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[CHIEF PHILLIP WHITEMAN, JR SINGING "PRAYER SONG FOR WORLD PEACE"]
NARRATOR: America, a land full of natural beauty.
A nation whose very soul is drawn from both its heritage and its future.
[CONTINUES SINGING]
America has also created what is arguably
the most mighty and technologically advanced military on the planet.
The reason I joined the military,
I had four great uncles that served in World War II,
my uncle served in the Army during Vietnam,
my father was Korean Air,
and it was a sense of obligation and duty.
So it was my turn.
What brought me to the military was just always
my incessant need to serve.
I was part of the big draft, the 50,000-guy draft from '65 to '67.
I was 17 whenever I joined,
and I wanted to go prove to myself that I was a man.
I was drawn to the military because of a lot of respect for military,
and I ended up signing my contract five days after my 17th birthday.
That's when everything started to get real.
SOLDIER: [SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY] Let's go!
[GUNFIRE]
[SOLDIERS SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]
NARRATOR: But coming home from active duty,
some members of our armed forces
face a stark, challenging and sometimes deadly reality.
Debilitating detachment, anxiety and depression.
My main job as an infantryman,
as an 11-Charlie, was kill or die.
Now if you can't kill...
[SCOFFS] what's left?
[WESTERN STYLE MUSIC PLAYING]
SETH HARDY: Anybody who's done combat tours,
they get used to living an environment
where every day is life or death.
You could catch a stray bullet.
RPGs, rockets, mortar attacks,
they happen every day over there.
So your body gets conditioned to living at high alert,
and when you come back to an environment
where those threats don't exist,
your body just doesn't turn it off.
[ECHOING]
SOLDIER: Get down!
It's totally unacceptable
that men and women that signed on the dotted line are left in such a bad spot
that they get so dark that they have no other options but to take their own lives.
NARRATOR: The struggle has exploded
to epidemic proportions.
As many as 20 veterans per day
are so desperate they lose all hope.
MARSHALL WOLFE: It's not just the combat veterans
coming back today that are committing the suicide,
it's also the older guys like me.
The alcohol, the depression, the drug abuse...
NARRATOR: At the Veterans Administration in Milwaukee,
Supervisor of Recreation and Creative Arts Therapy
Shep Crumrine
has seen the devastation the wars cause our veterans.
CRUMRINE: Every 75 minutes, we lose another veteran.
And so, when one of those lives is lost, it's very troubling.
Just the base where I served in Missouri for nine years of my active duty career,
thirteen people I knew and served with have committed suicide,
from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.
NARRATOR: Now there's a new sign of hope.
An unlikely, effective and potent treatment has emerged.
A remedy that requires no hospitalization,
no pharmaceutical drugs,
and has been right under our noses for hundreds of years.
Two wounded souls emerging from the wreckage of trauma.
Battle-scarred but new...
And every healer,
every hero has an origin story.
America's breathtaking landscape
is host of tens of thousands of mustangs.
Wild horses,
a true icon of American freedom.
The very essence of the American spirit.
And now, they offer a new opportunity for our veterans.
There's something deeply spiritual about a horse
that no other animal that I've come across has.
MITCHELL RENO: I was a grunt, I was an infantryman,
and I was in both invasions, and it's...
You've got to do a lot of bad stuff.
That's a lot of stuff to shut off in your head.
You can't really reason with the feeling.
[SIGHS] I walked out of the desert
and then I stumbled in life.
Literally stumbling, you know, from hos...
From the insane asylum to rehabs.
Just the daily anxiety gets so bad
that I didn't leave the house.
Felt like everything was coming at me
and everything was coming at me way too fast.
I cannot relate
to what the younger generation
has done in the desert,
stood up in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But we can relate on one thing.
We can't un-see some of the things that we've seen.
Absolutely.
And it's how you deal with it.
WILLIAM MERCURIO: You know, I never anticipated I would be in a war zone
and, uh, came home and found out that some of that stayed with me.
Um, I needed to get a little bit of comfort.
NARRATOR: Luckily for our struggling veterans,
equine therapy is making inroads to healing.
Three and a half months ago, I lost my son to drugs,
and the horses have really helped me to be relieved
of some of the pain that's involved in that.
And I can't explain that because you have to be there to know what it is, you know?
I tend to have an A-type personality, so I'm on the go all the time.
So this gives me the chance to be calm and take some of the edge off.
They are vessels that you can pour your emotions into,
that, you know, when you walk away from it, you feel better.
WOLFE: Oh, man, it's beautiful out there.
Just little creeks and rolling hills, lots of timber.
Nice trail ride, up and down some swingbacks.
Did real good.
Did a little bit of trotting through there,
so it felt really good. Clayton loves it.
He's free now. He's not an old ranch horse anymore.
He's in the therapeutic program and helping the veterans out.
He's loving it as much as I am.
NARRATOR: Although equine therapy
is just now starting to get a mainstream foothold in healing our veterans,
the idea of horses for healing is not altogether new.
Horses have long proven to be healers of many an injured soul.
Just outside of Chicago, Marge Gunnar founded BraveHearts,
one of the many equine therapy centers across the country
that are helping mend our country's citizens.
GUNNAR: The reason that I started BraveHearts was in 1993,
I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
It was a pretty devastating diagnosis.
During the time that I was going through chemo,
my oldest sister, who has passed away now,
wanted to take me up to see my stallion.
And I went into his barn, where he was in training,
I went up to him and I put my arms around his neck
and I buried my face in his mane and I started to sob,
and that horse did something he never did before.
He just wrapped his neck around me and squeezed.
So that's when the inspiration to start BraveHearts came into my mind,
because I felt this healing connection to an animal.
And the program started.
NARRATOR: Though the program shares a similar name with a famous motion picture,
the two are not related.
Horseman and trainer, Paddy McKevitt,
is a former farrier for the US Olympics.
He has an affinity for the healing being done at facilities like BraveHearts.
I first met Meggan, our president and COO,
and I went over to a little program that she was at at the time,
where some kids that were all amputees,
and I had a little zebra that I had gentled
and got along with and could ride.
And she asked me to bring it over there
just 'cause they were there for a week-long camp.
And when I started to be around people that were using horses
in a beneficial way to the human,
I was like, "Wow, this is way more valuable.
"This is really the purpose of a horse."
You know, my background is working with children with various diagnoses
and using equine therapy for that.
I've gotten to see horses helping, you know,
a child learn to walk and a child learn to talk.
And I mean, all of that has been just phenomenal to get to witness firsthand,
and got introduced to working with veterans and just was riveted by it.
I'm a Gold Star father, so it kind of, you know,
it's the deepest, darkest day that you can have
when you lose a child in war.
And that's what happened to us.
And by having him, he just... He turned everything around
and he showed us a different way of doing things.
And, um, instead of going to the edge every night,
you know, going to the edge of that cliff, there's something else here.
HILL-McQUEENY: When somebody comes up and says,
"This horse saved my life"
and then you hear it twice,
and then you hear it five times, then you hear it dozens.
When you think about somebody that has been through something that I can't even imagine
and that they can come back because of a horse,
that's pretty huge.
NARRATOR: Navy veteran Mary Apper was declining rapidly
when she finally found solace at the BraveHearts ranch.
When I went to Afghanistan, I did Detainee Ops,
and then I was a 240-Bravo gunner.
And, you know, you see a lot of stuff over there,
and you kind of lock it away, you compartmentalize it.
But when I came back, I was pretty angry.
Had a lot of hate in my heart.
I talked to my mom about it, and my family, of course, was worried.
Twenty veterans a day commit suicide.
You talk to congressmen and you say, you know, at the end of every week,
if you took 140 people at the end of seven days,
that's about the size of a small plane crashing.
If you crashed a plane every Sunday,
you know Congress would do something about it.
I lost one of my brothers from the Air Force,
and we'd known each other for over 20 years.
And, uh, nobody knows why,
but, one night, he got intoxicated and he shot himself.
[GUNFIRE]
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
[GUNFIRE]
[INDISTINCT SHOUTING]
NARRATOR: Even members of the military police
are not shielded from the harm and trauma a war can bring.
