Mustang Adoption Academy is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
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Mustangs of Service
Veterans Equine Program
This is NOT your traditional talk therapy program. The Mustangs of Service program is a mental health program that teaches & utilizes Brain-based Horsemanship and Equine Assisted Services with our Veterans in the act of gentling Mustangs. Our MOS professionals support the Veteran through this journey and to see the undeniable parallels between the two. Through this, they both find understanding, learning & healing.
The MOS program was developed to help to reduce the number of Veterans who live every day with the effects of PTSD, TBIs, depression, and/or anxiety. We hope to make an impact in the 22 per day Veteran suicide rate, while also saving America’s Wild Horse, the Mustang by preventing them from ending up in kill pens.
Read on to learn about what we do in our
FREE Veterans program.
About the MOS Program:
Mustangs of Service is a Veterans program run by the Mustang Adoption Academy - a 501(c)3 non-profit. The mission of the program is to pair Mustangs & Veterans, and help both assimilate into (or back into) domestic life through Equine Assisted Services and Brain-based Horsemanship.
There is NO COST to our Veterans to participate in the MOS program.
Can be tailored to fit YOUR schedule: 16 week program - 5 day intensive - 1 visit.
Whatever works best for YOU
BENEFITS OF THE MOS VETERANS PROGRAM:
- decreases PTSD and/or depression symptoms
- utilizes trauma-informed techniques to integrate the fragmented sense of self that many Veterans find themselves living with after their time in service
- demonstrates the importance of regulating tolerance levels and understanding our nervous system in trauma-driven responses in everyday life
- helps the Veteran find safety in civilian life.
- brings adrenaline and excitement back into our Veterans’ days
- improves quality of life
- make them a part of the solution
Our MOS professionals provide Equine Assisted Services to our Veterans through work with our Mustangs. The Veteran starts to help another being, the Mustang, find safety and step into the domestic world, gentled. The parallels between Mustangs and Veterans help the Veterans see themselves through the Mustang.
Mustangs are vastly overpopulated in United States. When land set aside for the Mustangs becomes too overcrowded, many are rounded up and become available for adoption. While this is done in an effort to save their lives, it often inflicts more trauma on the horses and forces them to move into a domestic world they never would have chosen. In either alternative, their lives before they come to the MAA are often riddled with trauma, aggression and lack of safety.
We see a striking number of similarities in our Mustangs and Veterans: once they learn to live in the wild, using their basic instincts and gut to keep them alive, it can be very difficult to reintegrate into the domestic world. It often feels mundane and as though they cannot relate to others. Relationships feel scary and Veterans may keep those they love at an arm’s (or hoof’s) length. Many choose to redeploy soon after their return in order to seek the relative safety of how their brains now know to live, but this only serves to perpetuate the trauma, creating the problems we seek to resolve through the MOS Program.
Unfortunately, like the Mustang, our Veterans may not always have a choice in the matter. When that time comes, the Mustangs of Service Program seeks to re-engage Veterans with feelings of control over themselves, connection with their community and safety in the domestic world. Both the Veteran and the Mustang begin to learn that there is more to life than what they are enduring.
HOW HORSES ARE HELPFUL IN TREATING PTSD:
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Horses are prey animals and naturally skittish & hypervigilant, presenting an opportunity for Veterans to recognize and understand these fear responses.
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Horses are naturally sensitive to verbal & nonverbal cues, and thus provide good feedback to the Veterans about how they are communicating and at what level.
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Horses exist “in the moment,” and are forgiving, patient & nonjudgmental, allowing opportunities for veterans to make mistakes and learn from them.
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Brain-based Horsemanship is a scientific practice based in PATIENCE. Through simple techniques, it necessitates that both human & horse find focus & mindfulness in each task. It enhances communication skills and positive coping mechanisms for the pressures of the world they find themselves in.
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Horses are herd animals, who live in a social structure and seek out social relationships; However for our Mustangs who are taken from what they know and forced into a difference environment, they may have to re-learn how to find safety in a herd.
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Relationships with Mustangs must be earned. You have to build safety with them before they will welcome you into their world. Through this program, Veterans re-learn how to build trust and how to trust themselves again – valuable tools to help Veterans succeed with family, work and social relationships.
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The parallels between Mustangs & Veterans help the Veteran see themselves through the Mustang.
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The MOS Program isn't simply about making Veterans "feel better", it's about helping them increase emotional awareness and the ability to regulate their emotions. Our program focuses on the social & emotional aspects of the horse-human connection and bond. Our Veterans will participate in the gentling process with the horses from Day 1. Our MOS professionals offer support to help both horse & human to learn to re-regulate their brains & bodies.
Instead of focusing on what has happened in their pasts, we reintroduce the possibility of connection for the Veteran to another like-minded being, the Mustang, and through the MOS Program they then begin to show one another the path forward.
In my first moments with the horse I was concerned, borderline scared. I had zero experience with horses up to this point, let alone wild Mustangs. Sky is a very level-headed trainer, we would find something I could do while gently expanding my personal boundaries.
-MOS program participant
"As I came in to work with the mustangs, I saw parts of myself again that really had been disappeared for, well, since I came back home.”
-MOS program participant
Horses have an interesting way of showing you your inner throughts, fears and short comings. Nothing can be hidden from a horse, they see right to your soul. While participating in the MOS Program, I learned that a horse will always look for safety. It made me question why I was feeling the way I felt. I had to ask myself, "Do I not feel safe?", the answer was a resounding NO. I did not feel safe in public. I did not feel safe in my own skin, I was seperating myself from society because I did not feel safe."
-MOS program participant
MOS Participant Story:
On his journey, our Veteran came to relate to one horse in particular - a paint horse named Whiskey.
Over the course of 12 years, 7 different owners gave up on taming him, including two professionals who gave up after just one session with the mustang. He had found himself in a kill pen twice in his life.
“He did not want to be part of the herd. When the herd came into the pasture, he would go to the other side of the pasture, he was very, very difficult.”
One day, Miller and Whiskey simultaneously went in sync and walked across the pasture together without a halter or lead.
“At that point I knew, wow we are in this together, because although he doesn’t want to, and I don’t want to, we’re both trying."
I learned that mustangs need their herd, and people do too.
“I was able to build safety with him, and build safety in myself, and see that although he didn’t want to be part of society, and neither did I really, getting into it feels better than not.”
