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Strawberry Lane Percherons are the equine ambassadors for the National Scleroderma Foundation and Scleroderma Canada.  These Percheron Draft Horses travel across North America to show their beauty and power while raising awareness about scleroderma, a connective tissue disease.
 
Greg & Debbie Lurvey started showing Percherons in 1989 and named their farm Strawberry Lane after the 40-acre strawberry farm they operated in Oconomowoc, WI.  Starting with grey Percherons, they eventually moved to black in order to make it easier to match the horses in the hitch. The Strawberry Lane Percheron 6-horse hitch debuted at the Wisconsin State Fair in 1998.  For the next 7 years, they would show in the United States and Canada.  One of their crowning achievements was winning the Supreme 6-horse Hitch Championship at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto, ON for four years.  Debbie was passionate about the Percherons.  She loved having them on the farm, watching them show, and traveling to the fairs.
 
At the same time, Debra was battling exhausting fatigue, shiny patches of skin, and other beguiling symptoms.  After years of tests and misdiagnoses, it was determined that she had a disease called scleroderma.  This then led Greg & Deb to find physicians and care teams that had experience caring for patients with this rare condition.  The central organization for scleroderma, the National Scleroderma Foundation, provided the Lurveys with patient support, education, and access to experts from around the country. They attended local meetings and national conferences.  It was empowering to be with other people who lived with the disease, care for those with disease, and the physicians and scientists dedicated to treating it or curing it.  Even with an oxygen tank and intravenous feedings, Debra managed to attend the 2019 Scleroderma Conference in Chicago.
 
As Debra’s battle with scleroderma progressed, she became an advocate for healthcare professionals to learn more about this disease and consider pursuing it for a research area.  “You could be the one to find a cure,” she would tell residents and interns at the teaching hospitals where she was a patient.  Funding for research related to scleroderma was limiting the interest, and the Lurveys felt that if the number of donors increased that the tide could turn.  After Debra’s death in December 2020, Greg established the Debra L. Lurvey Memorial Research Grant.  This award is a 2-year grant to fund research for scleroderma, with a preference for projects focusing on lung-related complications and is funded into perpetuity or until a cure is found.
 
Strawberry Lane Percherons has been resurrected in loving memory of Debbie.  This time, it is a public awareness campaign for scleroderma.  The goal is to let people know more about this rare disease, connect people diagnosed with scleroderma to resources they might not be aware of, and raise some funds for the National Scleroderma Foundation and Scleroderma Canada.  Debbie would be delighted to know that the horse breed she loved so much could be used to highlight the disease she fought so hard.