Jenny McDonald was in charge of the captured enemy combatants in Iraq.
At any time, we can be used as infantry to provide security.
And doing my job, which was we ended up setting up
and running the very first prison camp in Iraq.
We were going on very little sleep,
we were getting mortared, and I became angry.
I was angry at these... These people in front of me.
They were threatening my family.
They were threatening me.
They were telling me they were gonna come back and get me.
We were sitting here watching these prisoners
who were bragging about what they were doing
to our fellow brothers and sisters
and what they wanted to do to us and to our families.
And people changed.
My mother noticed it on the phone.
You know, I'd be calling at 2:00 in the morning,
the prisoners would be rioting,
and the first thing she would say to me is, "Jen, I love you so much.
"Please stop yelling and, dear God, stop swearing so much."
[CHUCKLES]
And I had no idea that...
I didn't even think that I was talking loud.
This was how we talked to each other,
and it's definitely how I was at work.
CRUMRINE: In the military, you go to boot camp,
you're changed forever,
whether you experience combat or not,
because there's a commitment
and a violation sometimes of your soul,
your, um, you know...
You have violated that on purpose, and that's hard to live with.
MITCHELL HEDLUND: When I was in Afghanistan, we were taking a lot of fire.
I got a group of four.
One of 'em was running away
and, uh, I couldn't, I couldn't just take him out.
I had to let him go. Give him a chance.
Dumbest mistake of my life.
We were walking, we were gonna come down the mountain.
That's when I got hit by the RPG.
It didn't directly hit me, but it was enough to concuss me and mess me up.
And, uh, backpack was half ripped off.
Bullets are flying all around.
[CHUCKLES] The guy that ran away, came back
and finally got behind this rock. [SNIFFLES]
Turned up, shot four shots.
Last one was a tracer round.
And I saw it disappear right into his side.
He wasn't moving after that.
The helicopter came over and was checking all the bodies
and, uh, told me his heat sensor was going to blue.
And, uh, yeah, six confirmed kills that night.
I had ended up getting medevac'd to Landstuhl in Germany.
I had a shrink, we were de-processing, or whatever they call it,
and she asked me how I felt about the prisoners,
these same guys that were threatening my family and currently still were.
And she didn't say anything.
I got off the plane in the United States
and they put us into two lines.
Everyone else got to go to a barracks-type situation.
Us in the shorter line went to a mental hospital,
where I spent six hours begging and pleading
and telling them anything I could
to make them let me out.
I'll never forget the chains wrapped around the door.
I, um...
I was given a discharge from the military,
and I took that pretty hard.
HEDLUND: I hit rock bottom.
I got a call from my friend
and I looked at it and I didn't answer it.
I just thought, "Okay, I'm gonna call him later."
He committed suicide right after that.
He was gonna call me.
I didn't pick up the phone.
People always tell you it's not your fault.
You couldn't have prevented it.
I still hold that blame.
McDONALD: I did my best to go back to normal.
Had a job at a grocery store.
And I was just so angry all the time
that it affected absolutely every aspect of my life.
I didn't fit with people.
I couldn't talk to them the right way.
A 15-minute conversation with somebody,
I would just sweat through my clothes.
I was so... I just wanted to run.
I had several years of just drinking a lot,
and making a lot of mistakes and hurting the people that I really care about.
Alcoholism and substance abuse,
it's a natural phenomenon coming out of the military.
That is certainly a comorbid or a corresponding diagnosis to,
I'm gonna just guess it's over 90 percent, 95 percent.
That may not be what we're seeing them for, but it's somewhere in the mix.
As much as I may have not wanted to live anymore,
and it began to show in...
At one point I was 89 pounds and...
[SIGHS]
probably wasn't too far from dying, the way it was.
I knew I couldn't do that to my little brother.
APPER: Well, last August, I had to put my mare down that I'd had for 24 years.
And she was really the way I was kind of dealing with my PTSD.
I grew up with her, went to college with her, everything.
You know, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning
I'd go out there, I'd sleep next to her stall, ride her at midnight.
She was just there whenever I needed her.
But my mom told me, she's like,
"You have more love in your heart for your mare, Satin,
"than any amount of hate they could have put there."
So when she passed away, it was like everything was gone.
Kind of went to a pretty dark place.
Um, wasn't really sure I wanted to be around anymore.
So my mom was the one that really pushed me.
She's like, "You need to go out there and at least give 'em a shot."
When I first got here, I wasn't even sure I was gonna stay.
I met up with Meggan and she started giving me a tour around the property,
just trying to get me to talk.
She didn't talk down to me.
You know, a lot of times, when you have PTSD,
a lot of people tend to, like, talk in a slower voice or a baby voice
or kind of, like, walk on pins and needles.
But she just treated me like I was just a normal person
coming here interested in horses.
You know, just a horsewoman-to-horsewoman basis.
And I saw CeCe, which is the little Quarter Horse mare.
And so I was talking to Meggan there,
and I kind of ended up breaking down a little bit,
telling her about what was going on,
and CeCe had reached over the fence
and nuzzled my cheek when I was crying.
So, of course, that, like, just melts you.
So I kind of got attached to CeCe.
And I was like, "Well, maybe I'll go out there again."
So, I thought about it for a couple days,
ended up emailing Meg and I was like,
"Hey, do you have a picture of that little filly?"
And so she sent me a picture of CeCe.
And I was looking at it, waited a couple more days,
and then was like, "I'm gonna go out there."
So she was just kind of waiting here
for, you know, her special person to come along.
So, I started coming out here on a regular basis,
and then it just escalated from there.
I just completely got sucked in,
and, you know, found a purpose again.
Good girl.
I had a plan that I was gonna end my life in four days.
And then I was like, "All right, I'll ride once."
I rode, so I put off the suicide.
After riding, then I was like,
"Okay, well, I need to put this off even more
"'cause next week I get to ride."
My therapist, who I was lucky to find,
a combat vet herself,
she recommended that I come out on a weekend trip to BraveHearts for a retreat.
And I thought, "I like horses.
"I never really got to ride,
"but okay, I can put up with people for this.
"Cool. Let's go to the farm for the weekend."
My whole attitude changed before I even got here.
The ride out to this farm is beautiful.
We got here, I saw the beautiful red barn
and the horses.
Pretty much anyone who goes the first time goes back.
RYAN OHRMUNDT: Keep going. Keep going.
Keep going. Atta boy.
All right, you can stop.
CRUMRINE: Equine therapy.
It's an unspoken relationship
and sensory experience that occurs.
And what makes it so worthwhile
is when you work with a veteran and you see them reconnect with life.
These horses have helped to get me sober.
I've seen 'em heal people from inside out.
I saw a child with autism
that had only spoken four times in her life,
and I watched her speak repetitively, over and over again,
and I watched her mother with tears running down her face of joy,
and, uh, that flipped me upside down
and it made me know that I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.
As far as the benefits that you get from horses,
it doesn't matter how much experience you have.
You could have never touched a horse before
or you could have been around horses your whole life.
The experience that you get
and the feeling that you get with them is the same.
Opens up your heart.
And you don't need experience for that.
WOLFE: You get out to the barn and you get in there
and you take that deep breath and you latch on,
knowing your body movements,
knowing the horse movements, knowing the ear movements,
how they're holding their head, what their eyes are doing,
the switch of the tail,
and you become part of that spirit of that horse.
Yeah, there's nothing in the world like it.
You know, I like to think about 'em as angels covered in fur,
and that's exactly what they are.
You know, they fill in the holes for what people have going on.
Those horses just pour it into every hole
of whatever you have, whatever your needs are,
wherever you're short that day, they're gonna teach you,
they're gonna show you, they're gonna help you.
NARRATOR: Horses are herd animals.
It's extremely traumatic for individuals
to be separated from their herds and families.
Many of our veterans suffer the same painful separation,
realizing they no longer fit in society.
CRUMRINE: Isolation is the big threat to veterans.
Uh, it results in suicide.
It results in decompensation. It results in depression.
It results in not taking your medications,
or taking them inappropriately.
BRANDON HORNING: I've had a very hard road,
and upon returning home,
I came to hell.
