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.