Collections within My Collection: Steha Leihas

 My introduction to Steha Leihas happened very early in my hobby life. 

Fourth grade. 

My friend Bobbie had an unusual model in her collection that her grandparents had given her.

She named him Ross, and he had a hair mane and tail and wheels in his hooves so he could roll across the floor. (Not gonna lie, I have had fun rolling both of my Stehas across my desk!)

I learned years later that Ross was a Steha Lieha, imported from West Germany, and most likely distributed by Breyer. (Photo from Google Images.)

I thought he was gorgeous, and had kept my eyes open ever since, hoping to find one just like him.

 I looked a very long time.  It wasn't until 2017 that I finally found my own "Ross," only this time as a black circus horse. 

Nearly pristine, he also had his original "Steha Made in West Germany" label on his belly. I was thrilled!

I started actively looking for more Steha Leiha circus horses. I have found a lot of Rosses and several more circus horses, but that flocking on the body is fragile and easily damaged. Manes get messy and even pulled out, and tack disappears. And, the price for a Steha Leha even in poor condition is high.

I kept searching and in 2021 I found another one, one in good enough condition to justify the seller's asking price.

Unlike the black Steha, he has some flaws and someone had pulled all the green feathers off his saddle pad. His saddle is also too far back, but I chose to leave it there rather than risk damaging the flocking by repositioning it.

For a white flocked piece this old, I think he looks remarkably good for his age.

Their manes

and their tails are lovely which makes me wonder, 

did some little girl or boy brush them when they played with them? A thought that makes me smile.

The dapples on the white Steha are large and even comical. They remind me of pencil top eraser prints.

To protect both pieces, I have them loosely covered with plastic bags that are open on one end for some air circulation. I also have them on shelves that do not receive direct sunlight.  

I am not actively looking for more Stehas, although if I found the circus Steha in another color, I'd be interested. In the meantime, I am happy to have these two in my collection.

Indiana, a Hotbed of Showing: the Earliest Days

Live showing in Indiana can be documented back to 1966 and right here in West Lafayette. While it may have occurred earlier than that, I was only 9 and had no connections to any other collectors and no knowledge of any other shows. But I can document that, as a fourth grader, I was putting my models, tack, and doll riders into grocery bags, hopping onto my bike, and heading over to my friend, Bobbie Sue's home for a day of model horse showing.

Here's a throwback post about those in-home shows we held.

---

Today I was out running errands and drove past the neighborhood where my old hobby buddy, Bobbie, used to live, and I decided to drive around and take some photos. I have a lot of happy memories there, including having her house be the site of the very first live shows in our part of Indiana.

I couldn't get into the house for pictures as my friend has long since moved away, but I sure could take photos of the outside!

This is the place where most of the live shows were held back in the 1960s.

A few others were held in my home, but most were here. The upstairs front window on the left and the side of the house were Bobbie's bedroom and where we gathered for the shows. (Carol Holmes, who lived around the corner, also came. Both girls left the horse world behind in their teen years.) The three of us met in 4th grade, discovered we all loved horses, I showed them my carpet herd, and Breyer gained a couple of new customers. Our live shows started in 1966.

 

The Vances' home, 705 Avondale Drive, West Lafayette, Indiana.

Not only did Bobbie collect, she also got a real horse like me, Starbuck, in 1971. (Named after a character in the classic book Moby Dick and long before the coffee shop started up.) Starbuck was a big-boned bay gelding whose breeding was unknown; I often thought he had some draft horse in him.

Bobbie boarded her horse outside of town a short distance from her home, and I had Amy at my home in the other direction. We liked to "meet in the middle" and go on rides together.  And most fun of all, we used to have horsey sleepovers at her house!

This is a view of Bobbie's back yard, taken from around the corner and zoomed in. The chain link fence is still there, but the trees have really grown! (The house was brand new in the 1960s.)

Sometimes after our ride together, we'd head to Bobbie's home and take the horses into the back yard through this entrance on the west side of the house. We'd untack and turn the horses loose in the back yard with a bucket of water and plenty of grazing!

But the fun wasn't over! We'd eat dinner and my mom would drop off some clothes for me, and then we'd play with Bobbie's collection and stay up late. And then...

We'd go for a late night ride in the dark. I LOVED doing that!

Since it was a new neighborhood there was very little traffic, especially after dark. There were streetlights, too, and so we felt safe riding down the streets together.

Cumberland Avenue, which stretched about a half mile in either direction directly behind Bobbie's home, had a grassy median, and we loved to canter down it. (Dodging the occasional telephone pole, of course.) Back then it was all grass and had no other plantings.

Or, we'd ride down to the new neighborhood park that had just been built and ride around in it.

 Lommel Park, West Lafayette, Indiana

Back then, a long line of saplings had been planted across a bare stretch of ground, and Bobbie and I would use them to pole bend on Amy and Starbuck. A few of the trees still remain, but they're no longer those skinny saplings!

When we finished playing with our horses in the park, we'd ride around the neighborhood some more and then head back to Bobbie's home, untack, and turn out the horses before going to bed. (I have often wondered what Bobbie's neighbors thought about seeing horses next door.)

