All across America and around the world, this
is Veterans Radio. This is Veterans Radio. Good
day. I'm Jim Fossone. I'm the Officer of the
Deck today here on Veterans Radio and thanks
for joining us. We've got some interesting stories
for you. We always want to remind you, you can
find more about Veterans Radio at its Facebook
site or at the web, veteransradio .org, where
we're on the web 24 -7. You can find a lot of
our podcasts there as well. We post new ones
every Tuesday, so you can get a new story, a
new interview, something you didn't know before
by going to veteransradio .org. Before we get
started, we want to thank our sponsors. First
up, we want to thank National Veteran Business
Development Council, nvbdc .org. It was established
to certify both service -disabled and veteran
-owned businesses. You'll find out how they can
help your business by going to nvbdc .org. We
want to thank Legal Help for Veterans. Legal
Help for Veterans fights for veterans disability
rights all across the nation. You can reach them
at 800 -693 -4800 or on the web at LegalHelpForVeterans
.com. We just want to remind you that Veterans
Radio podcasts are available on all your favorite
streaming platforms including RSS .com, Apple
Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts, I Heart
Radio, and Reeves Across America Radio. So wherever
you are, you can find us, whether it's on your
mobile phone or your computer or your laptop,
your tablet, but listen in to Veterans Radio
Podcasts. We post something new every week, and
you're going to find it informative. We want
to welcome back to Veterans Radio. Colonel Michelle
Ruhl, Air Force veteran. Michelle, welcome back.
Thank you. Well, we're glad to have you. We'll
talk more about your military career at the end
because it is kind of fascinating. Well, you're
involved in a nonprofit called Stable Strides
and folks can learn more about it by going to
stablestrides .org. It's involved in equine therapy.
So, Michelle, you've been involved in this since
you were a cadet at the Air Force Academy. So
a few years ago, you might say. Couple of decades.
Tell us how you got involved and what equine
therapy is. It actually goes back prior to my
military history. When I was growing up in Detroit,
I used to go up north in Michigan to a horse
camp. And at that horse camp, it was run by a
church. They did a few different programs that
could help teens that had gone through transition
or troubling times. And I used to volunteer to
help feed and muck out stalls and lead the horses.
And I thought, well, that's interesting how a
horse interacts with someone who's going through
some mental health challenges. But I'll never
see that again. And then it turns out I went
out to the Air Force Academy in Colorado. And
in our very limited time, we were allowed to
go do volunteer projects. And I heard of an equine
therapy center, which used to be called X 1911,
which addresses doing miracles for a community.
At that time it was called Pike's Peak Therapeutic
Riding Center and I had to borrow an upperclassman's
car at the Air Force Academy. I would drive 40
minutes out and I just again volunteered to be
a horse leader in what's called a sidewalker.
A sidewalker is someone who helps someone who's
in a wheelchair mount onto a horse and you hold
on to the lower half so that they can feel riding
and what walking feels like, but it takes a sidewalker
on either side. And there's an accreditation
body called PATH. And that's a professional association
of therapy to coursemanship international. It's
an accreditation body that does certifications.
So I thought, well, you know, I'll get a couple
of certifications, but I probably won't see this
again. As it turned out, every military base
that I was stationed at as a pilot within 20
minutes, there was an equine therapy center.
But over the last two decades, it wasn't well
known and there wasn't a lot of evidence based
research. It just seemed sort of an alternative
therapy that might be for some people, but not
for others. But I always found a place, for instance,
when I was stationed at Beale flying the MC -12,
there was a therapy center about 20 minutes outside
the South Gate, and I was able to work with them
called Warrior Soul. When I was in Virginia,
of course, that has a lot of horse history, but
I was able to find a therapy center, also Little
Rock, Arkansas, and then, of course, Colorado.
So I kept up my certifications, thinking I would
do it part -time, and I did for a while. I'm
a therapeutic riding instructor, so I can help
people who have different types of disabilities,
whether that's speech, occupational, physical
therapy, it's called hippotherapy on a horse.
And then I also started digging into other types
of work with horses, including mental health.
