BuySellHorth

For years - make that decades - Carrie Sapp's Model Horse $ales Pages was the place to buy and sell model horses. I have many fond memories of scrolling through the offerings on that site, shopping and dreaming.

Alas, time marches on. 

What was once state of the art started to feel a little date. Service was spotty. There was a name change. People got disgruntled and moved to other platforms. Eventually, there were a million places to sell your model horse, but no one place where all the buyers were likely to see it.

Everyone started missing Model Horse $ales pages.

And that's where Shauna stepped in...

BuySellHorth 

by Shauna McDaniel

As my friends know when I start any conversation with, "Okay so..." things are about to get weird, and  this one was no exception.

A few weeks ago there was a bunch of discourse around our lack of central hobby selling platform, trying to use Facebook was getting so complicated with a million groups and a million rules, plus Meta was going to change their policy to help themselves to all our work, Model Horse Connection - the new iteration of MH$P - appeared to be hit or miss. eBay's fees were crushing us.

  

What I kept seeing over and over was we just need one simple spot that works.

I was telling Adam about it and suddenly realized the solution (architect) was sitting right beside me.

I affectionately named the project buysellhorth as a joke and in homage to all the different fun facets our hobby has. Of course it stuck.

I'm not really sure what happened as it was all a whirlwind of discussion planning and trying to explain "I understand but that's not how our hobby does it"... a few different ways.

All of a sudden I had a small crew actually testing the site and Adam's patience.  Things went super smooth and we were able to actually take off our security gateway days early!  We have blown all of our projections out of the water and our entire email quota for the month in the first twelve hours.

Our goal was to build an easy to use platform that worked on mobile devices the same as on the PC. It should be clean and mostly intuitive to use for all ages. We've built it with room to grow feature wise but wanted to hit the ground with a solid functional model out of the gate.

Our second big target was Generative AI and protecting our users from having their IP stolen while on our site.  It resulted in my biggest concession on my must have list and that was to use non-generative AI to protect our users.  The onslaught from the word go from bots and crawlers and all manner of nonsense would be untenable for humans to keep pace with.  Fortunately with Adam at the helm everything is happening under direction and supervision of an actual human.

So far the feedback positive comments and insightful suggestions have been amazing.  Building something for a community takes a community and ours is the very best!

Thank you, McDaniels for taking this on! This is exactly what the hobby needs, and I am looking forward to making many new memories of scrolling through the offerings on your site, shopping and dreaming.

And then there were four

Last year, Alexey and I took Piper and Tang to dog days at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

We had the best time. 

So much so, we talked Alexey's wife, Tori, and her dog, Archie, into joining us the next dog days rolled around.

Another amazing day!

Last Friday, was another dog day, and once again, we expanded our pack.

If the fourth dog looks familiar, there's a reason...

That's Karin Hullatti's wonderful Cardigan, Cali, whose face was immortalized in the Dog and Pony Show logo.

Since it was Halloween weekend, Cali came dressed as a skeleton.

As always, our first stop was the penguin/hippopotamus complex. 

We arrived just in time to watch the hippos get their breakfast.

We watched them eat...

and go for a post meal dip.

This was, for me, the highlight of the day. It was so neat seeing them so close-up!

That's not to say the rest of the animals weren't amazing.

They absolutely were.

Dog days aren't just fun for the dogs and their people.

The zoo animals like them, too.

This orangutan was absolutely taken with our crew.

Everyone loves Archie!

As per usual, Tang was all about the skunks.

Cali was obsessed with the meerkats, 

and Piper liked anything she could stand on...

or in.

Of course, no trip to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is complete without spending time with its signature animals: the giraffes.

Unlike the hippos, they were not very hungry.

We were persistent...

and eventually, they ate all our lettuce.

Phew!

This was such a fun day!

There's a still a little more room in the car...

Who will we add to the zoo pack next?

Only time will tell!

Every year about this time

In regards to these life stages, there's no doubt as to my status. I am one hundred percent Team Getting Rid of Stuff.

That doesn't mean, however, that I'm not above a little bit of window shopping.

Last week, I received my holiday catalog from Breyer last week. 

I was too busy to appreciate it then, but today was quiet, and I was finally able to find some time to flip through the pages and dream.

As always, I tried to imagine which horses my younger self - the girl in the Wanting Stuff stage - would have obsessed over.

For sure, it would not have been these...

or these.

I always wanted my toys - my stuff - to be realistic.

I would have definitely wanted that pony!

Nowadays, my desires are more practical.

Comfy clothes? Yes, please.

I also enjoyed looking at the 2027 BreyerFest preview...

and this year's Christmas offerings.

I don't know if you had a hand in this one, Nichelle, but I hope so. Also, I miss you!

My accumulating days may be behind me, but I still enjoy my annual catalog. Thanks, Breyer!