A Tale of Two Spirits

I'm a big fan of the movie Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron put out by DreamWorks Pictures in 2002.  I first saw it live in the movie theatre, and then got the DVD version as soon as it was released.  

Spirit came out at the beginning of a minor explosion of new horse movies, including The Young Black Stallion (2003), Seabiscuit (2003), Hidalgo (2004), Dreamer (2005), and Flicka (2006).  While horse movies have never really disappeared from the big screen, this five-year span was heaven for horse lovers, with a new movie coming out every year.  A friend and I had a standing date to go see every new movie as it came out, and although we had critiques for some, we thoroughly enjoyed them all.

Spirit stands alone though, as being the only animated feature, and the one tale that is told entirely from the viewpoint of the horse.  This technique had been used before, most notably in the 1994 movie Black Beauty, and in several earlier animated versions of the same.  It's also part of the narrative line of 1993's The Silver Brumby (also called The Silver Stallion), where the horse's point of view is utilized to tell the "tale within a tale" of the movie.

 (image from the Internet Movie Database)

All of this combines to make Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron one of my favourite horse movies of all time.  Horses are notoriously difficult animals to draw and animate well for those who have not studied them in depth.  The animators behind Spirit made an extensive study of horses in general and Kiger mustangs in particular, striving for a distinctively stylized yet realistic look and movement on the screen.  Yes, they added eyebrows, but they only did it after a great deal of thought.  They simply needed to make their horses' faces more expressive so that the viewers could more easily empathize with what they were seeing.

Another thing that's notable about all the horse movies that came out between 2002 and 2006 is that Breyer had a hand in promoting all but The Young Black Stallion (although they did release the youthful-looking "Sham" version of the Black Stallion at this time).  Breyer offered Seabiscuit and War Admiral in Traditional, Classic, and Stablemate sizes, in addition to Stablemate-sized ornaments, a selection of plushies, and even a pair of stick horses. Hidalgo also got the Traditional/Classic/Stablemate treatment with a couple of plush, as also did Dreamer and Flicka.

For Spirit, however, Breyer went overboard, creating two new Traditional sculpts (Spirit and Rain), two more realistic Classic sets, Stablemate sets, porcelain sets, pewter sets, treasure boxes, a tankard, coffee mugs, and even a diorama.

However, despite my great affection for the movie and all this desirable merch, I never added a single Spirit item to my collection.  I loved the animated movie, but I wasn't all that keen on adding cartoon horses to my collection at that time.  I thought about adding one of the more realistic Classic sets, but I didn't like the molds enough to make the investment.

How things changed when the DreamWorks Netflix series Spirit: Riding Free debuted in 2017!  Once again, Breyer went to town on promotions, releasing a new Traditional Spirit on the old Spirit mold, re-purposing Rain as Chica Linda, and releasing a new Traditional sculpture for Boomerang.  This time around we also have hairy Spirits and friends in approximately Classic size, two plastic sets in approximately Little Bit scale (one with riders and one featuring the horses only), two series (so far) of Spirit: Riding Free Stablemate blind bags, a bunch of paint-your-own activity kits, a jewelry box, and a trio of plushies.

Spirit (Jr.)

Spirit: Riding Free launched to a great deal of criticism and confusion amongst model horse folk.  Why did this version of Spirit have a blaze?  Why would Spirit allow himself to be "tamed" by Lucky?  What relation did this Spirit have to the events of the original movie?

Chica Linda

DreamWorks, to my knowledge, has offered no definitive answers to these questions, but the fan community has come up with some answers that will do for me, to wit: This Spirit is a son of the original Spirit and Rain, and has inherited some of Rain's tolerance towards human contact.  As a young stallion, he naturally moved out of Spirit's territory in pursuit of his own herd, but after being captured and then at least partially tamed in Miradero he has had less and less to do with his herd, ceding everyday leadership duties to the grey stallion, Smoke.  This Spirit is young enough to learn to circus tricks, and will live in a stable as long as he is able to come and go as he pleases.  He has adopted Chica Linda, Boomerang, and all of his human companions as his new herd.