So I also have a certification equine specialist
in mental health and learning. Long title, we
shorten it to ES for equine specialist. And I
combined that with being I'm now a life coach
that helps veterans and military members deal
with addiction, recovery, grief, and suicidal
ideations. And the reason I started moving towards
mental health with horses is I was noticing at
every single base, there would be people coming
back from Iraq and Afghanistan who didn't want
to do traditional talk therapy, but they were
willing to go out and work with animals. And
I thought, well, I'll, I'll just sort of stay
involved peripherally. Well, after my 21 year
military career, I recently retired and I was
doing some part -time work with now called stable
strides. It's under its third name change and
I was just doing Mondays and Tuesdays and I was
working with some children and I started noticing
that we didn't have the same veteran and military
population that we'd had over the last two decades.
And so I joined the board. I joined the board
of stable strides and I thought, well, that might
be a way to help. I was recently elected to a
school board. I'm on another board at Mount Carmel
Veterans Service Center. So I thought from the
executive level, I can help expand our services
back to serving the 330 ,000 veterans we have
in Colorado, 7 % of our state. But we also have
30 ,000 active duty and reserve military members
here from all over the country. And I get more
phone calls a day requesting these services,
which we can get into in a minute. But the point
is the demand is high and people are looking
for this type of therapeutic environment as they're
coming back with moral injury and PTS. After
I was on the board for a little bit, the previous
executive director resigned with some family
issues. And so we looked around the room going,
where are we going to find an immediate executive
director who can work with veterans and military,
who can start now and can expand our program?
And I thought, well, that's hard to find. Turns
out. Well, if you're working in the Air Force,
you volunteer. So, you know, come on. You should
have known better what this was going to get
you into. I do, so now I am the executive director
of Stable Strives. Talk a little bit about, because
there is now more research and we're learning
more, maybe it's just getting more exposure to
equine therapy, what is it between a horse and
a person who's having their own challenges that
sort of is a connection that makes this work
for some folks? Yeah, I can put it in a nutshell
that our ancestors used horses quite a bit because
they knew something that we have sort of forgotten
in our kind of modern Western medicine. And that's
that a horse, it mirrors human behavior. But
what a horse can't do that humans are very good
at doing is they can't hide their true feelings
or anxiety. So they're part of a herd and horses
just want to know all the time, am I safe? So
they turn to humans as part of their herd as
long as they feel safe. But when they don't feel
safe, they act out. So they may show anxiety,
which we can see in their ears and in their body,
in their behavior, their breathing. The horses
also have the mentality of about a four to seven
year old child, and they can sense our heartbeat,
human anxiety, and our behavior at up to four
to five feet away. So what a horse offers for
you is a mirror to what you're trying to hold
in and compartmentalize. And you may not want
to sit on a couch and do traditional talk therapy.
So what we do with equine therapy is you will
have a client work with a horse and with a specialist.
And then we ask the horse and the client to sort
of lead this session. And it's not that there's
no objective. There's very clear objective. But
I'll give an actually concrete example. I worked
with a gentleman from Fort Carson who was a sergeant
who was really struggling with anger management
and with domestic abuse. And he knew that he
was being violent towards his spouse. but he
couldn't quite put a finger on when it was coming
up. He would come home and feel like he was calm
and he could handle being with his spouse, but
something would trigger him after a couple tours
in Iraq. So I chose a horse for him that did
have high anxiety. It was very high spirited,
but it was kind. And all I said was, hey, go
grab that horse, go try to go bridle that horse
and bring it to you. And the horse would back
away. and wouldn't get anywhere near him. And
this guy had worse experience. And he kept saying,
I don't understand why I have written. I know
how to do this. How come he won't come near me?
I didn't have to say much because I watched as
he tried to do some deep breathing and calm himself
down. The horse would approach. And as soon as
he would start to walk towards the horse again,
the horse would back up. And immediately he looked
at me and he said, I didn't realize I was giving
off this much anger, anxiety. And he said, is
this how my wife feels? Wow, that's awful. he
came to that conclusion and realized he was putting
out this anxiety but the horse can't hide it
like we wear a mask we hide behind i'm fine i
can handle it well they don't do that because
everything's a predator so they have to communicate
in a herd to say danger and so they give us a
mirror to our own challenges and our own mental
health struggles which even i have participated
in and i'd be happy to share how it helped me
as well Well, we'll come back to that for a moment.
