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