KEY POINTS:
In the covered arena at Ambury Riding for the Disabled, four horses stand. One seems bothered by the crowd, but a little gentle walk around soothes him.
His companions wait patiently as more and more people come to celebrate the life of Jill Calveley, QSM, who died suddenly last week, aged 66.
Some people walk in, some limp, some hobble. Others arrive in contraptions that bear only a passing resemblance to what we once knew as wheelchairs.
Dr Calveley was instrumental in establishing Ambury Park Centre for Riding Therapy for people with disabilities in Auckland, which was opened in 1983.
The concept of riding as therapy was easily understood then, said Bruce Robinson, the first president at Ambury.
"You took a person out of their wheelchair, led them around on a horse, and popped them back in the chair. It was recreation."
Dr Calveley took the concept further. To her it was a way of solving medical, psychological and attitudinal problems.
She received referrals from professional agencies, and took a clinical attitude to recording and assessing results of the riding therapy. The results were real and quantifiable, and this, said Mr Robinson, is her legacy.
The centre has grown from a shed with a basin in one corner to a sawdust arena with offices, horse stalls and bleachers.
The old, broken-down horses used at Ambury were not good enough for Dr Calveley. Her patients, or clients, or friends - they were all of those things - needed better, well-trained horses.
The centre's equine manager, Debbie Freeman, knows the reasoning behind this demand for better equipment. "Jill used to say, 'They have other difficulties. They need the best'. She believed that if we couldn't manage people with disabilities, the fault was ours, not theirs."
Dr Calveley knew her horses. She grew up near Methven, and spent holidays pony-trekking with her sister Judith. After medical school in Dunedin, she practised as a GP in Kumeu. Although she was in general practice, her interest lay with the disabled and the elderly.
And she loved to learn. When told she was developing a dowager's hump, she began yoga classes with Auckland teacher Mandy White, who led the crowd yesterday in a demonstration of exercises.
And exercise they did - torsos twisted, people laughed and clapped. Such displays are rare at events like this. Her friend Lyn Preston reckons Jill Calveley would have loved it.
