News

Riding for a cause
Hoofbeats offers therapeutic riding sessions for disabled

By KILTIE TOMPKINS

Workers at the Hoofbeats Therapeutic Riding Center help guide a child on how to ride a horse.
Photo courtesy of Hoofbeats Therapeutic Riding Center

If you were to drive out to Mount Atlas Road just outside of Lexington, you might find a disabled child with a beaming face walking around on a horse named “Ben” who is blind in one eye.

Leading the horse would probably be Carol Branscome, the director, instructor, coordinator, and everything else for Hoofbeats Therapeutic Riding Center, which has been housed at her house for the last two and a half years.

Like other members of the North American Riding for the Handicapped Associaton (NARHA), Hoofbeats teaches riding to disabled children and adults with both physical and mental handicaps.

“Anyone who’s struggling with life is welcome at the barn,” Branscome said.

Hoofbeats’ nonprofit status means that, like the rest of the 700 riding centers that are members of NARHA, it does not have to pay taxes. That’s a good thing for Branscome, who says that covering expenses is difficult in a sport that is so expensive.

“We’re always begging for money,” she said.

Branscome said her current budget for the program, which keeps eight or more horses at a time, is about $55,000. She estimates that it costs about $3,500 per year just to keep one horse. In addition, the real cost of one therapeutic riding lesson is between $65 and $85.

While Hoofbeats has about 47 riders that ride regularly in private and semi-private lessons, only about 16 of them can afford to pay for the program, Branscome said. Even those who do pay are only charged $15 per ride.

“We don’t expect our riders to underwrite the costs,” Branscome said.

Karen Karvonen, communications coordinator for the NARHA, said that while some of its members don’t seem to have a problem raising money, others struggle. Some rely on grants from governments and individuals, and others rely largely on fundraising efforts.

Branscome said Hoofbeats does everything from bake sales to banquets and costume parties to raise money. She said she does receive some scholarship money from the Rotary Club, but that she is also dependent on the program’s endowment, Hoofbeats Therapeutic Riding Foundation. According the Foundation’s Form 990, filed with the Internal Revenue Service, it received $26,256 in direct public support in 2005.

Court Nexsen, a junior at Washington and Lee University, volunteered at Hoofbeats through the school’s Shepard Poverty Program. He said that funding is definitely an issue for Hoofbeats, and that while the program has some loyal volunteers, it does not have nearly enough. Despite those setbacks, he said his experience there had no negative aspects.

“Watching the riders overcome obstacles was truly amazing,” Nexsen said. “The experience really grounded me and showed me how the simple things in life make such a difference.”

Like Nexsen, many of Hoofbeats’ volunteers are college students whose main focus is school.

“We desperately need help,” Branscome said. “Experience with horses is gravy. Anybody with skills, we can exploit them to help us out” with everything from lessons to mucking stalls and setting up for events.

Branscome said that in order to ensure safety, one rider needs as many as three volunteers. She never has more than three children riding at one time.

Karvonen said that Hoofbeats’ has received NARHA’s premier accredidation status, passing the most stringent standards of safety.

Hoofbeats holds three eight-week riding sessions per year, each of which concludes with a different final event. The first session ends with a dinner and theater or dance performance, the second with pony races, and the third with a horse show co-hosted by the Therapeutic Riding Association of Virginia.

“Whatever [the kids] are interested in, whatever their skills are, we can showcase them,” Branscome said.

But therapeutic riding is not the only way that Hoofbeats is involved in the community. They host events with the local Pony Club, the Special Olympics, the local Girl Scout Troup, and sponsor a Halloween party with the Association of Retarded Citizens, among other things. Branscome said wherever Hoofbeats is invited to come, it goes.

The program has recently been invited to a new venue. On March 1, it will move its operations to the Virginia Horse Center in Lexington, where it will keep ten horses. Branscome hopes the move will give the organization more visibility, generating more public interest for a cause that she does not want to have to give up.

“I just feel like I have to do it because its one of the reasons God put me here,” she said. “It just helps so many people.”