Boomerang

I enjoy Spirit: Riding Free although it can't hold a candle to Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron as far as I'm concerned.  Still, I'm all for more well-wrought horse animations, and this one is certainly more satisfying than some others I've seen, like DIC Entertainment's 2006-2008 Horseland TV series -- a series I had high hopes for, but which disappointed with its wise-cracking, wildly-coloured horses looking very much like grown-up My Little Ponies.

But, as I've noted, my collecting ambitions have undergone a revolution since 2002.  No longer am I barring animated equines from my collection -- instead, I'm embracing all things Spirit.  I have Stablemates from both blind bag series, the PVC Spirit and Friends set, the small Chica Linda and Pru set, and I've even had a couple of paint-your-own Spirits, although I declined to paint them after the cartoon horses (my Stablemate is a blue roan and my Classic-size hairy one is a dark bay/near black pinto).

I can't tell you exactly what caused this change of heart -- it doesn't even make sense to me when I reflect that I admire the original movie much more than the Netflix series.

I just collect as the spirit moves me, I guess.

It Only Took 20 Years

The year was 1999.  The model horse hobby was starting to get organized on-line, but it was still early days.  Breyer did not have its own website.  Facebook had not yet been born.  Model horse fanciers mainly met through the "Haynet" mailing list, which I subscribed to in digest form.  I did more lurking than conversing as I timidly paddled around in the shallow end of the Internet.  I was still working on a Macintosh Classic with a dial-up connection.

Suddenly, there was a stirring in the ordinarily placid Haynet pool.  Peter Stone's new model horse business, Stone Horses, had only recently come into being and already it was sending big ripples through the Internet.  Stone Horses were hard to come by.  The Ideal Stock Horse (ISH), sculpted by the multi-talented hobby artist Carol Williams (premiere sculptor, painter, and tack maker), was available in four different versions, and everyone wanted one of each.  Stone was already producing smallish special runs of horses, mostly for larger distributors like State Line Tack.

And then there was Coho -- a long mane, long tail ISH painted by hobby artist Laurie Jo Jensen in a silvery grulla appaloosa inspired by the colours of the adult Pacific salmon, produced for a model horse distributor I'd never heard of before: Eagle Nest Tack.

From the instant this special run was announced, a feeding frenzy such as I'd never beheld before gripped the Haynet.  Everyone, it seemed, wanted a Coho.  But how to come by one?  Some people, lucky enough to live near the distributor, were able to pick theirs out in person, but for most folks a phone call to the dealer placing an order was the only way they were going to be able to get one.  And as the Haynet kept filling up with people happily exclaiming "I got a Coho!" I sat squirming between the Scylla of discretion and Charybdis of desire, wanting a Coho but afraid to put myself out there in order to get one.

You see, at that time going out on a limb like that, making a long distance call to some unknown distributor and placing an order in a foreign currency for a horse to be shipped to Canada (if they even did that) required more effort than any other hobby project I'd ever undertaken.  Yes, I did have a credit card -- I knew that would help.  But still, did I really want to be one of the crazies besieging this distributor on this day?  I imagined them to be a small rural tack shop who had no idea what had happened to them.  Would the person who answered the phone even know what a "Coho" was?

I hesitated.  I was late to the party anyway, since the Haynet digest was only compiled after every hundred posts or so, and not sent out in real time to digest subscribers.  Finally, however, I couldn't stand the FOMO (fear of missing out -- a term that hadn't even been coined back then) any longer.  I gathered my nerve, found the phone number, and dialled.

I don't even remember the conversation, but I know it was remarkably brief.  By the time I actually got through to somebody, all the Cohos were sold out -- I was told so, and that was it.  Coho was my "one that got away."

I resigned myself to my loss, but I still really loved the idea of Coho.  I thought the trick of painting a model horse in a colour that would work on both fish and horses was too clever for words.  I loved appaloosas and I loved the work of Laurie Jo Jensen.  I wished I had a Coho.  But I'd done all I could do to get one, and still it had slipped away.

As the years passed and the model horse hobby presence on the Internet expanded, I did start to see Cohos come up for sale from time to time.  But just as it took me a while to get used to a mailing list like Haynet, so I was a latecomer to eBay, a latecomer to the Model Horse $ales Pages, and later a latecomer to Facebook.  I continue to be a latecomer today with regards to the whole social media scene -- something must be pretty well established as essential before I get into it.  I'm always working with last year's technology -- that was why I was still using a Mac Classic in 1999.