I slept on the garage floor for two days.
I spiraled down a deep hole that was really hard to get out of.
I was an Air Force veteran. I did four tours over in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So, uh, I had problems. I had issues when I came home.
I was trying to reintegrate back into civilian society.
I wouldn't say I was real bad PTSD.
I had anxiety and sleep disorder.
I couldn't sleep. I'd be up, you know,
several days at a time sometimes.
And at the time, I didn't have anything to do or anywhere to go.
I ended up back at my parents' house, you know, in my thirties.
So, uh, you know, it's hard to go
from an environment where you're told when to get up,
where to go, when to be there, what to do every day.
So it's a regimen.
And then to having just all this natural freedom,
you know, that you're not expected or aware of.
MARY BALLANGEE: It's hard sometimes to deal with human beings,
especially when you have PTSD, such as myself.
And so, I had to go back and start over,
and, um,
when a horse saved my life...
I'm a different person.
NARRATOR: While equine therapy can be extremely effective,
there's a remarkable magic when experiencing
a wild mustang straight off the range.
My favorite part of the programming
of everything that we do here at BraveHearts
is the wild mustangs.
Reach in underneath him and just put your heart close to his heart there.
I'm here with you, so you don't have to worry about it.
Now, I want you to drop the rope,
and I want you to reach underneath his neck with your left hand.
I want you to bend down a little bit and get close to him.
So can you imagine that little horse was completely wild?
Pick the rope up. Just go in there and pick it up. You're totally fine.
There you go. You're fine.
Stand up tall. There you go.
Now walk across the front of him and shake the rope at the same time.
There you go. Keep walking.
Keep walking to your right. Keep walking to your right.
-Keep walking to your right. -[WOMAN LAUGHS]
Keep walking to your right.
Now walk to your left.
There you go. Look at that.
-[ALL CHEERING] -McKEVITT: Whoa-ho!
And go back in the center.
[ALL LAUGHING]
You got some fancy moves going there.
Just like a ballerina.
NARRATOR: At BraveHearts, Meggan Hill-McQueeny
has spearheaded an effort to acquire horses from the wild
in order to supercharge the veterans' improvement.
Her program is aptly named Operation Mustang.
The whole idea that I had behind that phrase was just to let the public
know the concept to connect a wild horse and a veteran.
NARRATOR: Fred "Cowboy" Busby didn't exactly plan
on getting involved with wild mustangs.
BUSBY: My motorcycle club was looking for someplace
to give our donations locally instead of nationwide.
WOLFE: Meggan looked at Cowboy and said,
"Would you like to get in the round pen?"
And Cowboy was his road name 'cause he's always wore cowboy boots.
He's not a real cowboy.
He's been on a horse before, like I had been, once in a while.
But they want us to put a helmet on
and go in with a wild mustang.
And I looked at Cowboy and I said,
"You're on, man. You're more photogenic than I am, you know.
"If anybody is gonna die, it's gonna be you first.
"But I'll jump the fence, come and get you and pull your body out,
"you know, being the marine that I am, you know."
So Cowboy helmets up and goes in there
and this mustang yields and crosses and looks at Cowboy,
and then Paddy and Meggan tell Cowboy,
"Turn around and don't look at him and stand right there."
And this mustang had only touched a couple other people,
that's how wild the mustang was.
I'm standing there watching it,
and I go, "Well, that's the dumbest thing I would do.
"I'd never turn my back on a wild horse, you know?"
But they're telling him it's okay and he's doing it, dumb jarhead.
Old Cowboy turns his back and he's standing there,
and he's just like, "Well, what am I supposed to do now?"
And it's like, "Shh, just be quiet, relax, be neutral."
And what happens next is that mustang comes up
and slowly walks up behind Cowboy
because he's accepted that Cowboy is the leader of the herd.
He's gonna follow Cowboy.
This thing actually came over, breathed in, like, gave me a nudge
and the light came from the heaven through the windows...
-[VOCALIZING] -The harps played.
It was one of the most phenomenal things I'd ever seen.
And then all of a sudden, they tell Cowboy, "Go ahead and walk on."
And Cowboy walks and that horse follows him
all the way around the round pen.
That's where we got hooked.
The knowledge that you're getting into the round pen with a wild animal
that a month, a year ago now, was running wild.
And I jokingly say it's no different than standing
in the middle of a busy intersection directing traffic.
You're crazy to be standing in the middle of the intersection,
but you're up, but at the same time, you're calm.
NARRATOR: How can a wild horse be grazing on the range one day
and then suddenly end up in an equine therapy facility?
The answer is disquieting and extremely controversial.
The government gathers the horses in a round up,
using helicopters to terrify them into a trap.
The wild horses are the responsibility
of the Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management, the BLM.
In other words, they are government property owned by the American people.
[HORSE WHINNIES]
BEN NOYES: Yeah, in this operation, we're using a helicopter.
Sometimes we use bait and water,
but this operation is a helicopter.
What we do is we have locations
where the populations are higher than in some areas,
where they congregate more.
We kind of pick those areas to really work on.
And we'll set up wings, which is, you know, basically come into a V,
it's made with jute,
and then it'll come into some panels
and the panel will have a certain pens
and we're able to sort the horses.
So what happens is the helicopter goes out, finds a group of horses
and herds them towards the V or the wings.
And once it gets over to the wings,
we'll have a prattle horse or Judas horse,
the contractor will, which stays ahead of the herd.
And when they start to see Judas horse or prattle horse,
you know, they'll let it go,
and the wild horse will follow the prattle horse,
come into the trap itself, we'll close the gates behind.
It's pretty tragic what can happen.
These horses are being chased for miles.
They're scared.
They're being pushed into small traps.
This is a hell for them.
They are very reliant on their families
and, you know, who they travel with and stay with.
And so, when they're removed from that scenario,
and when you watch them actually peel,
you know, one horse out of a group of, you know, 400-500 horses,
and you just watch how that horse loses.
You know, he loses everything.
DeMAYO: I've seen horses jump, you know, out of chutes,
or over seven-foot walls to get back to their herd.
Their sentiment beings, they're deeply emotional and bonded to each other.
And their survival depends
on how they interact with the larger herd community.
So they have their family and social bands that are naturally selected,
and then they're all part of a larger herd community
in the regions that they live in.
NARRATOR: The BLM's multi-use management model of public lands
is creating a competition between industry and wildlife.
JENNY LESIEUTRE: BLM is a multi-use agency.
So, if you think about this, in a common area,
you've an got an acre of land, and every single piece of that land
is allocated to something.
Anything from wildlife to plants to wild horses
to even the discretionary acts of oil and gas,
cattle, mining, all of those.
You've got natural wildlife out here, we've got sensitive plants,
and when one thing goes over their allocated amount,
you have the domino effect.
It affects everything else.
Our natural places are being stripped from us
and in the middle of that battle there are heart beats,
living things that are casualties of that war.
Wild horses are one of those casualties.
RICHARD COUTO: And then seeing those animals caged and corralled,
it breaks your heart.
It breaks a lot of people's hearts.
And it's why a lot of people are spending their life defending the wild horse.
One of the saddest things that I saw while undercover
working with wild horses on the range
was seeing the herds of wild horses
being rounded up and chased down by choppers,
and those choppers going right by
thousands of head of cattle,
and leaving the cows, but not the wild mustang.
It broke my heart, and it breaks a lot of people's hearts.
DeMAYO: America was the birthplace of the horse.
A lot of people aren't even aware
that there are wild horses left in America.
NARRATOR: There is some dispute about today's wild horses not being native to America.
Let's have a history lesson.
Fossils of the first primitive wild horses
were discovered in Idaho that dated back 3.5 million years.
Subsequent fossils show the horse thrived
all the way up until the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago
until they went extinct in North America.
But with the arrival of Columbus in 1492,
horses were reintroduced to the continent.
They became our valued partners to help build American society for centuries.
They embody the spirit in all of us,
and, you know, this country was founded with their help,
and they are such an integral part of the story of the American West.
NARRATOR: After World War I,
the military's horse-drawn transportation
was completely replaced by gasoline vehicles.
