MINDEN, Nev. — Beneath helmet and glasses, Jim Jueneman is wincing. The muscles in his legs are contracted and stretching. His left foot has been wedged into a stirrup, his right hand grappling the horn of a saddle. Jueneman pulls with the forearm around the saddle's pommel, body bent as two women in green T-shirts hoist him upward onto a speckled white Arabian show horse.

Jueneman, 48, has a smile on his face.

It's Monday and he is at Kids & Horses Therapeutic Riding Center in the Carson Valley. Kids & Horses, an Incline-based nonprofit, was formed in 1999, and it offers horsemanship as a form of therapy for adults and children with disabilities such as blindness, paralysis, autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and other impairments.

Jueneman, a Carson City resident, has been visiting the center for the past 10 years to help with his balance and coordination. Born with cerebral palsy, Jueneman walks with a limp and says the therapy helps him with his bad days, days when he doesn't want to get out of bed, days when his legs are pained, days when his cat has hidden itself outside his apartment, forcing him into a prolonged search.

“There'll be days when I wake up and my legs don't want to work, and I just want to stay in bed,” Jueneman said. “I don't know if you have days like that — but I do.”

Because of his disability, Jueneman said each morning it takes him about 40 minutes to put on each shoe. The camp and its instructors, he said, are another reason for him to get out of bed.

The planner and the plan

Judy Holt, an equine manager and instructor at the camp, looks upward at a framed photo of a large man wearing a cowboy hat, glasses and a furrowed gray beard. She points out the man is Sam Waldman, a former longtime Incline Village resident and the camps founder.

“Sam had the grand plan,” Holt said.

Waldman died in 2000, a year after he founded the camp. But his vision is being realized by his wife Lorri and his children who have continued to support the camp's development under the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association, an internationally recognized organization promoting equine-assisted activities and therapies. Within Nevada, the camp is one of the two NARHA Premier Accredited Centers.

Holt said the 10-acre center is run mainly by volunteer support and has dedicated six horses for its winter through summer programs.

Alexis Roman Hill, executive director of Kids & Horses, said the camp provides disabled resources unavailable in most places in the state. And in Jueneman's case, Hill said it is the one of the few programs available.

“For Jim there's no other programs like this out there. For him this is it,” Hill said.

Though the camp is available for adults, Hill said the center deals mostly with children suffering from disabilities such as autism, cerebral palsy, rickets and Down syndrome.

Hill said the program provides children, no matter their disability, the opportunity to build confidence through their achievement on the horse. In recent years she said their program has become so popular the waiting list for enrollment has jumped to a three-year wait, and most of the participants are recommended to enroll by their physician.

Hill said she hopes the center, with more support, can be open four days a week instead of three and be available for more students.

A supporter

Monica Ross is the mother of a four year-old named Parker. Ross said her son has been diagnosed with a genesis of the corpus callosum, a disability which, among other symptoms, impedes the left side of his brain from communicating with the right side, causing autism and a number of learning disabilities.

“This therapy has been one of the best therapies he's done,” Ross said.

After a year-long wait, Ross said Parker was admitted to the program last September and it has now become a part of his weekly routine.

“He was scared when he first started and a little withdrawn about it,” Ross said. “But by the third time he got on Jesse, an 8-year-old mustang, he really made this connection with her and he's loved it here ever since.”

Ross said she sees the proof every time Parker laughs or smiles and by the amount of excitement he has after each lesson.

“We want him to be a self-sufficient adult and this has given him so much more confidence,” she said.