Give Me a "B"

Next stop on our alphabetical journey through my collection brings us to the letter "B."  I have a fair number of "B" horses in the herd, but it's also the letter under which you'll find most of my Breyer dogs.

This is because for a while I considered getting into model dog showing as a sideline to model horse showing.  I had had a Benji and Tiffany in my collection for a number of years, but never found a use for them.  Then in 1999 Breyer started to come out with the Companion Animals series, which contained a number of attractive dog sculptures.  So I decided to branch out from Winterplace Stables and add a kennel to my collection, using the kennel name "Ballyhoo" as the prefix for all of my new dogs' names.  

Benji and Tiffany, who had previously been called "Bo" and "Muffin" got renamed "Ballyhoo's Bo" and "Ballyhoo's Banana Muffin."  All the new Companion dogs I've purchased since then, and even the two Pocket Box (PB) pups I purchased "just because" can be found under the letter "B," including: "Ballyhoo's Briney Bay Yeller" (the yellow Lab), "Ballyhoo's Bingo Dali" (the Dalmatian), "Ballyhoo's Brigadoon Belle Reve" (the Golden Retriever), "Ballyhoo's Belinda" (the Foxhound) "Ballyhoo's Becca" (the Border Collie),  "Ballyhoo's Bitsy" (the Jack Russell), "Ballyhoo's Blink" (the SM Border Collie), "Ballyhoo's Bitty" (the PB Pomeranian) and "Ballyhoo's Barkie" (the PB Jack Russell).

But this post is not about the dogs.  Suffice it to say that I never did get into model dog showing, but it was fun creating a kennel all the same.

"Ben Gali" Breyer Family Arabian Foal

The "B" horse I want to focus on this time around is a Family Arabian Foal (FAF) from 1988.  First released around 1960 or 1961, the FAF has been in Breyer's line-up longer than I've been alive, but I've only ever had one of them in my collection: the flaxen liver chestnut that appeared in the line-up for one year only.

I don't know why Breyer decided to give the flaxen liver chestnut family such a short run -- for my money it's one of the most attractive colours the FAF ever came in.

If you recall my "My First Breyer" story you'll note that 1988 was fairly early in my collecting days.  I was trying out a lot of things in those days to see what suited me, including pedigree assignment.  Since I never purchased the stallion or the mare to go with the foal, I had to look further afield to find a sire and dam for him.  A friend of mine had the perfect stallion, very like my foal in colour, although he was a Hartland rather than a Breyer.  I applied for permission to use him as a sire (that's sort of how it worked in those days) and once I got a pedigree all sorted out for my foal, I was ready to name him.

My friend's stallion was named "Salvador Gali," a kind of pun on the name of the Surrealist artist.  It just seemed obvious to me then that my foal should be named "Ben Gali," using the word Ben as a "son of" prefix.  I also liked the fact that the name sort of resembled the name "Benghazi," a Libyan city which was very much in the news around that time, being more or less at war with the United States.  Plus, Libya was enough of a desert country that it could conceivably be thought of as a natural home for an Arabian horse.

And that's how "Ben Gali" came to "B".