The Palomino Project: Beginnings

 My head is spinning from all the research I have been doing, but I am ready to start writing about my findings.

First, to back up a bit, the Palomino Project began while I was sharing here on the blog about my "burnished gold" palominos. I'd pulled seventeen palominos off the shelves and was looking at that lovely carmel color so many early Breyer palominos sport.

And then I remembered something I'd read once, a theory that stated that Breyer's original palomino color was very orange and then faded with time, becoming lighter, even a lemony yellow. 

But that was not my experience. I'd had many of these models since their original release and purchase, including three that went clear back into the 1960s and were from my original carpet herd. 

While the manes and tails were a creamier color now, the coat was still the same beautiful carmel that they'd been decades ago. Puzzled, I did some rudimentary research and found nothing. Hmmm. 

I decided I would dust off my teacher/researcher chops - I did a lot of research and writing in my teaching career; surely I could find out more about this theory and any documentation for it if I dug deeper.

A research project begins with a question or two that you wish to study and mine is,

Was Breyer's original palomino color an orange shade that later shifted to a lighter yellow color? Or, was it originally a carmel tan that has remained mostly the same with the passage of time? What documentation can be found that supports one or the other position? 

After you have your research question, you need to organize and figure out what you need for the project and how to approach it. For me, that starts as an outline - I like to know where I am going and then plug in the tools and strategies necessary to getting me there. (Photo from Sande Schneider.)

The outline for The Palomino Project starts with this important caveat:

BE KIND AT ALL TIMES.

It's easy when you are doing research to get so caught up in the data that you forget there are human beings behind that data. Humans who have feelings, who have invested their own time and research into what they share with you.

So to be very clear, my goal is to treat folks with differing opinions or data with respect and kindness at all times. I'm interested in knowledge and an accurate portrayal of Breyer history, not who wins any sort of debate.

The rest of the outline looks like this.

Outline

1) Question(s) and possible hypothesis

2) Sources to use (people, books, blogs, etc)

3) Personal observations on non changing palominos within my collection from the 1960s

4) Examination of an orange palomino FAF in my collection

5) Findings from books, articles, internet

6) Interviews with knowledgable hobby historians (I contacted 5 and asked to interview them)

7) Examine early results; adjust or change question/hypothesis if needed

8) Do comparisons to other Breyer animals in similar colors from same time period as orange color

9) Draw up conclusions, write down any new equations or tangents to be addressed later, assess results.

10) Share findings.

I'm enjoying digging into the topic and chatting with some really knowledgable ladies. More tomorrow, so stay 'tooned!

Go here for a list of those research papers I wrote and published; I'm pleased to say that The Emotional Labour of Caring in Teaching has been cited or quoted over 400 times in research papers worldwide. And "labor" is spelled that way because it was originally published in Teaching and Teacher Education, a British education journal. (You don't argue about spelling with the editor who wants to publish you. LOL)