Equestrian bootcamp for veterans coming to Chilton County

CLANTON, Ala. (WBRC) - Two organizations focused on helping struggling veterans are introducing them to the power of horses.

Saturday was Orientation Day for Cowboy Boot Camp as they finalize details.

“We want to make sure that folks understand what horses can do for them,” said Bondfire Ranch Founder and President Gilbert Bryan Eddy.

He said the animals help provide peace and build trust. Many times, veterans struggling with PTSD are seeking both.

“Veterans are -- we can be a strange bunch in that we may not want to admit in a clinical environment that we might need some wellbeing activities,” said Dovetail Landing Executive Director Robert Holmes. “But getting together as veterans on a peer to peer experience... that opens the door for that.”

Dovetail Landing and Bondfire Ranch are partnering together to provide that camp for our vets.

“Veterans were civilians first but then they go in and served in the military, put on a uniform, take up weapons, in some cases go into combat environments where that takes a toll on their emotional wellbeing,” explained Holmes.

Alana Centilli is the inspiration behind Dovetail Landing. She continues to work through her own grief after losing her son in 2019.

“Daniel was a marine in Afghanistan and he was hit with some IEDs, suffered tramatic brain injury, PTSD,” she explained. “Within about a year or two, they found a mass on his brain and had to undergo brain surgery and when that happened, it was like another brain trauma.”

Centilli said her son began hallucinating and died from complications of his brain injuries. She shared that while he was living, they sent him out of state for rehabilitation.

“One of the things they did was equine therapy in South Florida and it helped Daniel so much,” she said. “I think it’s such a -- not only a physical thing, but a mental thing and it’s like -- these veterans, they connect with these horses.”

“It helps to sometimes get into a different environment so you can think about your wellbeing, you can think about what may be going on with you emotionally,” said Holmes.

“For a lot of military folks, myself included, sometimes it’s hard to trust folks and learning how to trust a horse, a 1200 pound horse, and learning how to interact and communicate,” said Eddy. “Horses communicate in many ways. They use nonverbals and believe it or not, people use nonverbals too as we know! But oftentimes, we don’t pay attention to them and so by learning cues from horses, we can also learn those same cues to look for in people.”

The Cowboy Boot Camp is sponsored by Norfolk Southern.

They’re still ironing out the details for the upcoming camps. Dovetail Landing will post on social media when they have the dates.

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