No longer of value to the Army,
thousands of horses and burros were released into the wild.
But unfettered slaughter and capture
saw the mustang population rapidly disappearing.
To protect this majestic icon of the American West,
in 1971,
President Nixon signed the Free-Roaming Wild Horses and Burros Act,
making it illegal to interfere with the wild horses.
The act allows the US government to set limits
for horse populations on given areas.
This number is called an Appropriate Management Level
or AML.
At the BLM's discretion,
the excess animals are removed to maintain these limits.
DeMAYO: For almost 50 years,
capture and removal has been the main management policy
to manage populations on the range,
and it hasn't been working.
And the cost for taking care of these is astronomical.
So we're gonna have to end this cycle somehow.
COUTO: The best way to help these animals
is not to touch 'em at all,
to leave 'em on the ranges exactly where they belong.
We need to look at, like, what can this land sustain?
How many horses can be out here before
this land is, you know, overgrazed?
If they're talking about rounding up 130,000 horses
from these areas where they're overpopulated, possibly,
there may be other areas where there are no horses
that they could be turned out on to.
If there's a lack of natural predators,
I think that we have a tool now that has been proven to be safe and humane,
and that's the reversible, non-hormonal fertility control.
And I think that most minimally intrusive methods necessary
to manage populations, healthy populations on the range
is the direction for the future.
NARRATOR: But for now, the violent roundups continue.
NARRATOR: The BLM takes steps to reduce the number of horses
held in their permanent holding pens.
Many horses are spayed and neutered
and then released back into the wild.
The majority of horses removed from their land
are currently living in off-range holding facilities hoping for placement.
That's all we do is find homes for these guys.
We're kind of like social workers.
We are emotionally invested in this program.
And the number one priority of the BLM
is to find good long-term homes for these horses.
We're funded through Congress.
We have to take orders from Congress.
But I can tell you, we will do the best we can
to make sure these guys get good homes.
LESIEUTRE: And there is a market out there.
People want these horses.
They are flying from different countries to see them.
NARRATOR: As with the returning veterans,
the mustangs have now lost their identity
and find themselves in an unfamiliar world.
Now in captivity away from the range,
the only home the wild mustangs have ever known,
they must come to terms with a new way of living.
When they first come in, you can see they're pretty fearful.
They're pretty traumatized.
I always think of them as most of the veterans that come here.
They don't trust a lot of people.
They're very, very fearful of certain things.
I just see so many common traits between the wild horse and the veterans.
You think about these mustangs.
They were hurt, rounded up, never been touched.
The only interaction that they get
is when someone puts a freeze brand on them.
And then they're stuck in these cages until someone gets them.
McDONALD: Getting in the round pen with Paddy
and him telling me about wild mustangs and how they live
and how they perceive stuff,
I'm sitting there going, "Wow, they're exactly like every combat veteran I know."
We're just like that.
We've had bad interactions, we're stuck out in this big pen called the world,
and we don't know what to do.
Got out of military and wasn't happy coming back.
And being an addictive person,
you know, the drugs and alcohol always played a role.
And killing myself, man. My liver's just about gone as it is,
and finally realized that what I was feeling
and what I was doing to myself emotionally
and my stress levels and, you know,
to put a wild mustang that's been rounded up and going through hell
and been castrated
and branded
and inoculated and aged
and then thrown into a pen in the middle of nowhere
after being caught up after being wild for so long,
without their herd,
they're lost souls.
And that's where I was at.
[DRUM ROLL]
♪ I look out
♪ On these hometown streets
♪ I don't know how
♪ But they look different to me
♪ Same old friends
♪ We share some laughs
♪ I'm home again
♪ But I'm not really back
♪ Tell me why
♪ Tell me how
♪ Tell me what in the world I should do now
♪ Tell me where
♪ Tell me how in the world To live again ♪
McKEVITT: Reach up and give him a little rub on his neck.
There you go.
The men and women that come here
don't want to make these horses feel uncomfortable.
So, they have to adjust their own behavior
because they're getting, through a bio-feedback loop from the horse in the moment,
they're getting information that could provide that's non-verbal.
So it's not a doctor sitting there telling 'em.
It's not cognitive therapy. They've heard that all before.
Then they can't make the adjustments.
But as they start to practice it with one of these wild horses,
it becomes second nature, and they make the adjustments in other areas of their lives.
OHRMUNDT: I didn't realize
how much my anxiety affected my behavior,
how much it affected the people around me.
And when you're working with horses,
your energy level, your behavior, everything you do
affects the horse that you're working with.
And so, the value for me is
I've learned just how much my anxiety level
affects how well I can work with a horse,
how well a horse will work with me.
They are truly afraid for their lives.
And when you do something, they scream the answer to you.
And it shows people exactly if they're doing it right or wrong.
HILL-McQUEENY: The wild side of them
is what benefits a lot of veterans the most
and that's the part that's so beneficial
that the veterans want to be a part of that front end with that horse,
that whole trust-building.
RENO: A lot of people are gonna be like,
"Well, you can't have a mustang with you all the time."
So, it's a process that you get to learn,
and you can take that with you wherever you go.
It's another tool in your toolbox
for whenever you're about to freak out in the grocery store.
I think that because I am so much more aware
of my anxiety when it creeps up on me,
I have been able to manage it much better now
everywhere else in the world.
That makes so much sense.
You've got horses with PTSD and a veteran with PTSD,
and bingo, there's the starting point.
There's a language there, and it's a respect,
and one might be scared
and one might be too aggressive,
but then, they learn how to mirror that
in themselves and in each other.
And they produce this, I think,
a great example for each other to live by.
McDONALD: This mustang, Hero, he became a project of mine.
He wasn't getting a lot of attention.
Nobody really wanted to work with him.
When I first met him, he would just stand in his stall, or enclosure,
with his head in the corner
and basically telling you, "Go away or I'm gonna kick you."
He wanted nothing to do with people.
He had no interest in approaching
or being touched at all.
But Hero especially, there was just something in this horse.
I've spent so many hours just talking to him, singing to him
and, uh, eventually,
he let me sit in his pen with him because it was raining.
And he could have gotten upset about that.
And we probably spent two hours just kind of hanging out
and his head got lower and he just stared at me,
and after a while, he came over
and he just started to check me out with his nose,
he was smelling everything,
and that was the first time I was able to really touch his face
to really, really pet him.
And he has these soft, sweet eyes that just say,
"I really want to trust. Please don't let me down."
These are sentient beings,
and when you have an opportunity to live around them
and to watch their very subtle, yet deep, interactions,
profoundly connected to each other,
and how subtle and how well they work together as a community,
we have a lot to learn from them. A lot to learn.
RALSTON: Anybody who has
made the decision to be a part of a facility like this
has released a little bit of maybe their ego or a little bit of their fear.
Opened theirselves up.
There's wonderful organizations out there.
There's the VA and there's the VFW
and there's any number of veterans' organizations you can participate in.
I had tried them, but I never got really in-depth with them
because I didn't feel that it was comfortable enough for me
to spend that much time with those organizations.
But when I came out to BraveHearts and I saw the vets,
and I saw...
the need that they have for these horses.
And the vets, I watched the vets get on these horses
and I see them... change.
They want the knowledge, they want the experience.
And when I work with the general public,
you've always got the person who's defensive.
I thought, "Well, I'll go and I'll participate.
"Maybe I can help out some other vets,"
and in the process discovered that it helped me.
APPER: I still have a lot of stuff to work through,
a lot of anger, a lot of dark thoughts.
But this place is my life.
Like, this place is where I can come and reset myself.
I could be in the worst mood,
I could be in the worst spot, the darkest spot,
and when I come out here and work with, you know, CeCe
and then some of the mustangs, it just, it melts away.
It's the only thing that makes it completely melt away.
I'm out here probably 60 hours a week 'cause I just love it.
And I see on a daily basis
veterans come through the farm over here
and show up with the weight of the world on their shoulders
and the steely eyes,
and I watch them go through a metamorphosis
and become uplifted as soon as they touch a horse,
whether it be a mustang or one of our therapy horses,
and the smile just gets bigger and bigger.
[LAUGHING] Pretty soon, their whole mouth is open.
