Volunteers Saddle Up to Help Disabled

The way Gloria Hamblin sees it, volunteering at the Institute of Equestrian Therapy in Chatsworth makes good horse sense.

Not only do volunteers get the chance to help people with physical and emotional disabilities discover riding horses as a means of therapy, but the volunteers also get a chance to learn how to care for and ride the animals.

“It’s good exercise in the out-of-doors,” Hamblin says. “They can help people who need it and meet other people who are interested in horses. We do fun things, too, like our volunteer barbecue. It’s a good way for a person who doesn’t know a lot about horses to learn more and at the same time help somebody else.”

Some of the volunteers, Hamblin says, come to the institute wanting to learn about horses and discover that with all of the work involved with keeping a horse, they would rather just volunteer a few hours a month instead.

Most of the 25 to 30 volunteers working at the institute travel every April to the state show for disabled riders, which is sponsored by the California Network for Equestrian Therapy.

Five disabled riders from the institute joined about 145 others from around the state at this year’s event, which was held in Covina.

Most of the volunteers hail from the San Fernando Valley and range in age from 12 to 68.

Hamblin, who co-founded the institute 19 years ago, along with Simi Valley resident Jacques Fouchaux, has worked with thousands of youngsters and adults who suffer from cerebral palsy, mental retardation, blindness, deafness or brain injuries. Stroke victims, people with autism and even at-risk youth benefit from the institute’s non-traditional form of therapy.

Hamblin says she was always interested in horses and her mother worked as a rehabilitation nurse. Putting the two together just seemed like a natural marriage, Hamblin says, so after graduating from Cal State Northridge in 1974, she attended the Cheff Center for the Handicapped in Augusta, Mich., which teaches people how to instruct disabled people in riding horses.

“I didn’t have a job,” Hamblin recalls. “I had been riding since I was 15 and a neighbor showed me a brochure for the Cheff Center.”

The center matched Hamblin with Fouchaux and the two solicited donations from public and private sources, as well as funds from the state-run regional centers for the developmentally disabled, to get the program started.

“They’ve been using horses in Europe for a long time in working with the disabled,” Hamblin explained. “It’s just starting to come to the United States and it’s becoming more popular and more accepted.”

The advantages of equestrian therapy, according to Hamblin, are that “it is outside and not in a therapist’s office, doing a routine set of exercises.”

“Horses take a thousand steps a minute, so the riders must constantly adjust their muscles to remain upright,” she said. “As the horse walks, the rider’s pelvis moves the same way as when a person is walking. This strengthens muscles and stimulates body balance. Motivation improves, it’s something their peers do that’s highly regarded.

“A kid who is paralyzed on one side and is considered somebody who is nobody, suddenly is controlling a 1,000-pound horse.”

The recession has caused donations to take a nose-dive. As of April, the institute handles only 30 riders a week when it had once served 50, and Hamblin herself no longer draws a salary but works as a volunteer.

The riders usually go out in groups of six, Hamblin says, and since some of the more severely disabled or novice riders need someone to lead the horse, as well as spotters on either side, the need for new volunteers is ongoing.

Volunteers learn how to groom, feed and saddle horses. Help is also desperately needed raising funds and producing the institute’s newsletter, Hamblin said. For more information, call Hamblin (818-998-8595).