Jamestown New Horizons

To view a video of Jamestown New Horizons, you may visit the website http://www.jnh-goneriding.org and click on the video at the bottom of the Home Page.

Jamestown New Horizons, a special combination of children with disabilities, volunteers, therapists, and gentle horses, was founded in 1985 for the sole purpose of providing therapeutic horseback riding to improve the health and quality of life for children with disabilities. Jamestown New Horizons provides a natural therapy for children with disabilities in a healthy, non-threatening rural environment filled with nature - a setting that many of these children would not otherwise have the opportunity to experience. 

During 2025, Jamestown New Horizons is celebrating 41 years of seeing smiles on the children’s faces that were a result of their own accomplishments, a product of the pride they felt when they knew they had done something above and beyond what they had never done before. On top of all the personal accomplishments of the students, JNH can claim a 100% safety record while providing 42,289 hours of therapy. These impressive achievements have been made possible by the unwavering dedication of friends, supporters, donors, volunteers, the JNH staff, the Board of Directors, and last but certainly not least, our horses and ponies. It humbles us when we look back and reflect on all of the wonderful, caring, giving people who have been involved with Jamestown New Horizons over the many successful and challenging years of the program. Jamestown New Horizons is a great place to discover new friends and new abilities.

Therapeutic riding is a unique form of serious physical therapy, as well as psychological, recreational and social therapy. It helps to improve the riders' posture, balance, and muscle tone, while gently mobilizing their joints, enabling them to sit up tall! Under the direction of therapists, riding instructors and adult volunteer horse leaders and side-walkers, they ride and play games and have great fun. 

The program takes the rider through a complex series of movements that consciously and unconsciously use all the body's muscles. Every step that the horse takes challenges the rider's balance and posture with infinite variation because the horse's strides vary with the surface of the ground and the length of the stride. It is not possible to duplicate this infinite variation with therapeutic equipment and/or computerized machines.