’ kind of things,” Therese says. The reality was she knew the specifications and the price point she wanted. She decided to look online to find a dealership with a machine, price and customer service that were just right. 

Hoofing it to Bobcat  

Therese knew a lot about Bobcat skid-steer loaders from being connected with other horse owners, but she admits she didn’t know that Bobcat also made compact tractors. She sent an email to Bobcat of the Quad Cities, and she couldn’t believe who responded. The dealer was Chad Mayerhofer, who Therese knew as a local horse farrier. The connection was meant to be. 

“Chad was phenomenal,” Therese says. “He was very informative. We talked about what I do, and the lift capacity I needed.” She decided to buy the CT4045 compact tractor with hydrostatic transmission.  

“My only regret is that I didn’t buy the compact tractor sooner,” she says. “Finding the right machine for my horses lets me take care of them and enjoy them instead of worrying about my tractor breaking down.”  

It was just what she needed for her horses and in turn, herself, to be in a good place for her professional career as a crisis clinician. 

Call of Duty 

In 2022, a national suicide and crisis lifeline became available by dialing 988, much like the familiar 911 emergency phone number. Trained professionals are available all hours of the day to offer emotional support to people in suicidal crisis. Therese is among the crisis clinicians who answer the call and help people through their most difficult moments. In addition, she responds to crises in person at the request of police and hospitals.  

Therese realizes her responses can save lives, which is why it is so important to find the strength to be ready for each call. “Self-care and stress relief are really important,” she says. “My horses are that relief for me.”   

Relief and Rejuvenation 

The first night Therese had the compact tractor at home, she put out hay after dark, under a full moon and with the sound of coyotes howling in the distance. For the first time in a long time, the experience was one she could enjoy rather than fear. She no longer worried about mechanical failures on her tractor that would put her beloved horses in danger.  

“It was such a total 180 from what I’d been dealing with previously,” Therese says. “This purchase was key to caring for my animals, which are deeply important to me.”  

Her compact tractor relieves the stress she once had about caring for her horses and enables her to enjoy them without reservation. In turn, the time spent with the horses at home is critical to preparing Therese for the moment when someone in crisis calls for help. She’s now ready, and her Bobcat tractor helps make that possible.