Finding a sense of peace within the quiet, rural landscape below the Helderberg Escarpment likely is not difficult for most people. For more than 30 years, a local nonprofit has tapped into it to provide therapy for mentally and physically disabled individuals.
Christine Lehman founded the Albany Therapeutic Riding Center in 1981 and has run the local organization through the help of volunteers and donations. The center is located in the Town of New Scotland at the end of a dead end, gravel road. The Helderbergs provide the backdrop to the riding area, where there isn’t a road in sight and only the sounds of nature.
During the summer, she said, the center gets rather “hectic,” but since there are no indoor facilities, activity comes to a halt in the winter.
The idea came to Lehman after she attended a national horsemen seminar and learned about a similar program offered in Michigan. She said the benefits she has experienced over the years from horses is something she wanted to give back to the community.
“We were the first ones in the area,” Lehman said. “I thought it was something that I could do, and it took me a little while to get everything in place to do it.”
A modest lesson fee is charged, but some riding scholarships are available for those who can’t afford it. The only paid employee is a part-time stable hand to help clean the horse stalls.
The North American Riding Association for the Handicapped certified the Riding Center’s program. Lehman still remains active at the center and holds an advanced certification for Cognitive and Physical Disabilities from NARHA.
The center has about a dozen volunteers, but it’s looking for more people who can help out during lessons. There are about 10 students who take lessons.
Linda Masullo, volunteer coordinator for the Riding Center, said volunteers don’t need to have experience working with horses or helping disabled people. There is mandatory training each volunteer must complete before helping during lessons.
Masullo said more volunteers are needed because at each lesson, there must be three volunteers per student. Two people must walk alongside the horse, while another person is in charge of keeping the horse in control.
The optimal volunteer is able to devote a certain amount of time on a specific day each week, Masullo said, but anyone who can offer help is welcomed.
The lessons provide the students with a positive experience where they feel in control, said Masullo.
“It gives them an opportunity to do something on their own, even though it is not necessarily considered on their own,” she said. “It gives them a sense of empowerment when they are sitting on top of the horse and they are the tallest one out there.”
Seeing students progress and enjoy the horses is what has kept Lehman doing the program for decades.
“There is a lot of reward in seeing your students progress,” she said. “We have been doing it long enough now I have had students that rode as teenagers come back and ride as adults.”
Masullo agreed watching students progress and their reactions are the most rewarding aspects of volunteering at the center.
“It’s the satisfaction of seeing a student progress to the point where they might start off as a very fearful 5-year-old and become very confident and pop up on the horse like she has been doing it all her life,” Masullo said.”We have had a student who is completely blind, and just to see her total trust in us to see her through her lesson — walking out to the ring and getting on the horse — something like that just blows my mind.”
Adding to the peaceful atmosphere of a lesson, tranquil music is played from a boom box in the center of the riding area.
“We are not a big riding center, but we do the best we can,” Masullo said. “We’ve had students that have been with us for a while, and then they leave us and go on to be independent riders, which is what you strive for.”
After horses can no longer give lessons at the center, they continue to be housed on site. This does add to the center’s operational costs, but Lehman believes it’s the right thing to do.
“They are special horses and they have done a special job, and they deserve to have a healthcare program,” she said.
Anyone interested in volunteering at the Riding Center can call Linda Masullo at 355-8650 or by emailing [email protected].