But I think this is one of these things, and
we've been talking to veterans on Veterans Radio
for 20 plus years now. There's no one silver
magic bullet that deals with the problems veterans
may have on emotional or anger or PTSD. So you
have to find the therapy or the approach that
the veteran's comfortable with. And I think at
the VA for a long time, just take these pills,
that's it, one size fits all. But that's where
equine therapy comes in. For some folks, this
may be the right therapy that works for them,
that they can connect with while they didn't
connect with a variety of other things. And is
that kind of what you see as well? I am seeing,
it's just another mode, it's another tool in
the kit, but for the type of person that is generally
drawn towards the military and towards operation
and towards relationship and towards being a
protector, all of those come out when you're
working with a 2 ,000 pound animal that might
be bigger than you, because there's that instinct
for us as humans to protect, is their part, the
animal's part of our herd, part of our squadron,
part of our battalion. But at the same time,
that animal is also looking to us to provide
something and clearly communicate. If you try
to hide or lie to the animal, it knows and it
won't come towards you and it won't build that
relationship. So it's just a different modality
and it doesn't include Western medicine, which
you could augment if your doctor says that that's
correct. But this is more, how do I work through
some of that energy, some of the trigger, some
of the PTS? And even grief. Horses are animals
that grieve when one is removed or one passes
away or when they're separated. They stand and
they look for the other. They'll stand in the
spot that they were. They'll eat in the same
trough and just look for their member. So they
really understand that group mentality when a
group is sort of separated. And it's just a modality
that works for a lot of people that are already
drawn to a military lifestyle. But it doesn't
require sitting still. You don't have to sit
down and talk about your feelings. You can act
them out. You can ride. You can touch. You can
actually express emotion. And it doesn't even
require talking for a lot of this. And we're
talking to Air Force retired Colonel Michelle
Ruhl, who's the CEO of stablestrides .org in
Colorado, about equine therapy. These animals
are, as you mentioned, minigots, big, sizable.
Their care is costly. I know from reviewing stablestrides
.org's website, it has an operating budget of
about a million dollars for, I'm not sure how
many horses, I think there's 10 or 12 or something,
but this is an expensive proposition for a non
-profit. How do you keep it going financially?
You know, there's a positive outcome for people,
but still it takes a lot of resources to do that.
It does. This is one of the most expensive nonprofits.
It's a large animal that eats and then has vet
bills and they eat a lot. We have it down to
grants and donor funding, but to be honest, every
time the horse comes out of this stall, it's
about $200 for just coming out. That's overhead
operating costs of running a farm and a ranch.
We do have 15 horses, but three of those are
mini. Mini horses are about the size of my great
Pyrenees, or smaller. Even those have therapeutic
value, having a small horse to work with, and
children love it as well. So what we've been
really dependent on over the last two decades,
they've actually been around for 44 years, but
for the last two decades specifically has been
a lot of VA funding, adaptive sports. There's
been all sorts of private donors, but as you
know, there's donor fatigue. There's also a focus
over the last year that's been on food scarcity
and rightly so. But the mental health of my generation
of veterans that are coming home from 20 years
of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, What we don't
want is what happened in Vietnam where we weren't
prepared for the mental health challenges of
our veterans coming home. Now we know better.
So how do we do better? And part of that is this
type of therapeutic work is helping for moral
injury and grief as well. I mean, my generation,
I was working in the White House the night Afghanistan
fell. And I have many people coming to me going,
I still have my interpreter in Afghanistan. I'm
feeling all of this sort of grief and I can't
get them out. And so we actually have horses
that help process some of that grief and also
loss from the war. But if we want to do better,
it means having about 12 to 15 horse capacity
to be able to do the services. And each horse
is about $10 ,000 a year. So we look for corporate
sponsors. We're always looking for someone to
sponsor an entire horse for 10 or a partial horse.
and help with those payments. And honestly, I
don't take a paycheck as the executive director.
