Family organizes barbecue and dessert competition to give back to Clover riding center

At Rideability Therapeutic Riding Center in Clover, equestrian trainers, riders and spectators alike say that interacting with horses can heal.

As a Special Olympics Equestrian Training Center and a Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship member center, Rideability trains riders with physical, emotional and cognitive disabilities such as muscular dystrophy, developmental and cognitive delays, autism and many more. About 50 of the center’s riders are from Fort Mill, Lake Wylie and the surrounding areas. Therapeutic riding has been shown through research and anecdotal evidence to help with a wide range of medical conditions and special needs for people of all ages.

One rider, Sydney Lopour-Davis and her parents, LyRae and Randy Davis of Clover, believe so strongly in the center’s mission that they wanted to do something to give back. Sydney, 28, has Down Syndrome and is active at Fort Mill’s Adult Enrichment Center. Her parents say therapeutic riding has done and continues to do so much for their family that they want to be able to share that with many more families.

Rideability relies on donations to operate and no one that is referred to the center by a doctor, teacher or similar professional is ever turned away because of lack of ability to pay. To beef up the center’s ability to provide even more financial scholarships, Lopour-Davis and her parents decided to organize a barbecue cook-off and dessert competition fundraising event – Reins of Life, Sept. 10 and will feature live music, an auction, a parade of horses and more.

A match made in heaven

For the Davis family, Rideability is about more than just riding – it’s about an unbreakable bond between man and horse. The Davis’ credit Rideability and Sydney’s connection with the horses as helping to bring her out of a dark place in her life.

After being the victim of a traumatic event, Sydney withdrew and did not want to leave the house, see her friends or even go to church, her family says. She lost the vibrancy and carefree nature she was known for. And that big, huge smile that never left her face.

“We went through a bad time,” said Randy Davis. “It pulled her through that bad time and brought her back to herself.”

The Davis’ say the connection between horse and rider is one that cannot be adequately explained, but instead must be experienced.

“It was a match made in heaven,” LyRae says of Romeo, the first horse Sydney connected with.

Rideability Executive Director Wendy Schonfeld agrees.

“Our horses are loyalty and respect and trust,” she said. “Our horses love our riders unconditionally.”

A path to healing

For Sydney, Rideability paved the way for her to find herself again.

Schonfeld remembers Romeo being a sounding board for Sydney as she walked through the painful time in her life.

“(Sydney) would sit for hours talking to Romeo. She would just sit there telling him everything. I would hear her talking about what happened and he just sat there listening. He didn’t tell her not to feel this way, he didn’t judge her, he didn’t have opinions of it, he just listened,” Schonfeld said.

“She went from being the happiest child I’ve ever met to the saddest child I’ve ever met back to the happiest child I’ve ever met. It was the most beautiful thing. It changed her. It makes me really emotional because I truly believe it’s the only thing that got this child to start healing,” she said.

These days Sydney is busy training for the North Carolina Special Olympics Equestrian competition at the end of September and helping her parents get the word out about the Reins of Life fundraiser.

“All my friends, they come here. I love and cherish the horses,” Sydney said.

Romeo has since passed away, and Sydney has formed a new bond with a horse named Stratton.

“(Stratton) is my horse. He takes care of me and I take care of him,” Sydney said. “He has a tender heart and I have a tender heart.”

LyRae, a certified Special Olympics coach and rider herself, says connecting with the horses helped her heal as well.

“God gave us horses and they heal the human spirit. I’m a testimony to that, (as well as) Sydney.”

Randy agrees that there’s something special about the horses.

“All I can say is they’re anointed. They have something that connects with that child,” he said.

“It’s brought her back to her normal self,” LyRae Davis said. “She started to laugh and love life. That’s what I want to see is my daughter laughing and loving life.”

Kelly Lessard: kellyrlessard@gmail.com, @KellyLessardFMT

This story was originally published August 14, 2017 at 4:04 PM with the headline "Family organizes barbecue and dessert competition to give back to Clover riding center."