Horse power

CANTON -- A new equestrian center -- the first such facility built by the state -- at the Massachusetts Hospital School is the region's latest example of the therapeutic value of riding horses.

The young riders at the Randolph Street state facility, which provides rehabilitative and chronic care for children and young adults with physical disabilities, include children receiving treatment for muscular dystrophy, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, or traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries.

Students like Jessica, a 19-year-old with cerebral palsy, are helped tremendously by horseback riding, according to Melissa Ryan, coordinator of the school's riding program, even beyond the physical benefits of the exercise.

''There is something about animals that is good for people's soul," said Ryan.

The school has offered therapeutic riding sessions since 1983, with about 40 children taking part in the outdoor program each week, as weather allowed. The new indoor facility, which was dedicated last month, allows up to 100 to participate year-round.

Once a week, Jessica's walker is cast aside and Mass. Hospital School staffers help her climb up on Jake, a 23-year-old horse of Belgian-Morgan breeding. She wears a helmet, and has a leather strap around her waist; two staffers hold handles on the leather strap, as another leads Jake around the arena. As Jake walks, Jessica raises her arms and keeps them outstretched. The exercise helps improve her balance and posture, and strengthens the same trunk muscles used in walking.

Her schoolmate, Angela, who also has cerebral palsy, spends most of her days in a wheelchair. She enjoys riding Dutch, a sturdy 14-year-old known as a cob horse. In one of Angela's exercises while aboard Dutch, she stretches forward to pluck red, pink, and yellow plastic rings from the horse's ears, where they had been placed by hospital staffers, and then tosses them to the ground. Angela's goal is to learn how to hold the reins and guide the horse by herself, said Ryan.

Others among the school's 105 students, like 11-year-old Anthony, enjoy grooming the school's eight horses. With every brush of the horse's coat, Anthony improves his motor skills, Ryan said. On a recent afternoon, Anthony smiled as he sat atop Peter Pan, a 30-year-old pony with a blind left eye. The boy's hands, usually stuffed into the pockets of his jeans, gripped the saddle firmly as Peter Pan wove in and out of a series of orange cones.

''Their strength has improved tremendously," and so has the students' self-esteem and confidence, Ryan said. The riding sessions have shown them that ''a disability doesn't mean they can't do the things they see their friends and cousins doing."

In the past decade, therapeutic horseback riding has become increasingly popular in the Northeast, she said. ''More and more health professionals . . . and pediatricians are starting to understand the benefits, and starting to use it as a prescription for treatment."

Therapeutic riding gained worldwide recognition in the 1950s, thanks to Liz Hartel, an equestrian from Denmark. Polio had paralyzed her legs, but the disease did not stop her from winning an Olympic medal in dressage, an event in which the rider guides a horse through a series of choreographed maneuvers.

Following Hartel's success in the 1952 Olympics, therapeutic horseback riding started growing in popularity across Europe, and expanded to the United States in the 1960s. The North American Riding for the Handicapped Association, which formed in 1969, reports that there are 650 equestrian centers serving about 30,000 people with disabilities across the United States and Canada.

Horses can also play a role in therapeutic activities of a slightly different sort -- as is evident at two other area establishments.

Two years ago, Bridgewater resident Evilda Hughes launched Horse & Spirit, a company that provides ''equine-assisted" personal growth sessions, youth empowerment workshops, psychotherapy and weekend retreats in Middleborough. Instead of riding, people interact with horses while standing on the ground.

It was at another established therapeutic riding program, the Handi Kids center in Bridgewater, that program director Nicole Birkholzer noticed the horses being used with the children were also having a positive effect on their parents.

''Not only do the children benefit, I also realized the parents can use the spirit of the horse to help deal with the challenges we all have in life," said Birkholzer.

It prompted her to start Birchwood Farm, an ''equine learning center" in West Bridgewater, where personal growth workshops for adults are offered. This spring, she took the concept a few strides further, and introduced yoga sessions with horses nearby.

''It's an extension of therapeutic riding," Birkholzer said.

The new equestrian center in Canton is big -- more than half a football field long -- and cost $1.5 million to build.

During the June 1 grand opening ceremony, the wife of Governor Mitt Romney shared her own experience with therapeutic riding. Six years ago, Ann Romney told the gathering, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, not long after they had moved to Utah so that her husband could head up the 2002 Winter Olympics. They got a little chestnut horse named Buddy.

''I was really alone and frightened," she said. ''I told myself, as long as I can walk, I can still hold onto the reins, I'm gonna ride."

While she was riding and taking care of Buddy, she said, ''I forgot I was sick."

Romney attributes her good health to her horseback-riding regimen. In May, she competed in a New England Dressage Association show. And she won.

Romney said she is confident the eight horses at the Massachusetts Hospital School will help its young patients, just as Buddy helped her.

Horses ''know who's on their back," she said. ''They know their abilities. They take care of you."

More information about area therapeutic riding programs is available on the Internet at www.birchwoodfarm.us, www.horseandspirit.com, and www.handikids.org, and about the national organization at www.narha.org. Emily Sweeney can be reached at esweeney@globe.com.