Fast-forward to the current year.  One of many major collector's estates being sold by online auction is Carole Christian's Collection, a treasure trove of model horses, both clinky and plastic.  I'd already acquired a couple of her clinkies from previous sales, and had just started to check out the plastic pony sales.  I looked, and suddenly, there was Coho, beckoning me to me again.  I bit, and bid, but was outbid by the time the auction ended.  So close, and yet so far.

A few weeks later -- and there he was again!  Carole must have had at least two Cohos in her collection.  This time my bid was the final one and just this week, Coho came home to me.

He's everything I hoped he would be, and though I never thought I would want to add another ISH to my collection (I have acquired 3 since the great Coho feeding frenzy) I'm so glad I finally have a Coho of my very own.

And it only took 20 years.  Thank you, Carole -- I'm forever in your debt!

Breyer's Material World

One of the unique things about the Breyer Model Horse Company -- and one thing I stressed when I sent in my note nominating Breyer to the Toy Hall of Fame -- is the fact that Breyer produces more than just Tenite plastic horses.

To date, Breyer horses have also been made in PVC (polyvinyl chloride) some soft, vinyl-like kind of plastic, styrene plastic, flocked plastic, plush, resin, crystal, pewter, bronze, porcelain, and even paper, for goodness' sake!  If you need an equine fix of any sort next to being up close and personal with the living, breathing thing, Breyer has got your number.

I have most, but not all of these Breyer materials in collection.  I don't have what I'm thinking is a vinyl-like one (Breyer's Kipper), any cold-cast porcelain, any crystal, any pewter, any bronze, or any paper horses.  But wouldn't a full collection of all of Breyer's touchy-feely materials make a great Collector's Class entry?

Of course, you'd have to solve the debate as to whether some things, like the Britains set, offered in 1986-1989 in solid polythene plastic, really count as a Breyer product or not .  For the sake of a really thorough Collector's Class entry, though, it probably wouldn't hurt to toss them in.

For my own part, I have the PVC "Spirit and Friends" set, a styrene Dapples horse, a flocked Breyerfest horse, a plush snoozy horse, the resin Equine Art Collection, several porcelain horses and even the ceramic Performing Misty co-created with Hagen-Renaker (another piece that asks the question: Is this really a Breyer product?).

It's not the lot, but considering the fact that some Collector's Classes limit the number of horses/animals you can display, I think I'd set mine up using the following nine horses:  the porcelain Arabian in Costume, a Breyer with a textured coat like Misty or Brighty in cellulose acetate (Tenite), Sunny's Mom in smooth styrene with long brushable hair, a Breyer Mini Whinnie for the type of plastic used in it (softer than both styrene and Tenite), Whistlejacket as a resin, rearing Spirit in PVC plastic, the flocked Stablemate Morgan, the plush dozy pony, and the ceramic Performing Misty.

It might not take the class, but it would sure be a fun display to make, as it takes in almost every scale of model horse that Breyer produces.

It sure would be fun to have a Breyer in a "Touchability box" for the Tenite rep though -- somehow I think that would capture the theme of the whole class.  And what would I call my Collector's Class entry?  Probably something like "The Magic Touch."  Breyer's got it, in just about any material you can name.

Some Schleich I Like

I don't have a very large Schleich horse collection.  When it comes to solid plastic horses, I tend to prefer the CollectAs (which have the advantage of being designed by a hobby artist, Deborah McDermott) and the Safari Winner's Circle horses over the Schleich selection.

That being said, there are some Schleich I like, and one in particular that I like a lot.

2018 Schleich Dartmoor Pony Mare and Foal 

I've featured a couple of my Schleichs on this blog before -- the Dartmoor Pony mare and foal set.  I've also featured an older Schleich Shetland Pony gelding.  In addition to these I have a Dartmoor Pony stallion, an Icelandic Pony mare, a male zebra, an older Lipizzaner foal, a Bashkir Curly foal, and a Haflinger Pony foal.

2014 Schleich Shetland Pony Gelding 

  

By and large, I think Schleich does better with their foals than with their adults, and better with their ponies than with their horses.  With the exception of adding perhaps a few more exotics or long ears, I see my future Schleich purchases probably concentrating on the pony and foal sculptures.