All you can see is teeth and they're laughing and they're talking
and they're being social with people.
McKEVITT: I grew up in a little town called Newry in Northern Ireland,
right on the border between the Republic and the North.
-[GUNSHOTS] -[PEOPLE CLAMORING]
Growing up in a place where security was very high, it was a war zone.
The '70s and the early '80s were war zones in parts of Northern Ireland.
And I went through some really tough struggles in my own life
trying to overcome some problems with alcohol
and I didn't know what I was gonna do to carry on.
And there was nothing really inspired me to get up in the morning,
and I got to a spot that I never thought I'd get to in my life.
And it was one horse in particular,
a horse that we have in the program here called Wyatt,
that I bought out in Montana
from a guy that wasn't very nice to him and had abused him,
and when I got him back here,
I realized how petrified of people that he was.
You'd go into a stall to catch this horse,
and he would literally bang off the walls to get away from you.
You know, that probably is partly the reason why I'm so passionate
about working with the veterans, is because
the one thing I thought about that inspired me to get out of bed
was that I felt empathy for that horse, and I felt bad for him,
and it made me want to get up and figure out a way to help him.
It was that journey with Wyatt that started me thinking of horses in a different way.
And I went around the country working with different men and women
that had a different approach to horses
because all I wanted to do was make him feel better.
Well, I thought I was saving the horse. [CHUCKLES]
You know, look where it has landed me.
I started my business then,
taking in horses that people were thinking were bad horses,
but basically were horses that had people problems,
that people didn't really know how to get along with them.
NARRATOR: One of the reasons the mustangs begin to trust their captors
is due to the powerful new psychology of horse training.
You know, traditional ways was pretty firm, pretty violent,
pretty dominating, pretty dictating.
The horse didn't have an option in anything.
You know, bigger chains, bigger ropes.
Tie 'em down, blindfold 'em, do whatever
until they conform out of fear and just do what's being demanded of 'em.
People just took advantage of the power they had
and would force the horse to do things.
It's just so rough and hard and dangerous.
WOLFE: It took a while for me to understand what was going on
because I didn't know what therapeutic riding was,
I didn't know what hippotherapy was.
It was John Wayne movies for me.
Well, we're all here. Let 'em roll!
[EXCLAIMING]
I thought that, "Well, they got wild mustangs."
I said, "Boy, I can't wait till we go out
"and we lasso 'em up and tie 'em to a pole
"and beat the cane out of 'em."
I go, "It'll be like boot camp again for me. This'll be great.
"Let's beat on some horses, throw a saddle on
"and we're gonna ride like John Wayne."
And that's why they called it "breakin' horses."
They broke their spirit down.
When I eliminated, or learned to eliminate that out of it,
and that the horse had a perspective in it,
then you could live in the moment and read what the horse was given you back.
We had a great revolution in horsemanship
really starting in the '70s,
but not really seeing it until the '80s and '90s,
where we had Tom Dorrance and Ray Hunt come out
and made good horsemanship,
quiet, humane treatment of horses popular
and how much you can do with 'em.
And it's much better.
It's much faster, much better, much longer-lasting relationship.
These horses learn to follow our direction
because it's a good deal for them.
They're not gonna find any more pressure.
I actually think mustangs are the most intelligent horses
that I have ever encountered.
MEYER: The mustangs, through the generations of being out in the wild
and having to fend for themselves
and learning where it is you can eat, learning what you can eat,
learning what animal is okay and what animal isn't okay,
once they come into captivity, that intelligence translates to training.
And they found out that working with horses quietly
and teaching them instead of making them,
the horse was so much better-minded,
co-operative, dependent, consistent.
Just a happy, good-minded horse that anybody can work with,
by using those methods.
A way I like to do it is set on a skid or set on the ground,
put the hay on you, make them come to you
and they have to eat and come to a human.
And then from there, I would slowly take the hay in my hands
and make 'em eat it and come to me to get food.
And so I just put a little pressure.
Once he takes that step, let the pressure and then let him go,
take a step and then let the pressure.
And let him know it's good.
And he goes straight back.
I don't need to pull or nothing.
I'm making that exaggerated movement like this and say, "We go back.
"We go back," and we take a step back and say, "Whoa, whoa."
And then like this, whoa.
You have to have patience.
Um, it's a daily thing.
Whether it's raining, snow, sleet, hail,
you need to work your horse and bond with it.
Go outside. Bundle up. Put a raincoat on.
Whatever you need to do to keep that connection going.
And I always came out with great results
of gentling 'em that way, to get 'em to build their trust.
Once you remove the fear, the mustangs think,
operate, work and train just like any other horse.
NARRATOR: Veterans aren't the only ones healing from wild horses.
BRUCE INMAN: Come on. Let her go!
Run her out! Run her out!
NARRATOR: Bruce Inman runs an equestrian program in Ohio for youth at risk.
INMAN: I work with a lot of at-risk families' kids, teens,
a lot of situations with the courts,
and just people that have had hard times in their lives, especially young people.
Kids just are naturally drawn to something like this.
So it gives me the opportunity to really find out what's going on in their life
and give them an understanding that there's more to life
than some of the things that they've had to suffer through.
NARRATOR: Ivy, Bruce's foster daughter,
has seen her share of challenges,
but is now making great strides in life.
Her past is very, very difficult
with a mother who died of a heroin overdose, a father in prison.
Just had a lot of things going against her.
So horses sparked a new life in her,
has given her a hope, has given her a chance.
And they can just really heal each other.
I am training Lima, the mustang.
And at first, she really didn't want anything to do with humans.
Attention span was really short.
She didn't want to work with anybody, honestly.
First step's gaining the trust.
She's learned how to control the horse
with as little effort as possible.
You can muscle, you can break a horse,
or you can really just gentle a horse.
IVY WALDROP: And now she's really loving.
She likes the attention
and she wants to be with people all the time now.
Really curious, too. Curious about things
and I guess that's what makes her willing to try new things.
If I'm hammering nails at a fence,
you're gonna have her nose right there,
where other horses might be taking off as far away from that hammer as they can be.
They're just so curious.
And they want to be with people.
WALDROP: She's fun and she's kind and very willing.
She's smart. Extremely smart. [LAUGHS]
They just...
I don't know, like they don't want to be out in the wild anymore.
They want to know that somebody's there to feed 'em
and take care of 'em.
You know, they depend on you and it's a great bond.
They transform, actually.
We've taken in an enormous amount of horses
that have been deemed dangerous and unhandleable,
and lots of people have said they should be euthanized for safety's sake,
for their own safety and for the safety of people around them,
and we have never had that experience when they arrive with us.
And I think mustangs have a very strong fight-or-flight instinct,
and the kind of weird spiritual axiom of it
is that when you give them a lot of space,
they often choose to make a connection with you.
So there is nothing more special to me
to take in a wild horse that is so wild
and demands so much space between you and them,
for them to come kind of a full 180
back to, actually, their natural curiosity
and seeing other horses interact with you, maybe that are more gentle,
just kind of overcomes them in the end
and you'll suddenly find them right there and touching them.
It never, it never gets old.
Give me kisses.
[KISSING]
Who's a good girl? Who's a good girl?
DeMAYO: I think one of the things that's so powerful for me
when I'm with the horses, and I'm just with them,
you fall into a different rhythm
because what that is about is connection.
She's such a friendly little filly. Like, she loves this.
And this kind of incorporates into the training that we do.
You know, the sense of touch.
We mimic brushing.
So when we go up and we touch around their face
rubbing of the eyes,
we do a lot of rubbing of the ears
just to get 'em used to touch, and they really start to crave it after a while.
MERCURIO: You know, the process is,
we're going to teach the horse
with the proper care for the horse's needs,
so that minimal effort is required to get the horse to do what you want it to do.
I mean, it's being so calm and so quiet and so nice to that horse
that he can feel your heart beating right there in your hand.
If a regular horse sees through a regular lens,
a mustang sees through a 20-X lens.
He sees everything so much more sharply
because that's their need to survive in the wild.
But one of the things about mustangs is they can be quite nippy
'cause that's a natural thing for them.
