Regal, a handsome brown draft cross, was the most standoffish of the four horses, but the horse's lack of cooperation seemed only to endear the animal to the three combat veterans working with them.

"Horses are kind of like humans. They can have issues they have to get over," said Tim Klevgard, 49, of Elk Mound, a veteran of Operation Desert Storm.

Regal had an abusive owner before he came to Trinity Equestrian Center, which explains his fear.

"You can tell he wants to have fun and do the stuff. He's following us around, but he's just afraid of people," said Nick Webster, 29, of Eau Claire, with the Army National Guard. He has done two tours in Iraq.

Webster, Klevgard and Dave Church of Menomonie, a lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard, were trying "equine-assisted psychotherapy" Saturday morning. They didn't ride the horses, but rather tried to get them to perform a variety of tasks, including walking through an obstacle course the veterans set up.

The center has been using the technique with troubled youths with good success, but this was the first time they worked with veterans, said Toni Mattson of the center.

The youths they work with often resent adults, but they open up to horses, she said. Although horses are nonverbal, they are sharp on interpreting body language.

"When we have clients in, they may try their darnedest to camouflage their feelings. The horse will have nothing of it," she said.

"You have maybe an 1,100-pound animal that is watching every move you make," she said. "In order for them to stay safe in their world, they have to be experts at reading body languages, not only horse body language, but human body language also."

Center staff hope to work with veterans who have post traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries or who are amputees, she said.

"We spent an evening at Camp McCoy this week ... ," she said. "They were so thrilled that we are taking a stab at helping vets that otherwise are falling through the cracks. ... They admit they can't serve them effectively, because there are so many of them."

Unlike the young people center staff work with, the veterans don't necessarily distrust adults, but they distrust their environment," she said. "They are conditioned from a combat zone to never let their guard down. They are trained to be hypervigilant, but, they can't turn it off when they come home."

The veterans did a project in the morning Saturday with the horses, and then over lunch with staff, they interpreted the horses' behavior and related it to their own lives.

After lunch they did another short session with the horses, and the media was allowed to watch and talk to the veterans.

The horses and veterans warmed to each other as the morning progressed, the men said.

A horse offers "a friendly ear" to people who might have difficulty opening up to other people, Webster said.

"It's a self-reflective type of thing," said Church, who served in Desert Storm and, more recently, in Iraq.

He and his fellow veterans said they would recommend the program to other veterans.

Knight can be reached at 715-830-5835, 800-236-7077 or joe.knight@ecpc.com.