Our Founder and CEO, Larry McDaniel, explains the purpose and benefit of our Trail Teams, hosted for local veterans.
There is something special about becoming good enough friends with a horse that it willingly carries you down wooded trails. On the one hand, trails simply circle back to where you started, but on the other hand, they carry one’s restless soul to places of peace, calm, and relaxation that is hard to find in today’s troubled world.
We are asked to carry many things through this life; some more than others. Some carry significant childhood trauma or living a life in hard places. Some carry the suffering of great personal loss. Many veterans carry the life and death experiences of military deployment in a combat zone.
These experiences can be heavy and burdensome. They can weigh us down and cause other important parts of our lives to strain under the load. Sometimes, we just need a break.
Since we already use horses for therapy with our children, it just made sense to also use them as a tool to help local veterans who need a break, a few moments of calm, and a bit of help carrying their burdens. Trail Teams was developed for those very reasons, while also providing the benefit of comradery with fellow veterans who understand.
The healing power of a relationship with a horse is amazing, especially knowing this animal will not judge you, and will carry you and all of the trauma that comes with you. Coyote Hill Foster Care Ministries’s Trail Teams equine program is designed to give a veteran space to begin exploring the parts of themselves that have been left behind. To adjust to the new person they have become, and perhaps learn new skills now needed as a result of their wartime experiences so they can fully return home, emotionally, for their families, friends, and for themselves.
Winston Churchill once remarked, “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.” At Coyote Hill Foster Care Ministries in Harrisburg, MO we have certainly found this to be true for everyone; man, woman, and child.
“The weekly trail ride helped me out tremendously,” stated Kenny Eskew, one of this fall’s Trail Teams participants. “It was truly the highlight of my week. Being with the horses and fellow veterans helped ease the stress of life and our common experiences. It helped me physically as well. I have several problems with my lower back and the riding helped realign it. There is something about being with the horses, where you can just melt into them and feel the stress of life lifted. The veterans’ program is amazing, plus I love how much Coyote Hill Foster Care Ministries does for children.”
