Volunteers are essential at Lovelane. Our volunteers proudly and generously give their time and their heart to support and provide for our students and horses. Our volunteers groom, tack, and lead horses; they encourage our riders; they ensure that our students have productive, fun and safe experiences at Lovelane.
Volunteering at our therapeutic riding center gives you an opportunity to be outdoors, to provide joy and challenges to people with disabilities, to meet other volunteers and to work as a team. Our riders, in turn, provide many rewards for you – smiles, camaraderie, enthusiasm, and pride in the progress of their skill.
Volunteers must be 16 years or older to help in our therapeutic riding lessons.
Please consider joining us, we could not run our program without the hundreds of volunteers that give their time to us!
A horse leader is responsible for leading the horse safely during lessons. The leader’s main focus is paying attention to the horse, and listening closely to the instructor’s directions. The horse leader’s primary goal is safety and controlling the horse.
A side walker is required to assist with the lesson by standing, walking and running next to the horse, and supporting the child as per the instructor’s directions. A side walker’s primary role is to support the student as needed.
Barn volunteers assist the Barn Manager with chores, such as mucking stalls, sweeping the aisle and cleaning and filling water buckets. Barn volunteers need to have significant horse experience, and sometimes can help tack horses for lessons.
In our Unmounted Programs, volunteers work one-on-one, and in a group, with our students under the supervision of an instructor. Their primary responsibility is to ensure the students stay safe as they work in the barn and care for our horses while keeping them engaged in the lessons and activities of each class. Volunteers for these programs are ideally closer to a “peer” age, therefore we most often enroll teenage or young adult volunteers for our unmounted classes. Volunteers must also have a solid background with horses and be comfortable and confident working around them. Many of our participants are working on social skills, so being able to model appropriate social behavior is essential
We always need help with general office projects, such as annual appeal and event mailings, The Run for Lovelane (June) and The Ride for Lovelane (September).