VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — I want you to meet my new friend. This is “Kidd.” Gotta love the name. He is one of the therapy horses at Equi-Kids Therapeutic Riding Center, and lately they’ve been helping military spouses get through some very difficult times.
Vanessa Terrell knows firsthand the ups and downs of being a military spouse. Her husband is a sailor on the USS Truman. She says his last deployment was especially hard. So when she saw a Facebook post seeking military spouses for a horse-therapy study, she signed up.
“I really wanted to participate in the study because I was very stressed out,” she said. “I was raising our toddler by myself, and we had just moved from Tennessee to Virginia, so a lot of big life changes were happening.”
The study was conducted by Liberty University doctoral candidate Melissa Crook, who is also a military spouse. Her dissertation examined how horses can help spouses better cope with military life.
“We were doing something called ground-based training,” Crook said. “We didn’t ride the horses; we just spent time with them. We groomed them with brushes. We did some interactive activities with chalk — wet chalk — and we were drawing on the horses.”
The eight-week study was performed at the Equi-Kids Therapeutic Riding Center in Virginia Beach.
“You’re so focused on the animal that you’re not paying attention to the stressors you have at home or the fact that your spouse is deployed,” Crook said.
Some of the 18 participants had experience with horses, but others, like Vanessa, did not.
“I was so giddy, like a little kid,” Vanessa said.
At the end of the study, Crook reported that all of the spouses said they were feeling better emotionally and physically.
“All of these horses are calm, and that’s infectious,” Crook said.
Crook and everyone who supports military families are 'Positively Hampton Roads.'
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