The next morning I would ride home after breakfast and Bobbie would ride Starbuck back to his boarding place, and we'd look forward to doing it all again.

Such fun times. I am smiling as I write.

---

Tomorrow we will continue this series with either a look at one of the live shows currently being held in Indiana or (if I can find them) a look at the tack, props, and dolls we used for our live shows.

Stay 'tooned!

50th Anniversary: Pawnee Stables

In 1966 at the start of school, my 4th grade teacher put up a line of zoo animals on the bulletin board, all different and all with our names written on them. I was disappointed when I saw that my name was on the giraffe - I wanted the zebra since it was horsey. The zebra went to Bobbie Sue, a new girl in our school. 

Bobbie Sue and I became friends and, along with another girl named Carol, they were my first horse-loving friends. They also started collecting like me, and soon we were getting together on Saturdays and having shows and making tack.

Bobbie Sue on the left and Carol on the right. 

We decided that our now blossoming stables needed names, and for reasons I no longer remember, used the names of Native American tribes. Bobbie was Apache Stables, Carol chose Cherokee Stables, and I became Pawnee Stables.

We even made "brands" that we used as symbols for our stables.

Of course, our stables had to be located in real western towns. I remember poring over a map of Colorado looking for a horsey/western sounding town to use as the home of my stables. The towns and cities in my father's atlas were tiny and abbreviated, so when I saw a dot labeled "Pagosa Sprs," I assumed that meant "Pagosa SPURS" - the perfect town for my stable!

It was years before I learned the real name of the town was Pagosa SPRINGS, not Spurs!

This pretty Lenox Appaloosa is named Pagosa Spurs in honor of the original town for my stables.

Even back in elementary school I was starting to play with fabrics and hand embroidery. Not only did we make halters, bridles, and saddles for our horses - I embroidered coolers out of my mother's sewing scraps. You can see the Pawnee Stables symbol on Sham's.

Bobbie had an unusual model in her collection that her grandparents had given her. She named him Ross, and he had wheels in his hooves and could roll across the floor. I learned years later that he was a Steha Lieha imported from Germany and most likely distributed by Breyer. (Photo from Google Images.)

 In 2017 I found my own "Ross," only this time as a circus horse. I looked a long time - Stehas are so hard to find in good condition but this guy is nearly pristine.

It wasn't long before Pawnee Stables had taken over several shelves - I had dolls who cared for, trained, and rode the horses, a lounge where they all gathered at the end of the day, and more. I'm going to see if I can pull those things out of storage (no more lifting restrictions for me!) and when I do, I'll show you some other parts of Pawnee Stables.

Don't forget to comment if you want to participate in the first anniversary giveaway!

Dad's Slides: Purdue Horsemanship Camp

Even after Bobbie Sue and I aged out of Girl Scouts, we still had another opportunity to attend camp with horses. In June of 1973, we went to Purdue University's Horsemanship Camp near Seymour, Indiana.

The camp was actually held at the Jackson County Fairgrounds in Brownstown which butted right up to the Jackson-Washington State Forest.

This meant that we stayed in the woods and had lots of trails for hiking during our downtime. This is the cabin where the girls at the camp stayed.

 Our 4-H leader, Jerry Synaesal, hauled Cee and Starbuck, Bobbie's horse, to camp for us - Brownstown is in the southern part of Indiana and only about twenty five miles from Louisville.

 Me, Jerry, Starbuck, Bobbie, and my sister, Jenny.

 The horses were stabled in the fairground's livestock barns.

Me with Cee, Bobbie, and Starbuck letting the horses stretch their legs after the three hour drive south.

 Another view of the barns at the fairgrounds.

It was a wonderful week spent learning about horse care and improving our riding. This was a terrific opportunity for me since most of what I knew was from reading books and then trial and error experience with Amy, Nick, Pokey, Cee, and Flame. I will ever be grateful to Jerry Synaesal and his 4-H club for the way it started me on the path of becoming the horsewoman I wanted to be. 

There were a lot of other 4-H teens from around the state in attendance, and both English and Western disciplines were represented. We were instructed in horse care, conformation, how to show in halter and performance, and so many other aspects of horse ownership.

The 1973 Class of Purdue Horsemanship Camp graduates. I've put a blue arrow pointing to me, and Bobbie Sue is to the right of me in the blue shirt.

At the end of the week, a horse show was held so that we could show what we had learned. I was so excited to win two third place ribbons in large classes against kids who'd grown up with horses and had far more experience than me.

 In fact, those wins meant so much to me that the ribbons hang in my horse room to this day.

I was especially excited about the ribbon for horsemanship - I had felt so far behind the other campers and that win showed me that, despite my lack of lessons and experience, I could catch up with more experienced kids and that I could ride well. 

I left camp with far more confidence in my abilities to care for my horses and feeling, for the first time in my life, like I was a horsewoman.

My Earliest Blankets

I see a lot of improvement in the practice blankets I am making now when compared to my earliest attempts. Back then when I was in elementary school, I had no sewing machine to use or any sewing skills aside from threading a needle and sewing on a button and some rudimentary embroidery skills.

