Center Offers More Than Horse Play : Riding Becomes Therapy for Children With Physical, Mental Disabilities

When Anne Greaves recalls the first time she ever rode a horse, her pale blue eyes light up. “I rode for four hours,” she said, grinning. “I didn’t know what I was doing. People just told me how to stop and go, and go faster. It was great.”

Since that first great ride at a friend’s house, the Costa Mesa preteen has joined a weekly program of horseback riding lessons and now, after 1 1/2 years of instruction, she walks, trots and canters horses knowing full well what she’s doing. She’s looking forward to learning how to jump fences on horseback, but there’s one problem with jumping she hasn’t quite worked out: Should she wear her prosthetic legs?

Anne and her parents, Jim and Nancy Greaves, were part of a small gathering at the Newport Harbor Art Museum on Sunday to honor the patrons of the Fran Joswick Therapeutic Riding Center, a San Juan Capistrano stable offering riding lessons to mentally and physically disabled children and adults.

The 10-year-old facility has 85 students whose ages range from 2 to 60 and who represent a wide variety of disabilities, said riding center director Cheryl Schou. Most of the students attend weekly group lessons, which begin with 10 minutes of stretching exercises on stationary horses.

“It’s the same kind of exercises they would do in a clinical setting, but it’s so much more fun on a horse,” Schou said. “We have a lot of cerebral palsy kids, for example, who maybe can’t tell left from right. Put ‘em on a horse, and turning right is fun. Or learning the concept of a circle--riding a horse in a circle--is fun.”

Schou said she keeps the lessons small--no more than six riders per class--and tries to group the students according to age and disability. “There are always a lot of variables at any stable--a horse gets loose, that kind of thing. We try to keep that to a minimum. We have a very highly controlled atmosphere at our stable.”

Anne Greaves was born with what her mother calls a “birth anomaly.” She did not develop legs, a right forearm or two of the fingers on her left hand. In spite of--or maybe because of--her physical disabilities, Anne has great balance and “a natural sit” on horseback, Nancy Greaves said. “At least that’s what her riding teacher told me. She just got right up there the first time and sat straight up and was fine.”

The cocktail hour was held in the art museum’s fern-filled patio and was long on friendly conversation and short on speeches. Guests helped themselves to dinner from buffet offerings of roast beef and turkey, crab-stuffed artichokes, duck liver pate, pasta salad and fresh fruit and cheeses.

Among the honored patrons were Janet and Amos Deacon, who keep three horses at their home in Orange Park Acres. Janet Deacon said she got involved with the center shortly after it opened “because I love horses and I thought this would be a wonderful way to help others.”

Beginning as a “sidewalker”--someone who walks along beside a horse while a student learns to ride--Deacon soon enrolled in the instructor training course, deepening her commitment to the cause. For the past six years, she has taught a “satellite” course at her home, using her own horses to teach disabled students at the beginning and intermediate riding level.

“It’s just very rewarding,” she said. “Some of the students I’ve taught for five years--I’ve watched some of the kids grow up and make so much progress. I have a little girl who’s now 8 who started with me three years ago. For so long she couldn’t even sit up, but now she’s sitting up straight. We trotted her for the first time in June.

“That was something,” Deacon said, looking away for a silent moment. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the place that day.”

Dudley Wright, president of the board of directors, said he was particularly proud of the fact that of the approximately 400 therapeutic riding centers in the United States and Canada, only two offer accredited instructor training courses--the Fran Joswick center and a stable in Michigan.

Wright, who keeps horses at his home in Laguna Hills, said he first got involved with the center after he taught horseback riding to a girl with Down’s syndrome.

“She was the daughter of a friend of mine, and I worked with her for a couple of years, every weekend I could,” Wright recalled. “She rode this old mare I have, and that mare would walk on eggs with that child.

“I have five children and I taught them all to ride. I have eight grandchildren and I’ve ridden with all of them. But I’ve never seen anyone who retained so much information from one lesson to another as that little girl. I’d give her a lesson one week, then I’d be gone for three weeks. And the next time she came over to ride that little girl would pick up right where we left off. It was just amazing. It was one of the most gratifying things I’ve ever done.”

Also attending the party were riding center benefactors Charlie and Ruth Kirth, who ate dinner with their daughter, Marilyn Murphy and center supporter Maxine Arnold.

Patrons Shirley and Howard Williams of Mission Viejo and Cy and Elaine Gordon of Newport Beach sat at a table at the back of the patio.

At a noisy table nearby, riding center students Kelly Morley, Chrissie White and Christy Merritt giggled their way through dinner with former riding instructor Jennifer Nell, who left the San Juan Capistrano stable several months ago to open her own therapeutic riding center in San Diego County.