A Horse of a Different Texture

     There are horses and then there are horses.  Not all of them have to be fed and watered, ridden and groomed.  Take my thirty-five year old daughter’s horses.  Jenny has been in love with horses almost from the day she was born, but she had no where to keep a “live” horse.  So her horses are small, and made out of things like plastic, resin, ceramic, epoxy, anything but flesh and blood.  She is just as proud of her little steeds as real horse owners are, and her horses can sometimes cost as much as a live horse.

     I was the one that started collecting these little treasures, called “model horses” to people in the know.  My mother bought me my first plastic model horse when I was about five years old, back in the late fifties.  I did the same for my daughter.  She now owns all of the models that I collected as a child, and they have become quite valuable.

     Companies like Breyer Molding Company and Hartland, in the United States, have been making these model horses for decades.  They come in many colors and breed types.  You can also obtain models in ceramic and porcelain, made by companies like Beswick of England and Hagen Renaker of California, just to name a couple.

     New to the market are “cast resin” models made by artists, and hand painted.  These can be “one of a kind” or “limited editions,” whose cost can run up to several hundred dollars.  Also popular are “customized” horses, where a plastic model is reshaped and repainted, sometimes adding a “hair” mane and tail.  Of course, no horse would be complete without miniature, handmade, genuine leather tack.  Such craftsmanship can lead to a very expensive collection, or just plain fun.

     Not content to just let her models sit quietly on the shelf, Jenny discovered the world of showing the precious beings.  People from all over the country gather together in major cities, and small towns to hold these shows. 

     The rules for these shows are based on the same rules and regulations that “live” horse shows use.  The horses are judged on conformation, correct placement of tack, and how the horse is set up for what it is supposed to be doing in the class (i.e., roping a cafe, jumping a fence, preforming a dressage movement, etc.)