Since 2017, the Veterans Club has provided equine therapy to help veterans overcome challenges.

Related to PTSD and traumatic brain injury.

But you don't have to see combat to experience life altering trauma.

And the Veterans Club is now opening its doors to first responders and Louisville residents who were affected by the old National Bank shooting earlier this month.

Oh, you didn't look at you using it.

We have different visions of our equine program.

One is Equine Facilitated Mentoring, which is what we'll do here today.

It's where we use horses to get in discussion about things that folks need to get off their chest and things they need to heal from.

And it's very much it's less about horsemanship, more about being able to talk and offload some of these things.

Today is an exclusive special session for the community at large, really.

But we're also targeting, you know, lawful law enforcement officers, any kind of first responder folks who worked at the bank or in the area who were impacted by the shooting that occurred at Oak National Bank a couple of weeks ago.

What the folks impacted that day saw was combat.

And that's what we're in the business of helping people overcome.

I never thought in a million years that I'd ever have to have a session like this.

We'll talk about grief, We'll talk about anxiety and fear.

We'll talk about coping skills.

We'll talk about long term care.

We have clinicians coming to help get folks plugged in for long term care if they need it.

But the goal is for us to for them to be able to not necessarily forget, but to create an opportunity where it doesn't impact them in a negative way anymore.

Right.

To have a memory without feeling like you're there again or feeling like you're in that space again.

How do they bring me out of my shell?

Huge.

I mean, that's the number one thing when I get out of it is, you know, brushing the animals, talking to other vets, why we're doing it.

It's like as you see the fur fall under the ground, it's kind of like our feelings are going away.

You know, we were more positive when we leave the state.

We're never going to forget about what happens in Louisville, Right.

We're never going to forget about that.

And and the people who've had to experience it are never going to forget about it.

If they're carrying this and harboring this pain and this fear and this, you know, trauma, then we need to be there to help address that.

Isolation is the worst thing you could do to a veteran or first responder that suffered trauma coming out here and, you know, working with the horses, even if it's just to help Scott brush up the barn, clean up to mow the lawns out here, get it nice and good looking.

That's that'll get shouting out and stop the isolation.

My hope is that we put more plans in place, that we invest more money into mental health.

Because when we don't do that, all this trauma falls on the shoulders of the first responders in our community.

And as humans, we can only take so much.

And then we need good first responders.

And so we need to do them a favor and hear them when they say, hey, we need help.

This isn't a one time thing.

We'll be opening up this program for those folks indefinitely as long as there's a need because it's hard.

You can't really overcome that in one day.

Such good work there.

The Equine Facilitated Mentoring program has helped over 3800 veterans and first responders in the last six years and has an open door invitation to those affected in the Louisville mass shooting to receive care and community.