Right now, I feel like my heart is in giving
that back so that we can give scholarships to
our military. But the other thing that we're
really struggling with is the cost of having
a therapist that accepts TRICARE. So for our
active duty members here, we have seven military
bases right here in Colorado, five within driving
distance from my Equine Center. And so I get
calls every morning from the military bases saying,
can you take someone? And right now we can only
accept, we have one therapist who takes tricare
for children, which is very important, taking
care of our military members, children who are
experiencing secondary effects of their parents'
trauma and TTS. But then also we used to have
therapists who could accept tricare, but as you
can imagine, a nonprofit that has to feed horses
and keep the lights on a ranch, we don't have
the same funding opportunities to be able to
fully pay for a therapist that's in private practice.
So this has to be someone who we can pay through
grants and donor funding, but they also love
working with our military veteran population.
They choose to do it. They choose to do it through
a nonprofit. So we also are looking for people
that might be listening to this. They go, I could
do that for four hours on a Friday. And then
we're looking for those donors to help supplement
the cost. It cost about $200 per session to pay
out of pocket. And we know that for a lot of
our military members, that's just it's a high
cost, but the return on investment is life saving.
Well, and I want to suggest to our veteran radio
listeners, if you're an individual or a corporation
or a foundation, you know, somebody who might
be thinking that they could support equine therapy,
go to the stable strides dot org. You can. see
their tax information. There's a lot of financial
transparency there, which I was glad to see.
I'm sure they can reach out to you, Michelle,
as the executive director there. But let's find
ways to keep these kinds of programs available
at a cost or a reasonable cost or no cost to
our veterans and their families. I love the fact
that you're helping veterans children of veteran
as well, because they so often get left out of
the deal, right? Maybe mom or dad can go to the
VA for care, but there's no care for the kid.
And they do suffer silently often with those
problems that are brought home. Is there federal
or state grant money also available for this
sort of work, or is that diminished in today's
environment? The federal grant funding is paused
for now, but I am an English professor on the
side, so I set my alarm every morning at 4 a
.m. I'm also our grant writer, and I'm putting
in two right now that are larger grants asking
for continued funding, but it's actually, you
mentioned the children of veterans. We're starting
a new program, and it's literacy intervention.
Because I'm on a school board, we actually have
23 ,000 students in our school district, and
the children are only reading at 38 % proficiency
across grade level. And many of these are veteran
and military children who've moved around a lot
and who have issues with either English as a
second language or literacy in general, just
from moving and not having constant educational
care. And so we've started a literacy program
and it's in a national called Horse Powered Reading,
but we have started it at our center and it's
two retired school teachers, one's a principal.
And it's to reach out to the military and veteran
children and be able to do literacy intervention
prior to third grade and then third grade to
eighth grade to help reduce that gap. And then
secondary, we also, we accept Medicaid, but that
barely covers a third of the cost for children
that need intervention for behavior and mental
health that are in middle school. We're seeing
a high rate of suicidal ideation in middle schoolers.
And so what we're able to do is bring them out
and do some group work. But again, the cost is
prohibitive for a lot of families that actually
need it. It's a catch -22. So we look for funders
to help us keep those programs going for the
children that are here and then our military
families that rotate through. So we normally
start our veteran radio programs talking about
our jazz military career so that our listeners
know that this person maybe has walked in their
boots before. We didn't do that here because
I wanted to get right into equine therapy and
the current need at stable strides. I'm hoping
some folks will reach out and help support. But
Michelle, let's back up. I think we mentioned
you went through the Air Force Academy. You became
a pilot. You flew overseas. Tell us a little
bit about that. Then we also touched on that
you were in the White House. Well, you were a
White House fellow. And again, recently retired
back to Colorado with your husband and family,
your husband, a former Air Force pilot as well.
But tell us a little bit, let our listeners know
that you're the real deal. Well, I graduated
from the Air Force Academy in 2003 and then I
went on to fly the C -130 and then the MC -12
which is a King Air 350 that does manned intelligence
surveillance and reconnaissance. So I did my
tours in Afghanistan and we would fly over continuous
operations so that we could watch the ground
and we could send down real -time surveillance
to the ground troops so they could make battle
decisions and we could also do battle damage
assessment. But while I was there, I got very
close to the Afghan people. I also taught English.
So in addition to being a pilot, I was an English
professor at the Air Force Academy. So I did
a lot of volunteer teaching for the young girls
in Afghanistan teaching English and some young
men that were there. So I also had interpreters.