I'm grooming her and she's gonna want to try to groom me,
and, really, you just stay out of their way.
We don't do anything you know, to punish them
for a natural behavior that they have.
We just stay out of their way.
And if one happens to catch us, then of course,
we all tease each other about it.
[LAUGHS] Don't bite my butt! You goofball.
I like this mustang right here.
He's got a lot of character to him.
He's not real easy.
I'd like to love him, but I also like,
"Okay, gotta set some boundaries."
And that sometimes is hard for me. [LAUGHS]
AUCTIONEER: Let's hear a big round of applause for Ryan Ohrmundt.
OHRMUNDT: It's okay. Come on. [CLICKS TONGUE]
No, no, no, this way. Come on, dude. Atta boy!
Every horse, it has its own agenda, its own schedule.
Some, you can do in a day and some, you know, we still haven't ridden yet.
And we try to work peacefully within that.
Whatever's comfortable for the horse is what we're looking for.
I mean, it makes you feel so good that this horse
that lived out on the range wild,
that was completely skeptical of people not long ago,
is trusting you enough to follow you.
In other words, putting his life in your hands.
And they put all their trust in us
to hook on and follow us willingly
without us asking or manipulating
or bribing them to do it.
You feel it in the moment when you do it.
When you make the connection and they start, it's pretty empowering.
They're prey animals, and yet, they allow us to ride them.
They allow us to connect with them.
And they have a deep desire for connection, and they have a deep curiosity.
And I think if you set up the right environment and you build that relationship,
we are social mammals,
they're social mammals, and it can work.
MERCURIO: The idea that they're massive animals,
they're big animals, you know?
And when you see 'em from a distance,
you don't realize how much of an animal, you know, is there.
But when you realize how gentle they are,
right, because they'll come to you
and they'll attach themselves to you
without any real expectation in return, you know?
It's just, "You want to ride me? Fine."
"If you want to ride me well, that's a different story."
[CHUCKLES] You know? You gotta do a little work.
You about done, buddy?
I honestly would prefer a wild mustang over a domestic horse any day.
That bond is unbreakable,
and it's like they want to have a home,
and they want to have a purpose,
where more domestic horses,
they're already domesticated. They really could care less.
WOLFE: Mustangs are...[SIGHS] are a spirit.
They are the spirit.
When you have to walk 30 miles a day to eat
and then walk 30 miles back to get something to drink,
and you do it day in and day out
and you have to survive and you have to be on watch,
and you have to be part of a herd,
and communicating and relating to one another.
It's the spiritual thing about that horse.
The older ones we're finding are just phenomenal teachers.
HARDY: This is Booyah.
Um, he became the oldest known by BLM, documented, to be adopted and ridden.
And, uh, he was a 20-year-old stallion when they caught him.
HILL-McQUEENY: That horse, when we went in the office and said
how old is he and so forth and we selected and they said,
"You don't want him. Everybody's been asking about him
"'cause he was beautiful, but he's 20,
"and there's, like, 4,000 others.
"So, go pick another one."
at that moment we were kind of like,
"Well, we gotta have him. That's the one we want."
RENO: He's got markings all over him,
and a lot of people are like, "Oh, he's got beautiful markings,"
and then you go, "Those are all scars."
Hundreds of scars
from fighting other stallions to keep them away from their mares
and stuff like that, and to predators.
But I know, without a doubt,
in a second, that mustang can do serious harm to me,
and he doesn't want to hurt you, but you know that he can.
McKEVITT: A horse that lived 20 years on the range,
fought off lots of other stallions,
is all of a sudden making the decision
that it might be a good deal to be with a human.
RALSTON: He's out of his comfort zone, and he's adapting.
He's still adapting.
And he's learning something new,
something so foreign to him at an age where,
you know, his mind should be shut down and concrete.
I think the same goes to say with a lot of the individuals that are here
would be the people that
maybe their surroundings have given up on,
and, uh, those are the people that we want to try to help out here.
Those are the connections we want to make between
the wild horses and the veterans are,
you know, really getting to the un-reachables.
Everybody tried to talk 'em out of it.
Said, "Don't bring this one home. It will never be gentle.
"It'll never be ridden."
And, uh, the last summer, we proved them all wrong.
OHRMUNDT: Good boy, Booyah.
Cool.
I think that's pretty good on this guy.
HILL-McQUEENY: Somebody told me one time,
they said, "Wild horses don't make it to 20,"
and I said, "Well, obviously they do,
"'cause there's one standing right here."
NARRATOR: Booyah has a 20-year history grazing America's grasslands
and roaming freely on the range.
But after capture, his very essence lights the way for veterans
to discover the key to mental health and positive growth.
CRUMRINE: When you are too concerned with what's happened in the past,
that tends to pull you back, backwards into depression.
When you're too concerned with what might happen.
"What if," "This meant," blah-blah-blah, that leads to anxiety.
When you can be just here and now
it cuts off some depression, it cuts off some anxiety,
and it introduces you to what's going on right now.
A horse doesn't care about yesterday.
A horse doesn't care about tomorrow.
The horse is right now in this moment.
And if there's one thing that I'm learning,
it's about living in the moment. Just today.
Being present with the horse makes you present with yourself and the present moment.
WOMAN: You're fine. Go, go!
McDONALD: I thought I was going. [LAUGHING]
Whoo!
[McDONALD LAUGHS]
Well, that was something.
[BREATHING HEAVILY]
That's just you frisky, huh?
That's what that is?
A lot of times they really like their face brushed.
It's like kind of a relaxing thing,
like you can see her eyes closing,
and she lowers her head.
They love it.
CRUMRINE: Part of being present
is even if it's not a pleasant place, just be there.
I think that's the power of being present,
because you can increase your moments in the present.
It doesn't mean you never think about the future or the past,
but it doesn't dominate not only your thoughts,
but then where you are emotionally and physically.
HEDLUND: It's the only time when I don't think of the past,
when I don't think of the hurt, I don't think of the future,
all the stuff I have to do tomorrow
or any anxiety attacks or PTSD attacks. I don't get any of that.
The greatest pleasure is finally being free from that and being in the moment.
NARRATOR: Equine therapy and non-pharmaceutical treatments
are increasingly seen as valuable
in promoting a veteran's overall well-being.
Integrative medicine affects how the rest of medicine works.
They work together.
We're always educating people
because there's still a sort of traditional medical model.
Yes, we've got to have medical treatment.
The medications, the X-rays, the physical therapy, the OT...
But that's only part.
You know, veterans who are involved in psychotherapy by itself,
compared to veterans who are involved in psychotherapy and equine therapy,
there's a notable difference.
And I know there's some research being devoted to that.
I mean, we experienced the same thing with, you know,
our Shakespeare and veteran program.
Some people get involved with Shakespeare,
and through the character of Shakespeare,
find that they're able to begin to feel things
and express things in character
that also matches what they are in real life.
You know, Shakespeare wrote about war and relationships.
[CHUCKLES] So, it's perfect 400 years later.
Do not presume too much upon my love
I may do that I shall be sorry for.
You have done that you should be sorry for.
Begone!
Run to your houses, fall upon your knees!
Pray to the gods to intermit the plague.
Theater came out of the warrior culture of Rome
because the returning warriors told their story through play,
and that was how they were able to reconnect,
and it was the society's job,
it was just natural for them to take care of their warriors and their veterans.
America has never been that way.
You know, we send 'em off, we train 'em, they come back.
They get a day or two airplane ride and they're back.
At least World War II, they had the time on the ship to, you know, to come back.
Whatever.
NARRATOR: In light of the alarming number of veteran suicides,
the VA is broadening its quest for effective programs to help our soldiers.
MUSICIAN: One, two, one, two, three...
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Music therapy, recent research in music therapy
in the last, I'd say, 15 years now,
since we've been able to look at things in the brain,
you know, affects brain functioning in five significant ways.
I really think that some of these partnerships,
what we do in Creative Arts and Shakespeare with Veterans,
we have the advantage of seeing veterans get back into life.
And for those for whom it happens with horses,
it's profound, it's amazing.
And the biggest thing is getting veterans connected.
