Aaaaaah...WHAT A Horse- Lipizzaners:

Who Shared A Similar War Story

But Different Outcome As Vizslas

Us girls got to dream a bit the other night (Jan2009). Going back over my childhood was one of the most wonderful introductions to the truly classic horse as the Walt Disney movie “Miracle of The White Stallions” which was about the saving of the Lipizzaners from the Russians in 1945, the same killing Russian wave that saw about 90 percent of Rovid Szoru Vizslas in Hungary (smooth) destroyed.

Utterly thrilled with the movie it came to pass that the Spanish Riding School was having a US tour during the sixties. Instantly me & my sister fell in love and fell hard. The riding skills were beyond anything we dreamed possible. The seats, the hands, the boots were perfect. Then we heard that the Lipizzaners were being stabled at the Clark County Fairgrounds. Can you imagine how excited we were? To walk in the barns & pet the beautiful beautiful white beasts.

Me and my family weren’t alone by far as this little movie that Disney made about Colonel Alois Podhasky became so beloved that Disney has a reprint available at this present time. Although critics scurged Disney for not taking the time to “remake” this movie, it still is a thrilling story to watch.

It was about this time that me & my sister really started terrorizing the “neighborhood”. We had our pony Poncho trained (or so we threatened) to rear up on command. One sister was (me) “seeing” Roy Rogers & Trigger. But the other sister saw “airs above the ground” & a more classic “horse trick”. Today the other sister is a Peruvian Paso fancier & Vizsla Field Trialer. While I love a good ride, she likes best a specific ride. I hold the Lipizzaner responsible for that difference.

And so it seemed fitting that me & my sister saw the Lipizzaner 2009 exhibition at the Nutter Center in Fairborn, Ohio together. It was truly enjoyable & once again we were transfixed. True to sister form we analyzed this exhibition and compared. I bet the mouse on the wall had a good hang ten. The most obvious difference was the number of women riders which both of us agreed, even though we are very supportive of women riders, there just wasn’t the quality of riding seats, hands & boots with the new riders with the exception of the Head Rider Victor who appeared more traditional.

Then we tried to figure out just “when” we saw our first display because this Production claimed to be the tour group for 39 years. Whelp….I hate to say how old I am but we saw that movie way over 39 years ago & nearly fifty. We were silent a moment & realized together that we saw “The REAL Thing” and just how lucky we were. So as exhilarating as today’s show is……and it IS, as kids we saw we “saw” more because there was “more”.

Back to the White Stallions, there are things in life that happen to all of us. When a pivotal moment happens to any of us we probably don’t know then, that later we will remember how innocuous a relationship was really started. The White Stallions of Lipizza were saved because of a similar “co-incidence. General Patton & Alois Podhasjky became friends in a previous Olympic equestrian competition. When the White Stallions (mares/foals were already safe), who were currently being held by the Germans Colonel Podhasjky contacted Patton & Patton gave the order to his troops to “save” the Airs Above The Ground.

I was able to get better pictures than I expected but many were just not of the quality I prefer to see. But in reviewing the twelve dollar “book” you could buy about the White Stallions of Lipizza, their photos didn’t have the detail I look for either. Then on checking at youtube.com, their photos were of no different quality than mine.

I chose the wrong seats if we wanted to “see” the airs & get better photos. But for letting the experience wash over & reign down sitting in the middle of the end allowed us to really enjoy the light show that comes with the dancing white horses & the uniformity of the quadrilles & parades. There is truly no bad seat to see the White Stallions of Lipizza.

For those searching for Lipizzaner information online be sure to check out the used online book stores. It’s also enjoyable to snurf through youtube.com & ebaY.com.

Just search for the word “Lipizzaner”. It is important to note

 …one “P” and two “Z”’s is how the word is properly spelled.

The website associated with the US Lipizzaner show

is lipizzan.com. Take a tour & fly high as the airs.

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