After more than a decade of helping veterans and their families with post-traumatic stress disorder, Nancy Pitchford Zhe of Blue Star Ranch is putting out an “urgent and unprecedented” call for help: Her horses need a home. And fast.
Her all-volunteer network, aided by paid, licensed equine therapists, has thrived at Blue Star’s home on the 20800 block of Placerita Canyon Road for the past seven years, she said in a phone interview Monday.
But due to a recent change in ownership, the property she leases for her horses — the “four-legged therapists,” she joked — is now no longer available, and Blue Star Ranch needs a new home by the end of the month.
Everyone on the property was given 30 days’ notice on May 1, she said.
“We just want to let everybody know what’s going on with us, and hopefully, maybe there’s someone out there who will step forward and say, ‘I have room,’ and we’ll just go from there,” she said.
“If they host us, they can take a tax write-off from the IRS,” Zhe said, giving her pitch to potential new landlords. “We’re very organized. We’re an all-volunteer organization. We have fantastic volunteers, but we do need a place where they can feed our horses. We buy our own hay and everything.”
Zhe, who started the facility with her husband, John, in 2014, according to the Blue Star website, offers a 10-week course that also provides a certification for graduates. Quilts for Others, another nonprofit Nancy Pitchford Zhe is affiliated with, provides those who complete the course with one of their blankets.
“We try to put the veterans through the program for free, so they don’t have to pay, and so, it’s a constant challenge,” she said, referring to the cost for paying therapists and keeping the horses fed and housed.
The wish list for the new location includes: five horse stalls; parking for a golf cart and mini-garden tractor; electricity for refrigeration and cart charging; water access for a hose; a 60-foot pen or a space otherwise large enough for equine therapy; and on-site assistance with horse feeding (food provided).
In addition to the courses for veterans, there’s help available for their loved ones, and there are somewhat regular men’s and women’s group sessions.
“We actually help the whole veteran family,” Zhe said, adding that PTSD can manifest with symptoms like night terrors, which can be very difficult for spouses and children to know how to respond to. “If there’s tension between the spouses or whatever, we’ll even bring the spouse into class to work it out.”
Zhe said she’s blown away by the measurable results from veterans who report significant improvements in their symptoms, which are based on what the veterans report at the beginning of the course and then again at the end of it.
Anyone who would like to help Blue Star can contact Zhe at 661-312-6184 for more information, or visit Bluestarranch.org.