Once a veteran picks up the phone and makes a call,
an isolated veteran,
the risk of suicide goes down 30 percent.
So that's a huge part of what Recreation and Creative Arts therapists do.
They build connections from treatment to the community,
and then, once you're in community, try to keep those going.
There's been really no opportunity
where the mustangs get to show their greatness
as much as, you know, saving a soldier's life.
Like if my mom hadn't flown out, I would've never come out here.
She literally forced me to get in the car and drove me out here.
You know, not everybody has that type of support.
So, um, I hope in the future
to reach out to some of those vets
that are sitting in their basement alone,
are sitting in their house alone,
um, not really having the motivation or drive,
or even will to want to go out and look for something like this.
My neighbor came to me the other day and she's like,
"This Navy vet's having PTSD issues, alcohol issues."
So what did I do?
I went over there.
He didn't know me. No one knew me.
I knocked on that door and I was like, "You're coming with me."
After talking to him for a few minutes,
I got him at the barn, and I was like,
"You know, you don't have to do drugs or alcohol to be happy here.
"You just have to be here."
And, uh, he's very excited.
He's gonna be coming up, he's gonna be filling out the paperwork
and he's gonna get going.
There's nothing like a veteran wanting to help another veteran
because that's part of what they never leave behind,
is that commitment to the group, the mission.
Commitment to the mission.
As long as they got a mission, they're happy.
But they got to have a mission.
RENO: If you're a good battle buddy and a good fellow soldier,
you're helping your other soldiers out.
We know how to watch each other's back
and help them work on being better.
And there's somebody behind me going,
"Hey, I'm gonna help you perform better.
"I'm gonna help you be able to work this out." You know?
McKEVITT: So you got to find somewhere to be a little more consistent than that
up, down, up, down.
You know what I'm saying, with the horse?
NARRATOR: In spite of all the trauma the mustangs have endured,
the veterans are their saviors.
And now, the world is taking notice.
The group heads out to the biggest rodeo in the world.
[COUNTRY MUSIC PLAYING]
Cheyenne Frontier Days is a platform
for us to demonstrate veterans that are not professional horseman
can successfully make a connection with these wild horses.
NARRATOR: The BLM delivered 18 mustangs
and four wild burros to the team of veterans
to gentle over the course of the rodeo,
performing demonstrations, and ultimately auctioning off
the newly trained animals to loving homes.
We're each gonna be working with two mustangs.
We get assigned two mustangs,
and just developing them
and see what I can do for 'em
and show people that they're really good horses.
Well, it's the biggest rodeo in the country,
and I get to work mustangs, and I'm all about that.
These mustangs, we're gonna work with them on the ground.
Then we're gonna finally get a saddle...
We'll wrap a rope, get him used to that,
and saddle and blanket.
And then, we're gonna get on 'em, and we're gonna ride 'em.
And that's the great part.
RODEO ANNOUNCER: Now we have a very special group right now
that is making their way down to Chute Five.
Now they're going to head into the arena.
They are a group called the BraveHearts.
Now, they are the largest horse program in the country serving military veterans.
Last year, over 545 veterans
received nearly 11,000 rides at no cost to them.
The more people that are aware that they're useful, good horses,
that you can train 'em, you can trust 'em,
the more maybe people will stop breeding
other horses for pleasure and for ranch work,
and use some of these great resources that we have.
There are quite a few challenging moments
at Frontier Days for me personally.
There were thousands and thousands of people watching.
I had been riding for less than a year, and I was kind of petrified.
AUCTIONEER: $200. $250. $250.
$200, I have...
[AUCTIONEER CALLING BIDS]
Two grand where? $2,000.
This had to be a uncomfortable situation
for both the horses and the vets,
because these horses haven't been to town either.
AUCTIONEER: $800, where? I have it...
Then all of a sudden, they're here.
They've got tarps, planes, helicopters,
they got cars. Jeez, it's like sensory overload.
I'd never been at a big rodeo like that before.
It was an experience and it's spiritual.
And you're not used to all that culture shock.
And you're on a horse and you're with these mustangs
and we all got mustangs and we had the wild burros
and we got to work with them for ten days while we were out there.
And it was a bonding, you know?
So, all day, we're working with these horses,
and getting them ready because they had an auction at the end of the ten days,
and they got adopted.
She's gonna have the best life.
I mean, it's just like having a puppy
and having a child.
She's gonna be... I think her and I are gonna be awesome together.
These animals are a good source,
both for mental use, for work use, show horses.
We now see horses,
the endurance is a big, big, fun group of people that do it.
Here in Nevada, we've got a prison program.
It's a win-win.
Um, they're rehabilitating and teaching these inmates a new trade.
And then, we supply the Border Patrol in San Diego
with gentled horses that have been saddle-started.
They tend to last a lot longer.
They grew up in this terrain.
They can go on, they're hardy.
The public will have an opportunity to buy a wild horse
that a veteran on the front end has started the process,
started to lay the groundwork for.
AUCTIONEER: $300? I have... two... three.
$200. Now $500. $750.
I have... $800 where? $750...
[AUCTIONEER CALLING BIDS]
I have $1,250. Sold at $1,200 right down here in front.
Twenty-five. Gentlemen, $2,600.
$3,200 I have...
SPECTATOR: Thirty-five!
AUCTIONEER: Sold, $3,600, right here.
[CROWD CHEERING]
Then to $250. I have $200. Now half.
[AUCTIONEER CONTINUES BID CALLING]
Hi, baby.
I went to Cheyenne Frontier Days for a family vacation
and, uh, realized that the BLM was there with wild horses,
and I decided then, possibly, to try and adopt,
and I had no idea I was going to come home with a horse.
She's a three-year-old mustang.
Lima Zulu. Sweet as can be.
I adopted her through the BLM.
I love this horse.
Grandkids came over.
My granddaughter Layla rode her, and my grandson Liam.
Um, my son had no problem with her,
didn't realize she was a wild mustang
until, you know, they were already up on her.
But she's been really a great horse.
Seem like all the kids that are here always want to ride the mustang.
I don't know if it's the heritage thing or just the personality,
the, uh, the spunk that this...
There's just a lot of personality with it, so everybody likes this horse,
and she's been really good for a lot of other kids.
[SNORTS]
BARHORST: They're part of our history.
They've been around for hundreds of years,
and they're part of, you know, our lands,
and you get to have a piece of that and save a piece of that,
and it's just overwhelming.
You know, not only that, you get to save an animal
and give it a good home and a life and a purpose.
She's a blessing in my life.
NARRATOR: But what about people who don't ride
or aren't able to be around horses?
To emphasize that every veteran's life is valuable,
BraveHearts is taking to the streets.
Good morning from New York. Welcome to the Trail to Zero.
We're gonna be riding horses 20 miles through Washington DC.
Trail to Zero.
NARRATOR: Trail to Zero is BraveHearts' awareness effort.
Riding in large cities to help reduce veteran suicide to zero.
WOMAN: We're gonna hit the start sign. Everyone ready?
Let's go.
NARRATOR: The veterans ride downtown
in some of America's largest cities
to bring awareness to the problem of veteran suicide.
Some even mounted on the wild mustangs
gentled by the veterans themselves.
My father was a veteran. He committed suicide,
and many of my friends have committed suicide.
And so, um, that's why I have really mixed feelings today.
But being here in Washington, DC, where...
You know, this represents our country.
Veterans are very patriotic.
This horse is very patriotic.
It's just awareness.
Awareness, to me, is educating people.
WOLFE: We're here to ride with BraveHearts
and the New York City Police Department
and we're here for the suicide awareness prevention.
Every day there's over 20 suicides
with military veterans in the United States.
We're going 20 miles,
because it's a mile for every veteran which commits suicide every day.
We want to draw attention to the fact that there's a place to go to get help.
And one of the ways that they can get help is with horse equine therapy.
That's what we do out there in Illinois with these horses.
It's, uh, kind of venturing out into the unknown.
For myself, I've never been to Washington, DC.
And to do it on a horse, which is my vehicle to experience life,
just about everything,
and with people who also see the world like I do, it is just amazing.
It's raining.
There's an expression, "If it ain't raining, we ain't training."
