Sunday, April 28, 2024
Joshua Morrison may have just found some of the perfect therapists for veterans suffering from PTSD — and all they require is love.
Well, that, and maybe a few butt scratches.
Morrison, the veteran program manager for Pecan Valley Centers for Behavioral and Developmental Healthcare, recently stumbled upon an article involving veterans, PTSD and equine therapy.
In the article, it revealed that veterans who participate in equine therapy were reporting 87% better results in their PTSD symptoms.
“I was like, ‘Man, I could have 20 therapists working around the clock and I would never get close to those numbers,” Morrison said.
While ideas were forming, however, it wasn’t until he was approached last fall by Jim Sharp, board member for T.E.X.A.S. Rescue, that a plan started taking shape.
“I had just spoken in front of my church about my veteran services program and (Sharp) came to me, and he was like, ‘Hey, Josh, would you be interested in doing some veteran equine therapy?’ The skies parted and I was like, ‘As a matter of fact, I would be very interested,’” Morrison said.
T.E.X.A.S. (Texas Equine Xperience And Sanctuary) Rescue is a nonprofit organization that serves to rescue, rehab, and rehome donkeys, horses and mules.
At first, Morrison was concerned about the “expensive undertaking” associated with starting an equine therapy program, but Sharp assured him that T.E.X.A.S. Rescue could provide the animals — all he needed to do was provide the staff, and, of course, the veterans.
"A couple of days later, I came out here with my entire mental health staff,” he explained. “We did a tour of the grounds, we met the animals, and we spent an hour-and-a-half out here longer than I'd planned because once you get out here, you never want to leave.”
Once the two organizations agreed to a partnership, Morrison got to work planning the group therapeutic sessions and invited veterans out to T.E.X.A.S. Rescue to get them comfortable with the animals.
“In order to start having the group therapeutic sessions, it's first important to introduce the veterans to the animals one-on-one so that they become acquainted with, ‘Don't walk behind a donkey,’ ‘Don't slap its butt,’ ‘Don't do any of that.'” Morrison said, chuckling. “We've been doing that for the last few months, just getting them out here one at a time to get familiar with the animals, get familiar with the grounds, and learn the rules.”
During the new equine therapy program, Pecan Valley veterans will come out to T.E.X.A.S. Rescue once a week starting next month and will be tasked with grooming and walking the animals.
“The beauty of equine therapy is the animals do all the work,” Morrison said. “I don't have to be a good therapist if I've got the animals doing the work for me. The minute you set foot on these grounds, these animals know everything you're feeling. They know your emotions, and they're in tune to what's going on with you, so that makes our job really easy.”
Through the equine therapy process, Morrison said the veterans will learn to cope with their own baggage and in return, will build trust, credibility and rapport with the animals.
"Our male veterans with PTSD, the way they respond to everything is brute force, and I dare them to brute force one of those draft horses out there, because it's not going to happen,” he said. “Through this process, the veteran will learn how to deal better with human beings as well, like ‘Hey, I can't brute force everybody in my life. I need to learn how to work with people the same way I learned to work with these animals.’”
Tracy Miller, co-founder of T.E.X.A.S. Rescue with his wife Vicki said it’s hard for people to understand how to behave around equine animals because there’s a lot to learn. For instance, many visitors who come to the rescue use high-pitched voices to talk to the animals, like they would a dog or a cat.
“(The secret is to use) a low and quiet voice,” Tracy Miller said. “Everything that we do is second nature but for somebody coming in that's never been around them, there's a lot of training involved.”
He said an interesting tidbit about the rescue animals is that they have likely gone through a similar experience as the veterans who visit the rescue.
“The majority of all of them out here have baggage,” Tracy Miller said. “They’ve either been whipped on, beat on, starved or neglected. It‘s our job, when we get them, to transform them back into the animal they should be, so that’s why our new mantra is, ‘We rescue the animals; the animals rescue people.’”
Many veterans have now visited T.E.X.A.S. Rescue and have been blown away by the positive effects of equine therapy.
"We've had a couple of comments and one was, ‘No other therapy has worked for me, but this did, first time out,’” Tracy Miller said. "Another veteran said, ‘I would have never expected anything like this, because nothing else has worked for me,’ and that's big. I mean, to hear that first time that they've never experienced donkeys, and to have that kind of response from them, that was huge to us, and that's the part that makes your heart pitter-patter and the hair stand up on the back of your neck that, ‘Wow, they did their job.’”
Vicki Miller said she believes equine therapy will help not only veterans, but others affected by PTSD, whether from a past relationship or another traumatic experience.
"It's just very rewarding to go out there and know that we can share that with other people, too," she said. “It's an expensive therapy, because it costs a lot to feed these guys, but you know, as time goes on, we'll hopefully get more sponsors or grants for them.”
Many people, Morrison said, believe dogs are the biggest empaths, but said they don’t even “come close when compared to the equine kingdom.
“They (equines) are miles beyond dogs,” he said.
Tracy Miller agreed and explained that donkeys are not as stubborn as everyone thinks; they are just highly intelligent and use common sense in certain situations.
“Donkeys naturally are compassionate,” Tracy Miller said. “They're loving, they just want to give you that attention that you're looking for. Any of us that are out there, any veterans that have PTSD, or whatever they're going through, they can sense them, and they give as much back as we can give to them. All they want to do is be next to you. Donkeys are 500-pound puppy dogs; they just want to be in your lap. We aren't therapists, Vicki and I, but the donkeys do all the work — all you have to do is guide people through it.”
“One of the things Tracy said was that the veterans are coming out here and saying, ‘No therapy has ever worked for me before,’” Morrison said. “I’m sending most of my hard cases out here — the ones who just clam up in session, and then they come back to the next session and suddenly we’re getting all of the stuff and all of the feelings. So, it’s like, ‘Good work, Mr. Donkey.’ They’re greasing the wheels for us.”
Morrison said he attributes the breakthrough he’s experienced with many veterans to the fact that they don’t have to talk to anyone — just the animals.
“A lot of it is pride and ego, especially with our veterans," he said. “It's like, ‘I don't want people to see that I have a weakness.’ ‘If I have an exposed weakness in combat, I'm dead, so therefore I'm going to carry that when I come into the civilian world, and I'm not going to expose any weakness. I can expose my weakness to the donkeys and then I feel more comfortable sharing with my therapist at our next session.’”
Tracy Miller said his goal is to spread the word about just how beneficial equine therapy really is — and hopefully encourage more and more individuals to join the program when it starts around April 1.
“We don't try to take credit for everything that happens out here,” he said. “The animals do it. We're just their caregivers.
“Every day, they help us — in ways that people will never know.”
For more information about T.E.X.A.S. Rescue, visit texasrescue.org. To learn more about the equine therapy program, visit pecanvalley.org/veteran-services.