Schleich 2015 Icelandic Pony Mare

My favourite of them all, so far, is the lying Haflinger foal.  It's just one of those things that make you want to go "Aw, look -- how cute!"

Schleich 2015 Bashkir Curly and 2005 Lipizzaner Foals

I don't know who designed this little one, but I think it's quite a realistic replica as far as Schleichs go.  Since all Schleichs are not made to the same scale, it's a bit difficult to rank her within the standard Breyer scales:  she's really too small for a Classic scale foal (1:12) but too large for Little Bit scale (1:24).  Nevertheless, she looks sweet on the shelf tucked in besides horses of either scale.

2005 Haflinger Pony Foal 

  

While I'm not a huge fan of Schleich, they certainly have their fanatics.  YouTube is full of videos of Schleich collections, many of them housed in elaborate model stables.  You can get so many weird and wonderful accessories for Schleich horses -- every time I see these set ups I can't help but think how much they would have appealed to me if I can encountered them at a much younger age.  Since I was well-grown before I discovered Schleich, however, I tend to buy them mostly when I'm needing a cheap plastic pony fix.

Schleich 2011 Dartmoor Pony Stallion and 2009 Male Zebra

However, not all Schleich are super-cheap.  Although solid plastic figurines have been produced under the Schleich name since the 1950s in Germany, it doesn't appear that Schleich got into horses in any meaningful way until 1985.  Many of those earlier Schleich models are now coveted collector's items.  Schleich has also been in the business of issuing limited special run horses since about 2009.

There are several Schleich reference sites, both current and historic, you can go to to identify your Schleich horses, but one of my personal favourites is DH Stables' blog (see link on my Favourite Blog List).  It seems to be a deserted blog now, but it still provides big, clear pictures of various Schleichs and other lesser-known model horses, such as those from Bullyland and Safari.

I also enjoy the Schleich company's own videos on YouTube, which have taught me (more or less) how to pronounce the company name.  It seems like it rhymes with "like" in English, but with "mice" in German.  Go figure.

Despite my determination not to spend a lot of hobby money on Schleich model horses, there's a sneaking suspicion in the back of my mind that one of these years I'm going to cave in and buy a Schleich Advent Calendar (which I've traced from 2019 to 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and as far back as 2014).  I don't really need all the riders and accessories they come with, but those little Christmas collections are just too darned cute.  

And as far as I know, there ain't no cure for cute.  All you can do when faced with it is give in and just say "Aw!"

Quest Fulfilled (Sort Of)

'Way back in March when I first set out on this blog I made some mention of the heartbreaking Hartland story and how I had Hartland samples from every era of the company's existence except something from Sheryl Leisure's Hartland Collectibles L.L.C. era.

Recently, while perusing Lisa Perkins' new Hartland site, I noticed that she was clearing out some old inventory acquired at the time she purchased the old Hartland horse molds.  The horses she had had clearly been through the wringer, having been bounced around uncared for at least eleven years, if not more.  But I spotted one on the list that I thought I'd take a chance on because it was a model produced by Hartland Collectibles L.L.C., even though it is essentially a body now.  The horse is a pearly palomino 9-inch Saddlebred, originally produced from 2001-2004.  The poor thing was probably not sold at that time because she leans drunkenly to one side.  Before Lisa uncovered her, who knows where and how she had been stored?  Her scuffs and scrapes tell a story of the rough treatment she undoubtedly received.

At the moment, selling bodies to customizers is what the new Hartland Horse and Cowboy Company specializes in.  Most of their bodies are made through a 3-D printing process, and require smoothing and finishing from their new owners if they want to repaint them.  Broken bodies are also being sold in body lots for those who are interested in doing some repair work as well.  In terms of original finish horses, the options so far have been limited, and exotic decorator colours usually outnumber the realistic horse colours on offer.  

But it's early days yet -- the company is obviously going through some growing pains, but they have big plans for the future.  They've already come up with a few new molds for 3-D printing, and are currently sourcing a new injection molding company to mass-produce the older plastic bodies.  Resin versions of some horses are also in the works.

Anyway, I was happy enough to buy my poor neglected little Saddlebred if only to have a sample model from the Hartland Collectibles L.L.C. era.  As I mentioned before, these horses seldom come up for sale, and when they do they tend to be very pricey.  Despite her tipsy tilt, my new Saddlebred stands just fine, and she can be a placeholder for her species on the shelf until a better bargain comes along.

