Horse, Veterans and the Reality of War in Ukraine

I didn’t go to Ukraine to teach. I went to stand in a field with horses, and with people whose lives have been shaped by war, and to see what might happen if we allowed space for something quieter to emerge. The visit came together through the generosity and vision of Charles Gillow from the Light Cavalry, who organised the trip, and was supported by Julian Radburn from Damory Vets, who travelled with me. We were hosted by Paradise Ranch — a place that lives and breathes this work every single day, supporting veterans and their families through connection with horses. We stepped into something that was already there.

We also felt deeply honoured to be invited into that space at all. The men and women there are living a reality that, in the UK, many of us have not had to face for decades. For them, this is not something that sits in the background — it is a daily fight. To be asked to stand alongside them, even briefly, was something we did not take lightly. Their pride in their country, in their culture, and in each other was unmistakable and humbling to witness.

The people I met were veterans — men and women. Many had come directly from the military hospital. Their bodies carried visible injuries; their nervous systems carried far more than that. You could feel it before a word was spoken, in the way they stood, in the way they scanned the space, in the way silence sat differently around them.

And then there were the horses. These were rescue horses — horses who had also known instability, disruption, and survival, some had been rescued directly from the front line. Horses who, in many ways, understood something about living in a world where safety is not guaranteed, and both the humans and the horses carried the imprint of trauma.

It also felt important to recognise that the relationship with horses in Ukraine sits differently to what many of us are used to in the UK. Horses are far more woven into the traditional workforce — part of daily life, part of getting things done. They are relied upon, and that shapes how they are seen. That wasn’t something to challenge. It was something to understand. And perhaps, gently, something to expand, because alongside that practical relationship, there was space to open a different kind of conversation — one that recognises Horse, with a capital H. Horse as a sentient being with its own voice, its own perspective, its own way of meeting the world. Not instead of what already exists, but part of it.

In many ways, Paradise Ranch has already opened this space. The work they are doing with veterans and their families is rooted in connection, in presence, and in allowing both horse and human to meet each other without force or expectation. So we didn’t begin with instructions or techniques, we began by noticing. At Horserenity, we often say that all behaviour is communication, and in Ukraine that truth felt sharper, more immediate. There was no room for performance — from horse or human - everything was honest.

Some people stood back at first, watching, not ready to step in. And that was fine, because observation is not passive; it is participation of a different kind. Watching a horse flick an ear, shift weight, soften through the eye — these are not small things. They are the beginnings of conversation.

One of the horses stepped forward towards someone who hadn’t moved for some time. There was no cue and no request, just a quiet closing of space. They didn’t reach out immediately. They waited. And in that pause, something changed — not visibly at first, but you could feel it. The kind of shift that happens before movement, the kind of shift horses recognise long before we do. Eventually, a hand lifted, not to do anything, just to meet the moment and the horse breathed deeply on the back of the head of the man who had told us he has daily headaches from an acquired head injury - and as the horse's eyes softened and the man's eyed filled with tears we held the silence.

There are no big declarations in work like this. No dramatic breakthroughs that can be neatly packaged into a headline. What happens is quieter than that, and far more important. A breath softens. A shoulder drops. A hand that was held tightly begins, almost imperceptibly, to release. The horses notice all of it and they respond to what is real, not what is presented. They don’t ask for explanations or stories, and they don’t need people to make sense of what has happened to them. Because in a world where so much has been taken out of a person’s control, the presence of a horse offers something different. Not fixing. Not analysing. Just a moment of being met.

We talk a lot about helping people through work like this, but standing there, it didn’t feel one-sided. The horses were not tools in the process; they were central to it — active participants, choosing when to step in, when to step away, when to hold space, and when to ask a question through their movement. They were doing what horses have always done — responding to the energy, the intention, and the internal state of the beings around them. And the people, whether they realised it or not, were responding in return. Not through words, but through something older. Something that doesn’t disappear, even in the midst of war.

Standing in that field in Ukraine, it felt as though the conversation was still there, and, as we left, there was a shared sense — quiet, but unmistakable — of just how much is being held there, every single day. Not just the weight of what has happened, but the strength it takes to keep going.

Our hope, like so many others, is that Ukraine finds peace. And if, in some small way, standing in that field — listening, noticing, allowing space — contributed even a fraction towards that, then it was enough.