Well, we trained today.
The neat part was actually going through the heart of downtown Washington.
Everybody finished that started,
and it's something I'll remember forever.
A lot of people are curious, so they're gonna look it up,
an even if we reach one veteran
who wanted to kill himself or herself today,
saw this cause,
does not kill himself or herself,
it was worth it.
And it was worth riding the 20 miles.
And he's tired, but he says he's worth it, too.
[KISSES] I know. I know, I know.
I know, yeah.
Riding a horse in New York City.
Oh, my gosh, riding a horse through New York City was just amazing.
It was surreal.
Just the street. The people are friendly. It's unbelievable.
All these horse-drawn carriages around south side of Central Park.
This is... This is unbelievable. It's surreal.
You wanna pet him?
New York is an intense city.
The ride itself was fascinating
because the horses were... they were rock stars.
I mean, they were rock solid.
You know, you would imagine that a horse coming from a beautiful barn out here
going into Central Park with massive structures and buildings
and cars and sounds, hansom cabs,
and people running by, and cutting you off
and other people waving, and cell phones everywhere,
and people saying, you know, "What are you about?" and so forth and so on.
The distractions were massive.
And the horses were just rock solid.
They kept right on going. There were no glitches. Beautiful.
HILL-McQUEENY: We talk about how horses can reduce anxiety,
like, of all places possibly, to be anxious, right? New York City.
-Nobody was anxious. -Right?
HILL-McQUEENY: Times Square, like, there's people everywhere.
Cars everywhere, buses, horns, noises, bikes, skateboards, everything.
And the horses took it all.
They just sucked it all up like big sponges.
[HORNS HONKING]
And the time we spent interacting and getting to know people.
Obviously, we weren't prepared for the amount of exposure
and the amount of, you know, contact with people.
We ran out of literature halfway through the ride.
HILL-McQUEENY: Between all the people taking pictures and movies
and asked us what we were doing and all the information that we're handing out,
and just seeing how many people have been e-mailing and texting
and Facebook-ing or whatever, like, "That's on my bucket list."
Like, "How do I get to do that? Like, that's so amazing."
You know, how we try to capture all of that enthusiasm
and then use it for the true good of the cause.
MERCURIO: We were actually fortunate enough
to stop at a couple of firehouses
who were kind enough to water our horses
and they were fire houses that participated on 9/11.
And we were accepted by the people that came around
when we were at those spots where we took pictures.
People came, you know, literally, in droves to ask us questions,
know what we were about, you know, to touch the horses.
And that was, I guess, kind of interesting, too,
is that when people were...
You know, some had never been near a horse.
[INAUDIBLE]
Columns of two, column right! Ho!
We also were fortunate enough to have six mounted policemen with us.
They led the charge.
So when there was any kind of an obstruction or whatever,
they were right there to help us avoid it.
The mounted police, a bunch of them were on their off day,
and they came in because they wanted to support the cause.
HILL-McQUEENY: They were just honored to even be invited to join us.
That was pretty humbling to hear, like, "Wow."
You know, 'cause we feel like here that we're trying to fight for a cause so hard,
and then, here we go to New York City,
and have total strangers get behind what...
-What we're doing. -Mm-hmm.
And then when we went down to Ground Zero,
that was an awesome experience.
I mean, that was a heartfelt thing that we all participated in.
You could tell that it really had a meaning for all of us, you know?
Certainly for the New York policemen.
[BAND PLAYING "THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER"]
["THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER" CONTINUES]
[CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING]
MAN: Semper Fi.
-RIDER: You a marine, too? -Semper Fi.
-RIDER: Semper Fi, sir. -Semper Fi.
HILL-McQUEENY: I think it's somewhat sad
to think how many people really don't understand the epidemic that's going on,
don't understand whether the number is 20 or 22, whatever it is.
HEDLUND: So many people didn't know...
-Yeah. -...that that's how many were committing suicide every day.
You can't ignore that and think that that's acceptable
for the United States of America.
["THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER" CONTINUES]
[CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING]
[HORNS HONKING]
PHOTOGRAPHER: One, two, three.
MERCURIO: I wish I would have started 50 years ago,[CHUCKLES]
but I'm here now and I'm gonna make the best of it.
RENO: It's so awesome, 'cause people are like, "What do you do?"
"I work with mustangs, man. You gotta come check it out." [CHUCKLING]
And they're like, "What do you mean, Mustang cars?"
"No, mustang horses. Wild horses."
"Wild horses?" "Yeah, wild horses, man.
"Come check it out. It's a pretty awesome experience."
I just had a veteran tell me yesterday,
like, "If I didn't have this place, where do I go?
"I don't want to go to the bars. I don't want to sit in the VAs.
"That's not where...
"I need to be encouraged. I need to be challenged. I want something to do."
HARDY: I think people need something that's measurable
where they can look back and see what they've accomplished.
Working with the mustangs, it gives me that sense of accomplishment.
So I came to a place where I realized,
"Hey, I'm getting better and life is looking up for me."
And I always wanted to be in a situation
where I could try to share that with other veterans.
It's like a family.
It's like an extension to the family.
We're both Mitchells.
-MAN: Are you really? -Yeah.
APPER: A lot of times, we say in the military,
you know, our units become our family.
Um, this is my civilian unit now.
NARRATOR: The mustangs and the veterans.
Together, they find a new way to live, a place to belong.
A feeling of safety, hope.
A bright new spirit.
Can you believe that? A horse named Marshall.
Now with the Creative Arts, equine therapy,
there is that spiritual healing that can happen.
HEDLUND: This program has motivated me from sitting in a wheelchair,
not even able to walk around,
to, all of a sudden, I'm running.
I'm able to run now.
There's a lot of other centers like BraveHearts that want wild horses.
They just don't know how to start it.
There's about 800 across the country.
So, you know, that's a lot of veterans
that could possibly be assisted,
as well as a lot of wild horses
that could actually have a new purpose in their life
other than standing in a holding pen.
And these horses, um, are the love that shines through.
Like they're the part of my heart that was there before deployments,
before the military, before everything else.
McKEVITT: What better match-up?
You know, the wild mustang and a warrior
that's gone overseas to protect everything that we all have?
It's magic.
So we're trying to get equine therapy to move to the top of the list,
or at least up the list instead of being the last resort for the VA.
Move it up and have it so it's a regular therapy
that veterans can get turned on to and they can get involved in.
Because if they get involved early on,
you could probably save a lot of guys' lives.
You know, we need lots of support, equipment-wise, logistics.
Um, I hope that people will step up to the plate and support that
so that we can continue to get more horses,
better equipment, serve more veterans.
You know, our veterans that are coming home and are in tough spots,
they deserve a whole lot more than, you know, what we're doing right now.
And so, getting these horses placed,
you know, getting these veterans
a purpose to leave their houses,
to start to integrate with fellow veterans,
to have a project, you know,
have something that, at the end of the day, they can be proud of
and think that "I left this round pen
"a whole lot better than it was when I walked in."
HARDY: For me, my goal in life now
is to always just try to spend my day doing something I enjoy.
And cherishing the moments in the time I have left
with the people, my family and friends I have.
What is a mustang?
People think it's a breed, and we like to say,
it's a lifestyle. [CHUCKLES]
I found sobriety in horsemanship.
I found faith in horsemanship.
And I'm a real live person.
Look at me, Mom! [LAUGHS]
I've changed as far as, um, not being drunk all the time, probably.
[LAUGHING]
I don't have that crutch that I got to fall back on.
I got something to do. I got something more meaningful
than to be sitting at the bar,
to be drinking alone, or, you know, or doing any of that stuff,
because every time I come out here,
whether I'm riding or instructing or feeding,
or helping fix fences,
or whatever we got to do out here,
everybody wears a lot of different hats,
and to to build and to have community and have friends
and to be able to share and experience what I am out here, you know,
and go to sleep thinking "I did a good job today," you know?
I'm a happy camper. I'm a happy camper.
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
[PLEASANT MUSIC PLAYING]
[CHIEF PHILLIP WHITEMAN, JR SINGING "PRAYER SONG FOR WORLD PEACE"]