So, to review, I now have horses from:

Hartland Plastics (1940s-1969)*

Strombecker/Durant Hartland (1970-1973)*

Steven Toy Company's Hartlands (1983-1994)*

Paola Groeber's Hartland Collectables (1986-1994)*

Sheryl Leisure's Hartland Collectibles L.L.C. (2000-2007)*

and the Hartland Horse and Cowboy Company (2018-c)*

*all dates are approximate

Quest fulfilled (sort of) for now.

Naming Names

The names that collectors give their model horses are endlessly fascinating to me.  Not the ones that are just the issue name, like Misty or Justify, but the ones that people make up when they take a new horse into their "herd."

There are so many ways to name a model horse.  A lot of collectors, especially those that are into pedigree assignment (finding real or model horses to represent the sires and dams of their models) like to follow real horse naming conventions -- and there are a lot of them.  In some breeds, the conventions are mandatory, like the requirement to name a Lipizzaner stallion after one of the breed's six founding sires and the stallion's own dam.  Others are not mandatory, but tend to recur frequently within a breed, like the naming of a Thoroughbred after something suggested by either its sire's or its dam's name, or a combination of both.  In Quarter Horses you often see double- or triple-barreled names that contain both a reference to its sire and/or dam line and some sort of phonetic pun, like Big Chex to Cash (son of Nu Chex to Cash).

Phonetic puns are also popular in names collectors come up with -- they're fun to spell and fun to pronounce.  Collectors can also use the same technique that Thoroughbred owners use when naming their horses, only this time using a name suggested by the model name instead of one suggested by a sire or dam.  Other times you might want to give your model a name that reminds you of where you bought it, or who you got it from.  You can also use lines from poems, songs, movies -- almost anything in popular culture -- to name your model horse.  Or you can give your horse a sweet, simple single word name -- the sort of name you might call your own "backyard pony" or the sort of stable name a horse with a more complicated formal name might receive.

I've used all of these methods to name my model horses, but I think the ones I enjoy the most are the clever puns and the pop culture references.  I like punning names because, as I said, they're simply fun to say and spell, and I like pop culture references because of the insight they give into the working of the owner's mind.  I love getting that little flash of recognition when I encounter a model horse named after some pop culture reference that respond to.  It gives me a sudden sense of kinship -- that "oh, you like that too" response -- when I find something I have in common with someone else, beyond a simple fascination with model horses.

Some of the names of my model horses have layers of meaning for me as they come from a "stream of consciousness" kind of thinking, one thing suggesting another and then another resulting in a name that (to me) sums it all up.  For what it's worth, here are the names of some of my model horses, along with the thinking that went into the names:

"Maestoso Antigua"

I don't really like Lipizzaner naming conventions because the stallion's name always sounds female to me, since the unique part of the name is always the name of the foal's dam.  To get around that I looked for names or words ending in "a" that didn't sound quite so feminine.  The tropical island of Antigua was, to my ears, the right fit -- it technically follows conventions, but it has a more masculine sound and it means "antique" or "ancient," not a bad name for a stallion named after his ancestors. 

"Czarkist"

One of my favourite phonetic puns is the one I used for this horse.  I decided to make this generic Beswick horse an Orlov Trotter -- a Russian breed that is most often seen in dapple grey.  Making a pun on "Starkist" (the canned tuna), I named the horse after the Czar (an alternative spelling of Tsar) of Russia and implied that the horse was blessed, or kissed (kist) by the Russian monarch.

"Pat-the-Bunny"

Not only is this the name of a popular children's book, but it reminds me of how long it took Stone Horses to complete my DAH pony.  I ordered him on St. Patrick's Day (Pat) and received him by Easter (the Bunny).  Stone DAHs were completed more quickly back then.

"Glencoe"

Just like Elton John, I'm a fan of sad songs.  When searching for a Scottish name for this North Light Shetland pony, I remembered the mournful song "The Massacre of Glencoe" -- a song about an ancient act of treachery that nearly moved me to tears the first time I heard it (I still find heart-breaking to this day).  One of the lines of the song refers to the "cruel snow" that contributed to the tragedy and covered the graves of the dead, and since my shaggy grey Shetland's coat reminded me of stormy, windblown, wet and dirty snow, he just seemed a suitable symbol of the song.

