Wesley Steeb rode her first horse when she was 18 months old, unearthing a passion that continues to guide her life today.

It was Christmastime, and someone placed her on Ginger, a neighbor's Shetland pony, to take part in a living nativity scene. She didn't cry or panic. She didn't tumble off. She didn't freeze in fear.

She laughed.

"My parents say my eyes sparkled," says Steeb, now 16.

"The faster she went, the happier she was," says Karen Steeb, Wesley's mother. "She was just a natural. So for Christmas that year, at 18 months old, she started riding lessons."

After years of riding, however, Wesley Steeb wanted her daughter to branch out and "bless people" through her love of horses.

She loved "everything horses," her mom says, including horse books, horse models, even horse tack. Eventually, she began to volunteer at Little Bit, a therapeutic riding center near her Woodinville home.

"It's the most important part of my week," says Steeb, a senior at Cedar Park Christian School in Bothell. "It isn't complete until I've been at Little Bit. I just get such a great feeling whenever I'm there."

Little Bit's roots go back to 1972, when Margaret Dunlap, a rider with multiple sclerosis, founded the center with one horse, a rented stable and five students. Today, the organization is one of the largest therapeutic riding centers in the nation.

Little Bit is a member of the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association, or the NARHA, a nonprofit that promotes therapeutic riding. There are nearly 800 NARHA therapeutic riding centers in the United States and Canada, including 17 centers in Washington state.

Little Bit uses horses to improve the physical, mental and emotional condition of disabled children and adults. The program relies on community support to pay the high cost of lessons and volunteers to assist in classes, fundraisers, shows and events. The required minimum age for Little Bit volunteers is 14 years old, but Steeb joined when she was 8.

She isn't a typical volunteer.

"(The staff) knew she was young and said they'd consider her," says her mom. "During the training, a horse bit her, and it didn't phase her one bit. She disciplined that horse with such authority that they said, 'You know what you're doing. You're on.' "

Since then, Steeb has worked in numerous Little Bit riding lessons, programs and shows with every horse in the barn and too many riders to count. She estimates she has volunteered 1,250 hours throughout the past eight years, and makes an effort to go as often as she can.

She took lessons at the center for a year and was even photographed for a Little Bit advertising campaign. Currently, she's a volunteer captain, a highly trained volunteer and leader.

The relationships she's made through Little Bit are "amazing," she says, recalling a rider with impaired speech whom she witnessed speak his first full sentences, and a former volunteer with whom she still visits. Another rider likes her so much he calls her his sister.

"It's just a reciprocal relationship of teasing and joking," she says of their friendship.

As her mother puts it, Steeb initially went to Little Bit for the horses, but keeps going back for the relationships.

"I fell in love with the people and the community and the whole atmosphere," says Steeb, who stresses the intangible benefits of volunteering. "I really see friendship forming. There are riders that have a favorite horse, and that horse knows their footsteps and the sound of their wheelchair. It'll come to the door of the stall. The horses expect the relationship, as do the riders."

Her experiences are intensely personal, but they don't come as a surprise to the Little Bit staff.

"When someone comes to volunteer, they continue to volunteer for the same class on the same day with the same riders," says community relations director Pam Coté. "Some work together for years. They become integral parts of each other's lives, like family. Oftentimes, the volunteer becomes a mentor for the rider and they form very strong relationships."

Little Bit needs 350 volunteers each week to assist with 19 horses and 230 riders, who encompass a range of about 70 disabilities and special needs. Volunteers attend an orientation and two trainings to learn protocol, then work a minimum of two hours a week for a 10-week quarter.

According to Coté, all volunteers don't arrive with horse experience, but those that don't catch on quickly. And many are teens. In fact, some volunteers have grown up with Little Bit, staying for more than 20 years or eventually becoming staff members.

Steeb decided on her future career -- hippotherapy, a type of therapeutic riding offered at the center -- after job shadowing Little Bit physical therapist Debra Peet-Walker for two summers. After she goes to college, Steeb plans to return and volunteer during breaks and summers, and possibly even join the staff.

"She walks through the barn door and she is a changed person," her mom says. "The volunteering has given her confidence. It's been a wonderful focal point for her drive. She knows that she is receiving a very unique experience here."

Coté understands this dedication: "Volunteers come to Little Bit for an experience that they just can't get anywhere else. They get to smell the barn, experience the warmth of the horses, experience friendship with other volunteers, and they get to see magic happen in the arena."

Little Bit is scheduled to relocate into a new, larger barn near its current location in 2010. The staff's goal is to reach full capacity in 2012, doubling the number of potential horses and riders -- and likely shortening the two-year waiting list of 200 riders.

Naturally, this means more volunteers are needed: "We rely very, very heavily on volunteers," Coté says. "There's no way we could provide the amount of services we could do without volunteers. No way at all."

Steeb plans to contribute to Little Bit's progress and expansion. She doesn't mind the pressure of the looming volunteer workload. Truthfully, she hardly considers it work.

"Through helping other people, you focus on them, and you don't realize the return you're getting for yourself," she says. "I'm gaining so much more than I can ever give back."

The Pegasus Project
n Little Bit is only one of 17 therapeutic riding centers in the state to belong to the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association.
Closer to Yakima, the Pegasus Project, founded in 2003, also uses horse therapy to help riders with special needs.
Like Little Bit, the Pegasus Project, located at Tumbleweed Ranch, is a nonprofit, NARHA-affiliated center. It relies on approximately 75 volunteers each week to help run its programs. Three volunteers are needed per rider to act as side walkers and horse leaders.
The ranch is located at 4680 U.S. Highway 12. To learn more about the Pegasus Project, call 969-3310, or visit www.pegasusrides.com.