Racehorse retraining helps rehabilitate ex-soldiers with PTSD Video will begin in 5 seconds. Thoroughbreds for the injured Old race horses are being rehabilitated at the same time as injured members of the armed services giving both a new lease on life. PT3M9S http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/action/externalEmbeddedPlayer?id=d-3jae4 620 349 October 31, 2014 Scott Brodie knows broken. He has given more than 200 thoroughbred racehorses a life after the inner circle, and a ticket out of the knackery. A former mounted police officer who has worked with horses for 25 years, Mr Brodie's racehorses have also helped rehabilitate prisoners and damaged soldiers. Is he the king of broken? Before Mr Brodie can answer, veteran Max Streeter, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, interrupts to say: "I think he is the king of repair." Retrained: A retired racehorse at the Canterbury racing stables. Mr Brodie is the manager of the Racing NSW Thoroughbred Retraining Program, a three-year-old program to rehabilitate former racehorses -- some valuable winners, some losers and some that never showed enough promise to make the track. He uses natural horsemanship, which was popularised as "horse whispering," to get these horses to do the opposite of going straight. Race horses are taught to go and stop, and not even that very well. When they are on a race track, they go in a straight line. I know the race track is curved, but it is so large that it is really a straight line. One of the 40 horses now being retrained for a basic level suitable for dressage or polo is Integrand, an eight-year-old gelding that did well enough on the track to attract more than 5000 fans on his Facebook page. "At the same time, you are getting control over yourself," says veteran Max Streeter of horse training. Photo: Peter Rae "We take the dangerous racehorse stuff out of them, the silliness that racehorses have," said Mr Brodie. In racing, they have a very rudimentary education, it is basically grunts and groans. We want to teach these horses a language. It works. Within 10 minutes using Mr Brodie's techniques, Mr Streeter had managed to get the horse -which was previously roaring around a training circle - to follow him as if on an invisible string. By the end of the session at Canterbury Racecourse, Integrand was nuzzling Mr Streeter's bald, shiny head, and resting his head on the former veteran's shoulder. After serving on peacekeeping forces in East Timor and the Middle East, Mr Streeter's post-traumatic stress disorder caused his retirement from the Australian Federal Police in 2003. He felt without a future until he completed a week-long rehabilitation program in Kangaroo Valley, organised for damaged soldiers using horses from Mr Brodie's stables. New lease on life: Scott Brodie with Integrand. "These horses come off the track and no one wants to know them, and veterans come back to Australia and no one wants to know them," said Mr Streeter, who now receives a totally and permanently incapacitated pension from Veterans Affairs. After buying a horse of his own called Matilda, and completing the course, Mr Streeter said he had regained a sense of identity. I can say that I am a horseman in training, which is better than being nothing - which is how I simply felt after I left the force. I felt I was nothing, and thought I would be no one again. He now commutes from his home in Terrigal to volunteer at the stables in Sydney. Horse whispering: Scott Brodie and Max Streeter withIntegrand. Mr Streeter's PTSD had manifested itself in repeated nightmares where he would wake believing he was back in a war zone. "So when you are working the horse, you are learning to control another animal, and at the same time you are getting control over yourself, something you lose through PTSD," he said. You forget about you, and your problems in this world, and you are immediately focused on what you are doing. You can call it gestalt, you are in the moment.  After the horses are rested in a paddock with others near Muswellbrook, NSW, the first stage of their retraining is done by inmates in the town's St Heliers Correctional Centre. It is estimated that thousands of racehorses are put down and turned into pet food when they are retired from the track. It costs the non-profit horse welfare program about $8000 to retrain each horse so it is suitable for sports like dressage or polo and for a select few, a life as a police horse. Each retrained horse is then sold for about $5000. Mr Brodie's salary is paid for by Racing NSW as part of its contribution to the program. Mr Brodie admitted many racehorses had an "uncertain future" after the track, but this program was better than any other he knew of around the world.