"Marigold Cotton"

The name of the Haflinger breed  has always reminded me of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Halflings" -- Halfling being another word for Hobbit.  Most of Tolkien's better-known Hobbits are male, though, so when I was searching for a Hobbit-like name for my Breyer Haflinger mare I did a bit of googling for the names of female Hobbits.  When I found "Marigold Cotton" (sister of Frodo's companion Samwise Gamgee) I knew I'd found my match.  Marigolds are yellow and cotton is white, and my pony's palomino coat mimics these colours.

"Marguerite"

The Hagen-Renaker/Breyer Performing Misty reminds me, of course, of Misty of Chincoteague, but I've seen so many Mistys named after weather-related phenomena that I wanted to do something different for mine.  For me, Marguerite was a no-brainer since it was the first name of Misty's most famous biographer, Marguerite Henry.

I name all of my models as soon as I get them, and sometimes even before I get them if I know what they are going to look like beforehand.  But I find that I remember the names of the models I used to show (many of whom I've since sold) better than those that I name and display on a shelf.  No doubt that's because when one is showing a horse one is always writing down the name, keeping track of its winnings, and even hearing the name pronounced if it does particularly well at a live show.

For that reason, I always try to make my names as easy to pronounce as possible, even when using a foreign language for the name.  This reminds me of one of my very favourite horse names.  Since I had every intention of live showing him when I got him, I named my Breyer First Competitor model "Unpronounceable."  I just thought it would be so much fun to hear a judge call out something like "And the Original Finish Champion is . . . Unpronounceable."  And, let me tell you, it was!

 "Unpronounceable"

Almost Famous

Some of the most interesting things about collectibles (to me, anyway) are the stories that come with them -- how a piece was discovered, how you got or bought it, where it came from, and even who it used to belong to.  Part of this is provenance -- the history of the ownership of a valued object, and a mark of authenticity.  And part of it, like the proverbial fish story, is just a good tale -- particularly when it involves "the one that (almost) got away."

Not all of my model horses have an interesting provenance or story.  The ones I bought new off the shelf, or via mail order, just because I happened to like the mold or because it fit my collecting philosophy of the moment, rarely have deeper significance.

However, many horses that I've been gifted with, or that I've bought in memorable or unexpected places, have good stories.  And a couple of my horses are, indeed, almost famous.

We seem to be in the midst of a time right now when a lot of historic collections are being dispersed, often, sadly, because of the passing of the previous owner, but also because some collectors with impressive collections are now reaching a certain age and, either by necessity or by choice, have decided to downsize.

One of my "almost famous" horses came from a collection dispersal of the second sort -- an older collector auctioning off a portion of her collection in an effort to downsize.  That person was Marilyn Sweet, THE expert on all things Beswick, who not only wrote her own book on the subject, but contributed to all the Beswick animal guides put out by the Charlton Press.

My "Almost Famous" Welsh Cob

Marilyn recently held an in-person and on-line auction of many of her model horses and I logged in to watch it, mostly just to see what was on offer.  I didn't expect to be able to afford anything, but I did make note of a few lots that I might try for if the bidding was slow.  And somewhere in the midst of the auction, that's exactly what happened.  And so I became the proud new owner of one of Marilyn's Beswick pieces, a first version dapple grey Welsh Cob.

After the auction was over, I realized something else about my new Welsh Cob.  He had a very distinctive eye, and I knew I'd seen that eye somewhere before.  And yes, there he was -- the very model chosen to represent the first version Welsh Cob, not only in Marilyn's own book, but in all the Charlton guides as well.  A minor celebrity!  And now he's mine.

My Cob in a Charlton Press guide

I don't know the initial owner of my other "almost famous" piece.  I've recently become enamoured of the old Breyer and Hartland Western Horses and Ponies, and was looking for a nice older Breyer Western Pony to add to my collection.  Triple Mountain Model Horses had just had a large sale of Western Horses, so I knew they were fairly well stocked with these critters and thought I'd check to see if they had a nice Western Pony for me.  They did, and so he came to make his home with me.  After he got here, though, I was checking for the details of his issue dates on the Identify Your Breyer database, and I noticed that the black and white pinto with the snap saddle looked remarkably like mine, even down to the slightly misshapen bit ring on the left side (it doesn't close properly, leaving a little tag of metal sticking out of the circle -- you can see it best here).

