1967-Voice Of The Tennessee Walking Horse 1967 July Voice RS | Page 8

Tennessee Walking Horses. She has this to say ^ Walking Horse Proves Perfect For Handicapped Elizabeth Lukather Rides To Prove Her Point! The Annual California Walking Horse Celebration and Horse Show is presented each year for the benefit of the Crippled Children’s Society of Los Angeles County, and this year’s show featured daily exhibitions by handicapped women and children riding Walking Horses. One of these exhibitors, a Mrs. Elizabeth Lukather, seemed so at home on her horse BLONDIE that wc asked her for some background information. Born in Pennsylvania, her earliest memories are of huge draft horses pastured near her home—the flavor of horse admixed with the fragrance of clover hay was her favorite perfume. Stricken with polio at the age of two, she spent three years virtually immobilized. During these three years she learned to read, and read about horses. When she was able to be on her feet again, with the help of full-length leg braces, she made friends with BEAUTY, a Shetland Pony, and JENNY and DEL, driving horses which she learned to handle the summer she was five. In her teens she met a retired cavalry officer who maintained a school of equitation near Fairmount Park in Phila­ delphia. He taught her the rudiments of riding and in­ troduced her to MARY ANN, a fine mount who pos­ sessed a gait similar to the flat foot walk. For the next four years Liz worked to attain reasonable competence on a horse. Lacking the muscular control to raise her toes or lift her knees, Liz had to develop an almost uncanny balance. She learned to gauge both the horse’s and her own re­ actions in time to compensate for them. Unable to post, she learned to sit the trot long enough for a horse to go from a walk to a canter. After moving to California. Liz bought her very own horse—an older five-gaited mare named GINGER. In three years she learned to ride in the hills and added the rack to the gaits she could ride. However, GINGER needed more exercise than Liz could give her, so she re­ gained the spirit of her youth and became too much to handle. Regretfully, Liz sold her—and GINGER has a wonderful home of a thousand acres for expressing her energies. Fo