LAKE FOREST – Once a week, David Kolbiarz rides a horse with the help of Northwestern student volunteers before the 14-year-old is helped back into his wheelchair.

The boy has been coming to Equestrian Connection in Lake Forest, Ill., for the past three years as part of his therapy for cerebral palsy. His mother, Lucy Kolbiarz, 45, said she’s seen improvement in his balance.

“Horseback riding works,” she said. “I can see progress. He’s doing great. He’s happy here.”

Lucy devotes almost all her time to tending her son. On top of David’s therapy at Equestrian Connection, she and her son go to occupational, physical and water therapies. But she sees his hippotherapy – “hippos” mean horse in Greek – as one of the most effective treatments for David. In addition, she said it’s his favorite part of the week.

It’s also a highlight for the NU students who make a 45-minute commute each way every Saturday, led by site leader Miki Sawada.

The Music junior founded the hippotherapy site through OASIS, a volunteer organization, in fall of 2006.

Sawada has been riding horses for about 10 years, but many volunteers don’t have any experience with horses at all.

Weinberg sophomore Andrew Meyers grew up in rural Ohio and loved working with animals, but he had never dealt with horses.

“After the first 20 minutes of training, it became easier. It was rewarding,” he said.

When Sawada was a child, she rode horses in a Morton Grove barn where Equestrian Connection Director Nicholas Coyne, 47, used to work. Now, she and Coyne cross paths once again.

Coyne runs the facility largely thanks to a mantra he picked up as an Eagle Scout: “You can never leave a man behind.”

Coyne, who started riding horses at the South Shore Country Club when he was 5, said the facility depends a lot on the volunteers.

“You know the old saying, ‘Need something done, ask a busy person,'” he said. “There’s not a volunteer that has come between these doors that I wasn’t dog-gone glad to have.”

Volunteers clean the stalls and walk alongside the horses during the hippotherapy sessions.

“It’s a very upbeat thing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what the weather is. It doesn’t matter what’s going on. Everybody’s always happy.”

“It’s contagious,” 12-year-old Charlie Franz added while on his Saturday riding lesson with Coyne.

As NU volunteers Sawada and Meyers walk alongside Carl Tatelli, the 3-year-old says, “Whoa!”

His horse, Bubbles, stops. Carl’s therapeutic riding instructor, Robin Warren, 50, tells him to lie down on Bubble’s saddle. It’s time to do some sit ups.

“Let’s show how strong you are, OK?” Warren said. “Hold my finger, go to sleep, and pull yourself up.”

“One,” she counted. “He’s going to have the strongest abs in the whole program. Two, three …”

“That’s more than I can do,” Meyers said, as Carl finishes his set of five.

Warren and the volunteers cheer for Carl, offering him encouragement.

For about the past year, he has been coming to the facility to focus on his verbal skills.

Warren and Carl play various games while he’s on the horse to help him build sentences. As she and the volunteers walk alongside him on Bubbles, Warren might tell him to stop Bubbles at a sheet of paper with the letter “F” while he tries to name things that start with that letter.

“It’s been quite a year,” Warren said. “When it’s the same people he sees all the time, he’s very comfortable, and sometimes we can’t even get him to stop.”

Before Diana Schnell, 49, started the not-for-profit facility in the fall of 2001, she worked in the marketing department for Baxter Healthcare.

“(Equestrian Connection) is a tough business financially. I gave up a paying job,” she said.

But she considers herself lucky to make a difference for the 150 children she knows individually who come to the hippotherapy facility weekly.

“They’re a reminder we’re doing good work,” she said. “They remind us that if we’re having a bad day, we’re not.”

Schnell has twin 17-year-old boys, Willy and Tomi, with cerebral palsy. When the boys first started a hippotherapy program, she said they didn’t react well because their senses were overstimulated from the smell of the barn, movement of the horses and different strangers.

“My boys cried for a month,” she said.

But she saw the difference in her sons immediately. Their muscle tone and torsos were stronger. They paid better attention to their environment.

She knew hippotherapy would be valuable to many other families who have members suffering from a range of physical and mental disabilities.

“We don’t just treat the child,” she said. “We treat the family.”

A range of different activities and therapies is offered at Equestrian Connection. Siblings can go to art therapy. Parents can enjoy massage therapy. Whole families can go fishing.

“They can go without being judged, without being stared at,” Schnell said.

Reach Alice Truong at [email protected]