These three blankets are my very first efforts. They're pretty crude, but their sentimental value for me is through the roof! The childhood memories come rushing back just by looking at them.

I stitched them by hand back in the 1960s when I was in fourth or fifth grade. The yellow wire was from clippings left behind by the phone company as they installed new telephone lines in a neighborhood being built by mine. Bobbie, Carol, and I used to scavenge those bits of wire after the workers had left for the day. Pliable and easily cut, we turned them into bits, hooks, hoof picks, and fasteners of all kinds for our stables.

My carpet herd Five Gaiter, Sham, wearing his old victory blanket. 

Underneath Sham's name is my stable symbol from the 1960s. The three of us chose Native American names for them at the time. Bobbie's was Apache Stables, Carol's was Cherokee, and mine was Pawnee Stables. In 1970 when I joined the infant hobby I changed the name to Windsong to reflect the fact that my home was on the Wabash River. One of my favorite things to do was to walk along the river's banks and listen to the sound of the wind rushing through the Cottonwood trees' leaves. I love and connect to that name so much that I have never changed it in all these years of collecting.

As for the other blanket, Apache Joe was a cheap plastic model (I searched online but could not find a photo of him in Google Images) and he was my barrel racer in our backyard shows. That blanket was his award for winning barrel racing multiple times at our pretend Madison Square Gardens. (I smile at the memories as I type.) Bobbie, Carol, and I actually timed our models as we galloped them around Dixie cup "barrels" and across a finish line made from a green Lincoln Log roof piece.

I don't think that the third blanket was ever completed. Still, I hang onto it - those sentimental feelings are so strong. And as for the colors of blue and yellow being the same as Breyer's, the blue fabric was the only scrap large enough found in my mother's store of fabric remnants that could be made into several blankets. The yellow embroidery floss stood out nicely against the blue color and was snazzier than white. (And, I had matching yellow telephone wire to make the closure!) But the coincidence does make me smile.

These three are tucked lovingly in with the much nicer, commercially made Breyer blankets and my practice blankets. They're definitely some of my collection treasures.

Model Horse History: the 1960s Indiana Live Shows

Today I was out running errands and drove past the neighborhood where my old hobby buddy, Bobbie, used to live, and I decided to drive around and take some photos. I have a lot of happy memories there, including having her house be the site of the very first live shows in our part of Indiana.

I couldn't get into the house for pictures as my friend has long since moved away, but I sure could take photos of the outside!

This is the place where most of the live shows were held back in the 1960s.

A few others were held in my home, but most were here. The upstairs front window on the left and the side of the house were Bobbie's bedroom and where we gathered for the shows. (Carol Holmes, who lived around the corner, also came. Both girls left the horse world behind in their teen years.) The three of us met in 4th grade, discovered we all loved horses, I showed them my carpet herd, and Breyer gained a couple of new customers. Our live shows started in 1966.

 The Vances' home, 705 Avondale Drive, West Lafayette, Indiana.

Not only did Bobbie collect, she also got a real horse like me, Starbuck, in 1971. (Named after a character in the classic book Moby Dick and long before the coffee shop started up.) Starbuck was a big-boned bay gelding whose breeding was unknown; I often thought he had some draft horse in him.

Bobbie boarded her horse outside of town a short distance from her home, and I had Amy at my home the other direction. We liked to "meet in the middle" and go on rides together.  And most fun of all, we used to have horsey sleepovers at her house!

This is a view of Bobbie's back yard, taken from around the corner and zoomed in. The chain link fence is still there, but the trees have really grown! (The house was brand new in the 1960s.)

Sometimes after our ride together, we'd head to Bobbie's home and take the horses into the back yard through this entrance on the west side of the house. We'd untack and turn the horses loose in the back yard with a bucket of water and plenty of grazing!

But the fun wasn't over! We'd eat dinner and my mom would drop off some clothes for me, and then we'd play with Bobbie's collection and stay up late. And then...

We'd go for a late night ride in the dark. I LOVED doing that!

Since it was a new neighborhood there was very little traffic, especially after dark. There were streetlights, too, and so we felt safe riding down the streets together.

Cumberland Avenue, which stretched about a half mile in either direction directly behind Bobbie's home, had a grassy median, and we loved to canter down it. (Dodging the occasional telephone pole, of course.) Back then it was all grass and had no other plantings.

Or, we'd ride down to the new neighborhood park that had just been built and ride around in it.

 Lommel Park, West Lafayette, Indiana

Back then, a long line of saplings had been planted across a bare stretch of ground, and Bobbie and I would use them to pole bend on Amy and Starbuck. A few of the trees still remain, but they're no longer those skinny saplings!

When we finished playing with our horses in the park, we'd ride around the neighborhood some more and then head back to Bobbie's home, untack, and turn out the horses before going to bed. (I have often wondered what Bobbie's neighbors thought about seeing horses next door.)

The next morning I would ride home after breakfast and Bobbie would ride Starbuck back to his boarding place, and we'd look forward to doing it all again.

Such fun times. I am smiling as I write.