Real or Not?

BreyerFest was last weekend, and so for about the past ten days I have been following blog posts about it, looking at pictures people have posted on Facebook, and chatting with friends about their experiences. My social media feeds have been inundated with model horses.

So, is it any wonder that when this photo came across my Twitter feed, I had to give it a second look?

"What a nice model!" I thought. But looking a little closer, I realized the reins should not be dangling like that (unless the shower had a lot of documentation for a very creative idea! Hah!)  And while not uncommon to have a riderless model horse in a performance class, there was still the fact that all four hooves are off the ground and there is no acrylic pole suspending the model.

Realizing the source of the photo was The Chronicle of the Horse helped me determine for sure that this was not a model horse but a real, living and breathing one who had parted ways with its rider.

I laughed at myself for my mistake, but then I also realized that my difficulty in identifying the photo as real or not showed just how far our hobby has come.

Kudos to the artists, the tack and dollmakers, the customizers and prop makers, and all the others who  recreate the horse world so realistically that it can be tough to tell the difference between a real or a model horse.