giving back Jennifer N. Dienst

The Cowgirl Way

To help ease female veterans back into life aſter deployment, Shannon Morse opened up her horse ranch to them for a warrior-worthy retreat.

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ometimes when something isn’t right, the only thing to do is stomp your boots, dig in your

heels, and kick up a little dirt. But when that still didn’t work for Shan- non Morse, a full-time firefighter with the Spokane, Wash., Fire Department and co-owner of the Cowgirl Co-op — a 70-acre historic dairy farm just outside of Spokane that is part horse ranch, part mercantile, and part events venue — she did what any cowgirl would do. She threw on her chaps, grabbed her lasso, and did it herself. It was 2010, and the community was

in the process of organizing a retreat for local soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Just one problem — the soldiers requested that the retreat be male-only. “There were a couple of female

soldiers in the unit, and they were like, ‘Well, we’re soldiers?’ But nothing was available to them,” Morse said. “When I heard about that, we had just started the Cowgirl Co-op business, so we hadn’t done anything to make a dime yet. We hadn’t even opened our doors. I thought it might be a bit of a stretch, but I went to my partners and said, ‘How would you like our first order of business to be something that would be good for the community, but it’s not going to make us any money? In fact, it’s going to cost us a lot.’”

BACK IN THE SADDLE Fortunately, Morse’s co-cowgirls — Jill Smith and Louise “Lou” Ratcliffe — were just as open-minded. The three had just started the co-op as a for-profit business, with ambitions of turning the horse farm into a multipurpose ranch for everything from concerts and

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festivals to weekend art and gardening classes and birthday parties. Smith runs Experience Spokane,

a marketing company that highlights local small businesses, in addition to breeding Arabian racehorses, and is known as the “Clay Cowgirl” for her love of pottery. Ratcliffe, a mental- health therapist at the Excelsior Youth Center in Spokane, is called the “Cow- girl Gardener” for her half-acre garden at the co-op. She also volunteers for H.E.A.R.T. — Spokane’s Humane Evacu- ation Animal Rescue Team, which is where she befriended Morse. Calling herself “THE Cowgirl,” Morse trains horses (and their riders), and can lasso pretty much anything. Together, the three embody an

infectious wild-women-of-the-West attitude that makes it hard to believe there’s anything they can’t do — includ- ing launching the annual Cowgirls and

Women Warriors Retreat in May 2010. Twenty-seven female veterans who had served on or supported the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan, hailing mostly from Washington state, rolled up the ranch’s long, dusty road for two days of riding, bonding, and some well- deserved R&R. “When they first arrive and they’re

looking around at the other women, they’re not very trusting of them, because they don’t think that there’s other people who have walked down their path,” said Morse, adding that the soldiers don’t pay anything for the experience with the exception of their flight — and that is often sponsored by various veterans organizations and charities. “A lot of the folks who come in are somewhat disenfranchised with the military. They don’t think people appreciated their ser- vice, and they’ve just walked away from everything — their connections, benefits,

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Horse Whispering Horse-therapy sessions are central to the Cowgirl Co-op’s retreat program.

ILLUSTRATION BY BECI ORPIN / THE JACKY WINTER GROUP