HORSING AROUND : IN THIS BUCOLIC BURBANK ENCLAVE, MOST OF THE NEIGHBORS HAVE FOUR LEGS.

Byline: Heesun Wee Daily News Staff Writer

Evelyn Harrison runs the office of a multimillion-dollar business that manufactures plastic products for clients including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas.

Power lunches with her prestigious clients are part of her job as office manager. But Harrison, a Burbank resident, prefers to take her noontime nosh with a barnyard animal.

On good days, Harrison, 45, ducks out of Certified Thermoplastics' building on Chestnut Street in Burbank and drives two miles to her Lutge Avenue home to rendezvous with her favorite lunch companion. She'll chow down on her turkey sandwich at the patio table while Summer, her quarter horse, chomps on carrots in her corral.

``For me, it's a dream come true. I've been wanting my horse in my back yard, rather than constantly commuting back and forth to a stable,'' she said.

Harrison isn't the only one in her neighborhood with a hoofed mammal or two in her yard. Special zoning allows Harrison and her neighbors to board horses on their private residential property - essentially scaled-down ranches - even near the urban hub of Los Angeles.

Harrison's neighborhood and others like it, sprinkled throughout the San Fernando Valley, are decidedly more country than city.

Common sightings include hay deliveries, mailboxes jammed with equine magazines, horses traveling the same roads as cars and odoriferous manure in trash cans on trash day. And, instead of BMWs or Mercedes, pickup trucks and horse trailers hog driveways.

``I dreamed of it being like this, but I didn't know it was possible here in the city,'' said Judy Brooks-Johnson, who keeps two horses in her back yard, across the street from Harrison's home. ``We get the best of both worlds, frankly. We get all the movies in Burbank, Thai food, pizza - and the horses.''

But living a countrified lifestyle near Los Angeles isn't easy or cheap.

Brooks-Johnson and her husband, Howard Johnson, both 40, moved to Lutge Avenue about 4-1/2 years ago. The move ended years of searching for a home near Los Angeles that would accommodate Brooks-Johnson's career as a psychotherapist, Johnson's as a singer and producer, and their shared passion for horses.

Brooks-Johnson's Rocky, an Arabian, and Johnson's Blaze, a quarter horse, live in their own small corrals. There's a modest stable and tack room nearby for equipment. Wood shavings and decomposed granite, healthier for horses than plain dirt, line the bottoms of the stable and corrals.

So, in addition to work and raising their 4-month-old daughter, Jordan, the couple makes time to care for horses and maintain the stable and corrals.

That means, about five times a week, the Johnsons mount their horses and take them, via city streets, for a workout on the trails of nearby Griffith Park.

That means 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. feedings daily, with Jordan in tow.

``You can hear the horses nickering (in the neighborhood) when it's food time,'' Brooks-Johnson said. Many residents wake up to whinnying horses, not alarm clocks. And because consistent feeding times are healthier for horses, families like the Johnsons schedule dinner dates and other commitments around horses' meal times.

There are health-care issues, vet bills and other horse-keeping expenses that keep the Johnsons occupied.

Blaze and Rocky both eat about $200 worth of hay a month. Horseshoeing costs $100 a month. There's another $200 a year for vaccines.

And then there are the unexpected medical bills.

The couple recently shelled out $2,500 for a mysterious injury to Blaze's eye that turned into an infection. Johnson applied prescribed eye drops in Blaze's eye every two hours, every day, for three months.

``Horses are a responsibility,'' Brooks-Johnson said. Keeping horses isn't a temporary lifestyle choice. ``It's a living thing.''

Blaze and Rocky, in essence, are as much the Johnsons' children as Jordan.

But the couple's efforts pale in comparison to Harrison, across the street.

Harrison, who moved to the neighborhood nearly two years ago, has spent the past year and $100,000 transforming her back yard into nothing less than a mini-paradise for her horse.

Summer enjoys a stall and corral with wood shavings. A gadget spews out a nontoxic spray to keep away flies. A cooling system releases a mist of water when the temperature rises.

There's a shower - with hot water - for Summer, a tidy tack room for equipment and a small waterfall in the corral.

The Johnsons' back yard is more common among the horse-keeping set. Harrison's, decked out in a white and green color scheme, is rare.

But horses? In car-clogged Los Angeles?

Well, yes. In fact, the current community of riders is a surviving vestige of San Fernando Valley's equine past.

According to ``California Coast Trails: A Horseback Ride From Mexico to Oregon,'' originally published in 1913, author Jo Smeaton Chase wrote of his trot through the San Fernando Valley: ``It opened before me in league on league of grain, waving ready for harvest, a crop to be measured by the thousands of tons. The landscape flickered under an ardent sun.''

Commercial development since has swallowed up the leagues of grain, rows of ranches, acres of open space.

But horse-minded Valley suburbanites are taking advantage of a myriad of modern zoning regulations that are designed to protect remaining equine communities against extinction - even in predominantly built-up communities such as Burbank and Glendale.

An estimated 900 families live on private residential lots zoned for horse-keeping in back yards in Burbank, said Olga Jones, a private real estate agent who specializes in horse-friendly property in Burbank and Glendale. About 100 homes that allow horse-keeping also exist in Glendale.

``We get calls on them every day,'' Jones said. She and her husband, Trent Jones, are based in Burbank and are associated with R.R. Gable Inc.

Average prices for equine-sensitive homes in Burbank and Glendale range from $250,000 to $550,000. A usual lot size measures 50 by 135 feet.

Trent Jones also is president of the Burbank Rancho Association Inc., a group that works to ensure their pseudo-ranches and somewhat rustic way of life don't disappear.

Exact data on where and how many horse-keeping areas exist in the San Fernando Valley is not readily available. But Olga Jones, who has been in real estate for the past 17 years, said Burbank and Glendale are the only cities so close to Los Angeles that permit horse-keeping on private residential property.

Other communities in the Valley where horse-keeping is sanctioned on private residential property include Chatsworth, Porter Ranch, Arleta, Lake View Terrace, Pacoima, Sun Valley, Sylmar, Agoura, Calabasas and west Simi Valley.

Most horse-keeping communities throughout the San Fernando Valley are located near riding trails, some only blocks away from urban areas - an anomaly of Los Angeles, riders say.

``We moved here from Texas, where you had to have five acres to have a horse,'' Jones said. ``We felt more at home here because of the fact that you have a little bit of country surrounded by the big city.''

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) a horse is a horse, of course, of course ... even in the city

(2) Marlboro Country meets big-city Los Angeles as riders roam the trails in Griffith Park. Riders who can't keep horses on their private residential property often choose to board the animals at private riding stables such as the Riverside Riding Club in Glendale, near the park.

(3) Old-fashioned horsepower pulls this buggy along Riverside Drive in Burbank.

Bob Halvorsen/Daily News

(4) Judy Brooks-Johnson props infant daughter Jordan Johnson, a horse lover in training, astride Rocky, a 16-year-old Arabian, outside their Burbank home.

Myung J. Chun/Daily News

(5) Evelyn Harrison has a standing lunch date with her horse, Summer, in their Burbank back yard.

John McCoy/Daily News