WILMORE, Ky. (LEX 18) — The end of a senior year brings a lot of goodbyes with it. For students in the Asbury University Service Mounts Program, their farewell includes sending off their horses into the workforce.
Students helped raise and train horses to work in mounted units across the country. Ava Klein is the Service Mounts Program student leader, and she worked with a horse named Odin.
“Seeing my finished product of Odin,” Klein said, “the horse that I've worked with to take him from this little untouchable feral weanling to putting him on a trailer to go do his job, it's just that sense of accomplishment and knowing that, if nothing else, I did that, and I got to do it alongside some of the most amazing people.”
“It's really cool to see them grow and to see them become something bigger than yourself,” said Olivia Hutchens Rocha, another senior.
Students are assigned their horse during their freshman year, and they’ve spent the time since growing closer to the horse while training it for a bigger purpose. Junior student Bryanne McDermott had a bit of a different assignment training Ozark, whose previous trainer graduated in the fall semester.
“I am not just working with this horse for me I'm working with this horse for him to go and bless others,” McDermott said. “That I think is foundational to what this program is. We want to bless others through the ministry that we're doing through training horses.”
Back in March, LEX 18 was on campus when Asbury hosted officers from mounted units across the country to work alongside the trainers, growing familiar with their soon-to-be horses and learning the language and movements used to communicate.
Some units will return in the summer to pick up their horses to join the unit. With just a few weeks left until graduation, though, a mounted unit from Massachusetts stopped by the equine center to pick up their three horses.
The Hampden County Sheriff told the girls they could visit their horses at their new job anytime.
“He knows how much these guys mean to you. They’re going to mean a lot to us,” was the final message to the students. That helps make this ‘goodbye’ feel more like a ‘see you later.’
“We know about this day since day one, and we go into it and we tell ourselves that it's not a big deal and we're not going to care, and we know that we're training them for a purpose,” Klein said. “You think you're prepared and then you're putting them on that trailer and you don't know when you're going to see him again.”
“The heart we put in over time really pays off in the end,” Hutchens Rocha added. “We all get really emotional because it's like we're done, but we're really, really proud of them.”
Both Klein and Hutchens Rocha add that they have plans to continue training horses after graduation. Klein added that she has further aspirations to start a mounted unit in Indiana.
You can learn more about the Asbury Service Mounts Program here.