My "Almost Famous" Western Pony

The resemblance was so striking that I asked Eleda at Triple Mountain and she said that yes, she often sent pictures to the database in case they could be of use there and the picture used to illustrate the black and white pony with the snap saddle was a picture of my guy.  So there we are -- almost famous horse #2.  Just as everyone who checks out the first version Welsh Cob in a Beswick book is looking at a picture of my horse, so anyone who looks up the Breyer Western Pony in black and white with snap saddle on the Identify Your Breyer database is looking at my horse too.

I am so grateful to those people who compile databases and guide books for model horse collectors.  I'm a huge fan of documenting all aspects of the hobby, and I think one of the best ways that a collector can share a collection is to contribute photographs of their pieces to the people who need them to put these databases and guides together.  Collectively, we all learn more than any one of us can learn individually, and if that's not a good enough reason to share the special pieces in your collection, I don't know what is.

Horses I Have (and Have Not) Known

I've never owned my own real horse.  I worked for a few years with a therapeutic riding group, and I've taken riding lessons.  But the horses I've ridden have always been either owned by friends or by my instructors, or have been camp horses used for trail rides.  No real horse has ever been mine.

I have, however, three portrait models in my collection.  One is of a horse I knew but never rode, although I might have been able to given time.  The other two are of horses I've never known at all -- they're simply horses I've met in my travels.  But all of them impressed me enough to want to capture their image in model horse form.

Much of my early riding experience came courtesy of a friend I used to get together with every summer when my family went to stay with my maternal grandparents at their rural gas station/diner.  One of their regular patrons introduced me to his granddaughter, who was "about my age" (actually I think she was a couple of years older than me) and who had her own horse and pony on his farm.  We started off riding her pony together and then graduated to the horses.  Initially there was only one horse, but over time my friend acquired more and more horses, so I had my choice of rides.

Towards the final years of our friendship, which ended when my grandparents sold up and moved back to the city, one of my friend's horses had a foal which my friend raised and trained by herself.  She was just starting him under saddle the last time I saw her, so I never got to ride Lightning, but I had pictures of him and always thought he was a handsome little horse.

Flash forward to my first tentative steps into the model horse hobby.  I had purchased a Breyer classic Quarter Horse family that I was quite disappointed in as they all had rough finishes and terrible overspray.  I decided it was time to try repainting, and chose to repaint the foal into a portrait of my friend's foal Lightning.  Lightning is a ridiculously common horse name, though, so I called my colt "Greased Lightning," after the song from Grease.

"Greased Lightning"

Flash forward another few years and there I am with a hobby friend wandering around in the countryside looking for a suitable spot for model horse photography.  While out scouting we discovered a very prettily marked pinto all by himself in a field.  He was such a friendly fellow, coming right up to the fence for pats and admiration, and we both took plenty of pictures of him.  I was so attacted by his pattern that I attempted to replicate it in another portrait model, seizing a cheap plastic Largo Toys model for my body since I had realized by this time that I didn't quite have the talent to justify painting over a Breyer.  I called this little guy "Friendly," in memory of the friendly pinto.

"Friendly"

Not too long thereafter my model horse friend, who, unlike me, was a talented artist, started customizing Breyers in earnest.  We went out together on another scouting expedition, this time to get photos for her reference album, and ended up at a local Thresherman's Reunion.  My friend took plenty of pictures of drafters both in and out of harness, drafters getting their manes and tails plaited and ribboned, and draft mares with foals.  There was one fuzzy little foal in particular that really caught my fancy, and I commissioned my friend to make a portrait of her on a Breyer Clydesdale foal.  I wanted to give this one a suitably Scottish name, so I called her "Fair Isle Flossie," in memory of a Fair Isle sweater mill I once visited when I went to Scotland in my teens.

"Fair Isle Flossie"

I find something to like in most customized model horses that I see, particularly in those I decide to add to my collection, but there's something special about these three portrait models.  When I look at them I don't just let my imagination play -- I remember the real horses they were patterned after.  

It's immaterial whether I knew those horses or not.  It's the remembering that counts.