4-H Members prepare to show sheep with the True Buddies Club.
Members of the 4-H SOS Sheep Club are hard at work in Nebraska preparing for the Sarpy County Fair. While they are busy getting their sheep ready for showing like many 4-H’ers this time of year, these youth are working double-duty to help others who most likely wouldn’t be able to show animals at all.
The 4-H’ers are volunteers with the True Buddies Therapeutic Sheep Club, another 4-H Club where the volunteers work with members who have special needs to teach them how to show animals.
“We were spending all of this time, money and energy, and we thought ‘why not share it with others?’,” said Kathy Mann, SOS Sheep Club Leader and organizer of True Buddies Therapeutic Sheep Club.
The primary goal of True Buddies is to help the special needs youth grow through their interactions with sheep and the volunteers. In the two years since the club was created, Mann as seen a real growth in both the volunteers and the special needs youth.
“The volunteers are more outgoing and have really gotten more confident,” said Mann. “It has really broken down walls for the groups to interact, whether they are at the club or in school or even when they see each other around town.”
In 2008, Katy True was attending the Nebraska State Fair Sheep Show where an unruly ewe named Jewel was having a difficult time in the competition. At the end of the night, members of the 4-H SOS Sheep Club asked Katy if she would like to walk Jewel into the coliseum.
In the True Buddies Theraputic Sheep Club, 4-H youth from the SOS Sheep Club volunteer to help 4-H members with special needs learn how to show sheep.
It was a risky proposition given that Katy suffers from a Rhett’s disease, an illness that causes deterioration of the brain. Though she uses a wheelchair, she was able to walk Jewel with relative ease and sparked the idea for the “True Buddies” Therapeutic Sheep Club.
“We’ve had amazing results,” said Mann. “Last year, we had three autistic children, who may have had low self-esteem or avoided eye contact. They went out to a standing room only crowd and proudly showed their sheep.”
Some of the special needs youth have learned how to not only walk the sheep, but to groom them as well. Mann believes through their work, the 4-H youth volunteers in “True Buddies” are learning to give more of themselves through helping others, and, in the process, they are making themselves better people.