Give Me a "D"

Yes, I should probably get a "D" as a grade for my progress so far on my NaMoPaiMo horse, but that's beside the point.  Today I'm taking you back on the alphabetical tour through my collection and introducing you to one of my "D" horses.

This horse is one of the newer ones in my herd.  It's odd, because I used to have a lot more "D" horses but it turns out I've sold a bunch of them.  Nothing against the letter "D" though -- in fact, I still remember the names of some of the horses I've sold: "Dixieland Debutante," "Dustbuster," and "Defiant" to name a few.  But they're all gone now and have been replaced by more modern horses like this week's "D" horse -- "Dudley Do-Right."

"Dudley Do-Right"

"Dudley" is, of course, the Breyer 1719 RCMP Musical Ride Horse, available from 2014-2015 on the Big Ben mold.  I try not to conga the Big Ben mold but it's difficult because Breyer has put it out in so many attractive colours.  I love my original Big Ben (you can bet that I was one of the first to get one when they started rolling them out in 1996) and I can't see myself ever letting go of him, so I have to be very disciplined to avoid adding others to the shelf.

But with "Dudley Do-Right," I caved.  What finally sold me on him were the little maple leaves painted as if backcombed on his hips.  He may have a bit more chrome than you commonly see on the Musical Ride horses, but he just screams Canadiana.  I simply had to have him.

Broke my heart that Breyer didn't have any leftover mini-me RCMP horses to sell after Breyerfest last year as I would have loved to have the "set."  I haven't actively been shopping for it though, as I find it sometimes take a few years after a Breyerfest for prices to come down to reasonable.  Besides, the Classic Stock Horse Gelding is not a mold I really have to have -- I already have a very nice example from Breyerfest 2016.

But back to "Dudley."  As any fan of Rocky and Bullwinkle can tell you, Dudley Do-Right was the name of the dashing but dumb cartoon Mountie who protected Canada's northernmost territories from the likes of Snidely Whiplash as part of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.  I would have named my RCMP horse after Dudley's horse, except that the name of Dudley's horse is "Horse."  So my horse, with his admittedly goofy-looking Big Ben face, got the name of Horse's cartoon master, and "Dudley Do-Right" entered my herd.

To my eternal shame, my collection is very shy of RCMP horses.  I don't have Breyer's original Mountie horse, or Burmese, the ex-Mountie horse that was given to the Queen.  I don't have either of the Hartland horse and rider Mountie sets either.  At one time, I had two plastic Made-in-Japan Mountie horses without their accompanying Mountie riders.  One had a saddle and one did not.  Both had appallingly poor conformation.  I hung onto them for a long time as the finding of them at a flea market was one of my favourite childhood memories, but eventually I decided to put them in a flea market myself so some other child like me could discover them and cherish them.  I hope that's what happened.  I didn't sell them myself, but they sold, so I know they've gone on to new adventures.

Those two horses never got named, but if I had to got back in time I might just name one "Horse" after Dudley Do-Right's steed.  However poor their conformation was, it couldn't have been worse than that of "Horse."

Image courtesy of  cartoonresearch.com

They would have looked cute in his uniform, though.