{"id":2728,"date":"2021-01-06T12:07:57","date_gmt":"2021-01-06T20:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.sprucehealth.com\/?p=2728"},"modified":"2023-10-26T05:35:03","modified_gmt":"2023-10-26T12:35:03","slug":"ranch-hands-rescue-treats-complex-trauma-in-animals-and-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sprucehealth.com\/blog\/ranch-hands-rescue-treats-complex-trauma-in-animals-and-humans\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranch Hands Rescue Treats Complex Trauma in Animals and Humans"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ranch Hands Rescue (RHR) organization treats animals and humans who have experienced severe trauma by pairing them together in cross-species counseling sessions. This unique treatment modality helps to achieve results with humans and animals who were previously considered to be \u201clost causes\u201d when it comes to healing. Since its founding, RHR has rescued over 500 animals and served over 1,600 people, and the group isn\u2019t stopping any time soon. We sat down with Landon Dickeson, Director of Clinical Services at RHR, to discuss the organization’s special form of counseling, where they\u2019re going in the future, and how Spruce helps their team stay connected.<\/span><\/p>\n

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How did RHR come to be?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\"RHR<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in 2007, Bob, our founder, had recently quit his corporate job and was driving along the road when he noticed a little goat in a cage that was far too small for it. He asked the owner why he wasn\u2019t letting the goat roam around in a larger pen, and the man said, \u201cIf you want to do that, feel free to buy it.\u201d So Bob did. He bought the goat, put it in the backseat of his car, and that\u2019s where it started. As Bob started to rehabilitate this goat and rescue other animals, he noticed that he himself started feeling better, both physically and mentally. Each time he went to the doctor, his health kept getting better, and the only thing he could attribute it to was the animals. He then started to put together the counseling component of RHR. The counselors quickly realized that this form of therapy was incredible and helped them to get to the root of their clients’ trauma faster.<\/strong> From there, RHR developed the equine and assisted animal counseling program that we now use, which is a combination of your traditional talk therapy with time spent caring for animals. And it\u2019s incredibly powerful.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Do you find there\u2019s a specific group for whom this treatment works best?<\/b><\/p>\n

Anyone can seek our services, but we really focus on those who need an alternative, more experimental therapy. Usually these folks don\u2019t respond well to traditional office therapy settings and have lost hope because the system hasn\u2019t been working for them. We tend to see a lot of individuals with complex trauma, complex PTSD, those who have suffered from sexual abuse, and veterans. Most of them are what other programs call \u201ctreatment-resistant,\u201d but many find enormous success at RHR.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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What about the animals? Where do they come from?<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Child<\/span><\/p>\n

The animals that we help are, similarly, a rare population. They are farm animals, which are often overlooked in terms of the need for rescue. There are plenty of dogs and cats being rescued, but not many farm animals. The animals that we take typically have high medical needs and are on the brink of euthanasia. I\u2019ve trained and rehabilitated a one-legged dog with three prosthetics to walk and run. Where else do you get the chance to do that as a counselor?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The majority of our animals come to us from police seizures due to criminal abuse or criminal neglect, or from killing pens where the animals are going for euthanasia. We do occasionally foster animals out, but we don\u2019t adopt out any more, because most of our animals have such severe ongoing medical needs that people aren\u2019t able to care for them and end up bringing them back. We want these animals to have a forever home where they know they can be safe and loved and cared for.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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What makes the therapeutic relationship between the human and the animal so special?<\/b><\/p>\n

You first provide safety, which builds trust. Once you have that trust, that\u2019s where the connection happens. It\u2019s the same with animals, it\u2019s the same with people. It really does become\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>this back and forth magical dance between the clients and the animals, where the animals are getting healed from their trauma and they\u2019re also healing the people from their trauma. Within that connection and relationship is where all the healing happens.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The difference with the animals is that they don\u2019t know English. But they do speak a different language, if you\u2019re willing to listen.<\/div>\n

Humans are verbal beings, and we do a large portion of our communication and thinking through language. That narrative is part of how we process reality. <\/span>The difference with the animals is that they don\u2019t know English. But they do speak a different language, if you\u2019re willing to listen. So what ends up happening in these sessions is you have to get really good at listening to yourself, and as<\/span>king yourself, \u201cWhat am I bringing to the table? What am I bringing to this relationship?\u201d Oftentimes what we find is that there is a whole host of things that we didn\u2019t even realize were part of the way we interact with others.<\/p>\n

Clients typically gravitate towards the animal that they need to work with for one reason or anoth<\/span>er, and what a session looks like really depends on the client and what they\u2019re struggling with. For example, I can often tell if a client is struggling with addiction even if they haven\u2019t told me that, because they want to feed the animals. The only way they know how to connect with someone is through a substance. It\u2019s little things like that that you don’t think twice about before you\u2019re with the animal. It\u2019s a process of listening to what your body is saying, what the animal\u2019s body is saying, and processing that verbally, which is where I come in as a therapist.<\/span><\/p>\n

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You\u2019re opening Bob\u2019s House of Hope soon. Tell us more about that.<\/b><\/p>\n

\"RHR<\/p>\n

We often forget to include men in our discussions about sex trafficking. They\u2019re the unseen survivors, the forgotten ones.They are an entire population that\u2019s been sexually abused and trafficked, and nobody\u2019s talking about it or doing anything about it. Bob\u2019s House of Hope, which will open in early 2021, will be the first safe house in the country for sex-trafficked young men between the ages of 18 and 24. It will be a long-term residential program where they\u2019ll receive medical care, work with the animals, and get guidance as they transition to a world outside of sex trafficking. For many of these young men, their sexual abuse began in childhood, so they really only know survival in that world. You really have to work back through the developmental milestones that were missed and work back through those traumas that halted their development. Along the way, you have to teach them the healthy ways to be in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

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How has Spruce changed the way RHR works?<\/b><\/p>\n

We had never done any kind of teletherapy before, but we needed a telehealth platform immediately. Spruce helped make that a really seamless transition.<\/div>\n

Spruce brought us into the 21st century, which was great. Even before the pandemic, I saw the need for Spruce, so our team started talking about it then. But when the pandemic and shelter-in-place order hit, we saw the urgency.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We had never done any kind of teletherapy before, but we needed a telehealth platform immediately. <\/span>Spruce helped make that a really seamless transition.<\/b> We didn\u2019t have to take even a week off to adjust. Instead, we just transitioned right into telehealth from home. Even now, with the shelter-in-place order lifted, we\u2019re continuing with the telehealth option for those who want it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond just video, Spruce has been really helpful with team collaboration. The phone system,\u00a0specifically the phone tree, has been great. We no longer have an old-school office handset, and we can use our cell phones, which makes communication much easier. Spruce also makes sending team messages easy. We\u2019re always paging each other in conversations and getting things done virtually. We have found that we\u2019re much more capable of working remotely than we thought, and Spruce has been a big part of making that possible.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

How can people help support RHR?<\/b><\/p>\n

You can donate directly from <\/span>our website<\/span><\/a>, and any amount is greatly appreciated and welcome. We also frequently post information about RHR and our fundraisers on <\/span>our Facebook page<\/span><\/a>. You\u2019ll also see lots of cute animal pictures there as well, which is an added bonus.<\/span><\/p>\n

We have a waitlist for clients right now, but we encourage anyone to sign up for the waitlist on our website. You can learn more about our services and sign up for the waitlist <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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RHR\u2019s Spruce Recipe<\/b><\/p>\n