Jay Novak, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force, stands with his son who is riding Henry, a therapeutic horse.[/caption]

Traumatic experiences such as going to war, being diagnosed with cancer or battling depression can leave emotional scars the eye cannot see. One local nonprofit is trying to help those who have lived through those challenges find healing through riding and caring for horses.

Henry’s Home and Horse Sanctuary started when Donna Stedman rescued two horses, Henry and Lexi, from the Houston Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

“[The organization is] named after Henry because he was the worst case of starvation that we have taken over,” Stedman said.

Stedman started Just Us Gals, a program that offered trail riding for a fee. The program reached out to cancer survivors, women who had suffered from depression and eating disorders and others who found the riding therapeutic. The business, although technically not a nonprofit when it launched, was always run like a nonprofit, Stedman said. Any profit the organization earned was used to pay for the care of the horses. Henry’s Home and Horse Sanctuary officially became a nonprofit in November.

As the mother of a soldier who is deployed in Iraq, Stedman said she felt a strong pull to help veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder upon returning home by using the horses to provide a therapeutic experience. 

She said the organization started having more veterans work with the horses, which led her to seek a partnership with the Wounded Warriors Equestrian Program.

The program partners with horse rescues to benefit both the riders and the animals, Stedman said.

“There’s such a symbiotic relationship between the healing of the horses and the healing of the [veterans],” she said.

When veterans and their families come to ride or work with the horses, the sanctuary allows them to do so at no charge. The nonprofit uses proceeds from other riders to cover the costs of care and boarding for the horses.

One of the goals for the sanctuary is to find a permanent home that the organization can own and use as a retreat center.

“Our goal is to have this be a place where all the local nonprofits can come out, get involved with our sanctuary horses—the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the different equine therapy groups—pretty much any of the nonprofits,” Stedman said. “If they want to have their fundraisers out there, we want to be able to provide that.”