Want to become a part of the Henry’s Home Herdmate [Civilian] Family?

Our New Volunteer Orientations are held the first Wednesday of each month at 9 a.m., and the first Saturday of each month at 3 p.m.  To join our herdmate [civilian] family you must be over the age of 18. 

Kids may be allowed to come with their parents to work on a land or building project with a group, but not with our individual regular volunteers. Your kiddos may come join you here for the special events we have fairly regularly, but you are 100% responsible for their safety and supervision.

No horse experience is needed to volunteer here.  

We do ask that if you want to join our volunteer family you commit to coming at least once a week.

You will be working side by side with the veterans, first responder and their families.  Everyone who comes here, comes to serve those who have served us, as well as these rescued and surrendered horses.

At the beginning you will learn some of our daily horse care/ranch chores while working with other volunteer mentors, like putting out hay, feeding the horses, sweeping and hosing the feed stalls, cleaning and filling feed buckets, water trough and manure management, tack and barn care, etc. There are always lots of organizing, cleaning, land management and building projects going on as well if you like to work with your hands, including tractor work, cutting brush, mowing, repairing fences, building, watering and weeding gardens, etc.  If you have IT skills, marketing or fundraising experience, a family member who loves to garden, build or work with his/her hands, or anything else that we could use as a non-profit, even better.  

After you have worked for at least 40 hours at these horse care/ranch chores, if you want to start handling the horses, you will have the opportunity to take some lessons from our assistant instructors.  There is a small fee for these lessons, $30 per or $100 for four lessons of usually 1.5 – 2 hours, which come back to Henry’s Home as a donation. We all need to be on the same page for these horses who have been through so much and appreciate consistency.  Once you are comfortable and skilled at handling the horses, we encourage you to become a Barn Buddy.  This means you commit to giving one particular horse some extra attention every week with grooming, bathing in the summer, etc. Of course, all the horses appreciate a good grooming, so you will never be limited to just your buddy. You may also want to join our morning and/or evening feed teams.  We feed all the horses their supplement every morning, all together, and just a few [our harder keepers] in the evening. 

Please don’t count on riding our horses as most of our lessons go to the veterans and first responders who we serve in our Horses & Heroes Equine Learning Program.

Other than the basics to care for the horses, on Mondays we close so everyone can have a rest.

We offer a lot of flexibility as to what days and times, how often, etc, you can come volunteer. You may choose to come a specific day or more every week, or you may only be able to tell us the night before that you are coming due to other changing obligations.  That’s just fine. The more you do, the more you learn. And when you are ready, you will have opportuntities to help mentor the new volunteers if you would enjoy that.  Also, you might want to get involved in more of the organization and leadership, as well as helping us with the different groups that come for team-building or group volunteer days. We really appreciate hard work, showing initiative, honestly using your voice about any limitations you have, asking for help, recognizing that most of the time ‘good enough is enough’, and feeling gratitude for this opportunity.  What we don’t appreciate here at Henry’s Home is drama, back-biting, taking more than you give, judgement of others . . . we are not that place, and you will be asked to leave if that becomes a problem for others. We are a sanctuary of peace and simplicity, a place to heal your soul, by way of this family and these animals.

If you are interested in getting on the schedule to join one of our new volunteer orientations, please contact our Executive Director, Donna Stedman, at 281-292-1110 [text is best], or email her at donna@henryshomehorsesanctuary.org.