And when it came time to come back to the US,
I was a White House fellow under both President
Trump and President Biden. And I did speech writing,
military advising. And like I said, I was there
the night of the Afghanistan fall. And then I
went on to the Pentagon. I did future warfare
in the joint staff. My final assignment was the
Air Force sent me back to work at NORAD in Cheyenne
Mountain. So I was deputy command center director
watching all of the missiles around the world.
And now I still work with the Air Force Academy
as an admissions liaison officer. And I'm also
one of the theater officers in charge. So we're
doing something around the roof. But I bring
all that up to say, I went back and forth between
flying airplanes and also teaching. So I really
had the left and right brain going because I
taught English. And what I noticed a common thread
through both flying and doing operations overseas
and then teaching was really the humanity, that
part of it. We can get more and more advanced
in technology and AI and our combat systems,
but at the heart of it, it's really the people
that we need to take care of that are still making
the original decisions. And I was noticing a
heavier and heavier load on a lot of our young
guys who did 11, 12 deployments. So I went and
decided to get a master's degree also in psychology
and become a life coach. And the reason I did
that is because as much as we've worked to reduce
the stigma and mental health in the flying community,
in the last three years, I have lost people that
are very near and dear to my heart to suicide
because they could not come forward. In the flying
community, if we come forward, you will still
have the possibility of losing your wings, which
to many people is their livelihood. And it's
not just the flying community, a lot of special
operations. So we're working on getting that
to be much more open and reduce the stigma. But
the point is a lot of people won't go through
TRICARE or won't go to the VA, but they will
go to a private life coach. And if they go to
the private life coach like me, I work in the
grief and I work in all of these areas. to be
able to give them an avenue and i'm not saying
go around the military system i'm saying i'd
love for it to augment i would love for our people
to be able to go to their health care provider
but also also see someone like me who's a life
coach that can walk you through a lot of the
same challenges that you would talk to with a
therapist so um i've joined with a group out
here that does retreats for veterans and we bring
people out here who are facing some of the toughest
situations you can imagine suicide and grief
and loss and we bring them out to do a retreat
with equine therapy. So that's in addition to
Stable Strides. We do that for anyone in the
entire country listening. You can reach me through
stablestrides .org and we can talk about those
veteran retreats. Well, one of the things we
try to get when we're promoting nonprofits and
supporting nonprofits like Stable Strides is
we want our listeners to know, as I mentioned
a minute ago, the person organizing it, running
it, the person who's going to be a fiduciary
of the funds that you donate, has a heart and
a brain in the right spot. And clearly, Michelle,
you do. We've been longtime friends. So I know
better than most and your family. So I know everything
is in the right spot. So we're glad to bring
stablestrides .org to the forefront. to highlight
the value of equine therapy, but also the struggles
in today's climate to financially be able to
keep something like this going. And we'd encourage
folks to go check it out a little bit more. And
if you feel compelled to support the cause. So
Michelle, I really appreciate the time that you've
given us today on Veterans Radio. Thank you,
and I want to thank everybody for listening to
veterans radio today. I am Jim Fawzone It's been
a pleasure to be your host I'm a veterans disability
lawyer at legal help for veterans and you can
reach us at eight hundred six nine three four
eight zero zero or legal help for veterans comm
on the web you can follow veterans radio on Facebook
and Listen to its podcasts and internet radio
shows by visiting us at veterans radio org That's
veteransradio .org. We would again want to thank
our national sponsors, the National Veterans
Business Development Council, nvbdc .org. Legal
Help for Veterans, a veterans disability law
firm with a national practice before the VA can
help you on your claims and your appeals. It
can be reached at legalhelpforveterans .com or
1 -800 -693 -4800. We also want to thank our
local sponsors. This would include the Charles
S. Kettles chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of
America. That's chapter 310. VFW Graf O 'Hara
post 423. The American Legion Erwin Preskin post
46 in Ann Arbor as well. the VA Ann Arbor Health
Care System, and certainly the National Vietnam
Veterans of America Association. You can be a
sponsor by going to veteransradio .org, clicking
on the About Us and our sponsors, and help us
out. Keep this program alive for the 21 and 22
years. Keep us going for another 20. Thank you.