Give Me a "G"

We've now galloped up to the letter "G" in our alphabetic tour of my collection.

This time, for a change, I'm actually featuring three "G" horses since I bought them as a family and they live here as a family, after having first taken a brief family vacation.

Not too long ago I declared a personal moratorium on buying Hagen-Renaker (H-R) horses as I was getting increasingly annoyed at their tendency to break if you looked at them sideways.  More and more H-Rs were disappearing from my shelves and getting thrown into a box of "repair or sell" H-Rs, having broken due to a dusting accident, a cat incident, or spontaneous domino-type toppling.

I managed to hold out for a little while but then, about three years ago, I was looking at the piebald pinto reissues of the Shetland ponies "Rangler," "Maydee," and "Rascal" and realized that some day H-R was going to discontinue these and I was going to kick myself for not buying the closest things I could get to the original Designer's Workshop (DW) offerings while I had the chance.

"Gaston," "Gavroche," and "Gigi" on the day they (finally) arrived.

So I caved in and ordered a set from one of my favourite online sellers -- Triple Mountain Model Horses.  The proprietor, Eleda Towle, is a joy to deal with and she always provides her buyers with tracking numbers so they can follow the progress of their horses.  Triple Mountain Model Horses is located in Maine, so my orders would generally hop over the border into Quebec, spend a bit of time in Montreal, and then come directly to me.

That is what I expected to happen to my H-R Shetlands, but apparently the little rascals had other ideas.  When I checked on them a few days after ordering, I was both surprised and alarmed to find that rather than heading towards Montreal, they were on their way to France.  Paris, France to be more precise.

Neither Eleda nor I could figure out how that happened, so I started tracking them anxiously to find out what would happen to them next.  After a few days in Paris, they were put back on the plane and shipped to Montreal, after which they finally came home to me.

I knew then that I had to give my little world travelers some French names to reflect their adventures in the City of Lights.  So I looked to the world of French literature for some hints.

Naming the mare was easy -- the name "Gigi" from Colette's novella of the same name seemed a natural for a pony or horse.  The name of her colt came to me soon after: "Gavroche," after the clever urchin in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.  The stallion took a bit more thought, but I finally settled on "Gaston," after both Gigi's lover in the film version of Gigi and Gaston Leroux, author of The Phantom of the Opera.  It's also a nod to the villain of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" who was not named as an individual in the original story.

Besides the letter "G" and the references to French literature, the three names also share the distinction of representing characters from musicals set in France.  I'm a huge fan of musical theatre, and it pops up every now again in the names of my model horses.

Settled into their new home surrounded by other H-Rs, some Beswicks, and North Light and United Design resins.

To this day, the whole story of the naming helps me remember the names of my three H-R ponies without having to look them up.  I hope they will remain unforgettable for a long, long time.  There's nothing more frustrating than having a name on the tip of one's tongue and failing to produce it.  But point to my piebald ponies and I'll reel off "Gaston," "Gigi," and "Gavroche" without thinking about it twice.