Give me a "V"

In honor of Karen Crossley, a Canadian hobbyist and active blogger who passed away in 2020. Lynn Isenbarger, Anne Field and I are finishing Karen's alphabetical tour of her collection. Today's letter is V.

After college, I spent five years working for a mobile tack shop on the A show hunter/jumper circuit. We attended some thirty to forty shows a year, the vast majority of which which were held somewhere other than our home base in Memphis, Tennessee. It was a lot of driving, a lot of hotels and a lot of real horses. There wasn't much time or energy leftover for models.

Despite that, I ever lost interest in the hobby. I maintained my subscriptions to Just About Horses and the Hobby Horse News, I bought the occasional Breyer and I saved pictures of performance entries I wanted to create and tack I wanted to make. I always knew that at some point things would slow down, and I'd find my way back to the models.

Eventually, of course, I met Seth, quit my tack shop job and got married.

And just like that, the models made their comeback. I bought a whole slew of plastic ponies during my last couple years in Memphis. These included Benediction,

Etiquette,

Gallo del Cielo,

KayCeeMoe,

the second Poka Tia,

Twist and Shout...

and Vargo.

I was all about photo showing during this time period, so all these horses - but especially Vargo - had lots of performance pictures.

This was kind of challenging because I didn't have much in the way of tack or props.

Still, I was pretty good at cobbling together some reasonably competitive performance entries.

Lol.

Another issue was his gait, which is kind of... indeterminate. After a lot of back and forth, I decided that because his legs are moving in diagonal pairs, he was trotting, albeit very slowly.

I attempted to make him look speedier by using different angles.

Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Either way, I still like these photos.

I feel the same way about Vargo. He's no longer a competitive show model, but he's a cute little block of a horse. I like seeing him on my shelf, and who knows? Maybe someday I'll dust him off and tack him up again for old times' sake.

Now it's back to Lynn for the letter "W"!