Stacie, Correctional Officer

Lift Me Up

People come in, they get to touch a horse, maybe the first time in their entire lives they've actually seen a live horse up close and personal. And they have the opportunity to not only see them, but to, if I'm with you, then I don't mind taking you in there and actually brushing them and kind of just being around them. And their entire demeanor changes when you're around them. They like to be around people and people just calm down and relax. It's amazing, it really is.

Bringing calm

Stacie
Correctional Officer

My name is Stacie and I work at Edmonton Maximum Security Institution.

I bring horses on site for staff and officers to come in and have a little bit of a mental wellness break.

I was sitting in the gate one night shift or evening shift, and I had in the course of a four-hour shift, three officers coming in at various points. They didn't come in together, but they came in and they just needed somewhere to vent and to just talk to somebody and people don't mind talking to me. And over that course of that time, I realized that we just weren't doing well here. We needed something to help people decompress, relax, and just generally have something that was good and positive in this place. And I thought, you know what, perfect thing to bring to people. I had some conversation with my AWO (Assistant Warden, Operations), he was fantastically supportive in all of this. And he actually said, you know what, if you want to bring these guys in on a regular basis, then that is perfect.

Max comes in quite often. He's my main saddle horse and he goes everywhere with me. We have ridden everywhere. And this is actually his full sister Molly and they are 21 and 19 respectively.

With these guys, they'll come up to you and their breathing will start to match yours and they start to just kind of level out with you. They actually claim a horse can sense and hear a human heartbeat four feet away.

I am absolutely proud of this, I really am. It's gone way beyond what I expected it to be. I brought horses on site. I thought, you know, if it makes one officer smile in a day or one staff member for smile in a day, especially if you've, you know, you've had a bad day, you've had a stabbing or, you know, shots fired, whatever the situation is, you bring somebody in and they go in there and they pet these guys, they love them up and that, and that just goes away from their brain. That just goes away for that timeframe. Right. And if that makes one person happy, then absolutely, I'm very happy to offer this to people.

I've always said, if we can help one person here, maybe that person can help the next person and the next person. And it's, it's just the paying it forward aspect.

I'm so happy that these guys have embraced it as well as they have. I can't believe how many people have reached out and said, “you know, having these guys here has just made my whole day, made me smile, made my day happy for the rest of the day. This is amazing.” So that, that makes it worthwhile.