Gene Dalton | The Roanoke Times

Lowe’s employee Missy Linkous uses an ATV to stretch fencing Tuesday during work with other employees who spent several days doing work at Floyd’s Tekoa home

PILOT -- The horses at Tekoa are in for a shock.

The fencing around their grazing area and riding ring will look nothing like what it did when they went into their barn stalls.

Volunteers from Lowe's of Christiansburg worked during the heat of Monday and Tuesday to take down some 600 feet of old wooden and wire fencing and replace it with new wood and wire donated by the store.

The labor was donated as well, under a companywide volunteer program called Lowe's Heroes, for the Tekoa horse care and riding program for at-risk youth and children with disabilities. Lowe's employees log hundreds of hours of volunteer work nationally each year, to address safety concerns in their communities, according to the company.

It was Perry Martin, director of the Virginia Tech Service Learning Center, who brought together Lowe's store general manager John St. Onge and Tiffany Smith, who directs Tekoa's horse program.

"I met the general manager of Lowe's actually because of the shootings at Tech," Martin said. "Our office had wanted to do a large-scale flower-planting program in the weeks after 4/16."

Lowe's made the program happen, Martin said. "They provided literally a truckload of flowers," he said, and helped with their distribution.

Martin was having breakfast on vacation in Tennessee when St. Onge reached him by telephone, asking if there was another community program with which Lowe's could help. Martin thought immediately of Tekoa, where a fence-mending project had gotten canceled because of bad weather.

"It's a nice change of pace," said Faye West, a Lowe's employee for 18 years. "It makes you feel good."

She volunteered a year ago for the Lowe's program when it replaced fire monitors, night lights and other items to boost the safety of seniors in the New River Agency on Aging program. She agreed that this week's project was a bit more labor-intensive, not to mention hotter.

Lowe's had 12 volunteers working each day, with some overlap among them, women as well as men. "We ladies can work, too. We can't work as heavy or as hard, but we get it done," West said.

David Culbreth, one of the employees, borrowed a bush hog, which sped up the clearing work around the fence line considerably. Before, the horses could not have seen anything but foliage beyond the fence; now, they can see all the way to a nearby stream.

"They're going to think they're on vacation," said Smith, Tekoa's equestrian director.

"They're a very jovial group," she said of the Lowe's volunteers Tuesday morning. "They joke with each other a lot. ... It's hot, and it's hard work, but they're still going."

Smith has been with Tekoa about eight years. A Radford University graduate, she grew up near Lewisburg, W.Va., where her family always had horses. In fact, Doris, a 26-year-old mustang, has been with Smith since the family acquired her at age 2.

Tekoa has 10 horses, evenly divided between its Pilot and Christiansburg locations. Most are thoroughbreds, with easy-going dispositions compatible with youngsters unfamiliar at first with the animals.

The idea for the program came from Smith and Coreen Bookout, a physical therapy assistant. It started in 2003, nine years after the overall Tekoa program was launched.

"Kids that come here usually stay for a year, a year and a half," said Bob Sisk, Tekoa's executive director. The location of a Tekoa program at Pilot initially drew some community opposition, he recalled.

"One of my best memories -- we'd been here about a year," said Sisk, when a man came to his door. "I just want to shake your hand," the man said. "I was part of the opposition, and I was wrong."