Lincoln Land Live All Youth Show 1994

In the 1990s I hosted a live show in Illinois called Lincoln Land Live. As a counterpart to it, I held a youth show, too. That show was always held in my home, and usually the participants were horse crazy kids who were invited to come over, borrow my models, and have a pony party.

Lisa and Cole used to attend live shows with me and so they really enjoyed participating in the ones at our house.

 I still have some of the tags they had put on my borrowed models.

Once in a while I find one of these old tags with my kid's name on it, and it never fails to make me smile.

That's Cole consulting with me in our Illinois kitchen with the kitchen table set up for some sort of performance class.

 The kitchen counter was used, too. (Michelle Z. is writing out some documentation.)

Not only did they use my show props, but it looks like we pulled out the Barbies, too! I have absolutely no idea what class this was!

Holding those shows was as fun for me as it was for the kids who attended, and I know that at least two of the entrants still love horses twenty five years later. Michelle Z. even invited me to her wedding  in 2011. That day included a horse drawn carriage!

My photo was snapped while I was giving the carriage horse, a beautiful Percheron,  a kiss. I found it framed and wrapped under my Christmas tree later that year.

Go here for a look at another of the youth shows that were held in my home.

The Girl on the Catalog

I opened the last box of hobby ephemera that Nancy Kelly had given me. As I sorted through it, a ziplock bag caught my eyes.  Opening it, I was whisked back to my childhood in a flash.

 The bag was full of early Breyer manuals!

I'd had all these (and still have a few) but mine were either marked with circles as I decided which models I had to have, or they became so battered and torn from use that I ended up throwing them out.

 It was a delight to look at them again - so much has changed and yet...

... so much remains the same. (Vintage Club picture boxes, anyone?)

My all-time favorite Breyer catalog cover is this one.

That girl, gazing at her new San Domingo, was me. The illustration captures the quintessential relationship between horse and girl.

Some of us never outgrow that horsey phase. I am one who didn't, and I am still that girl on the catalog.

A Gala Evening - in a Barn!

As someone who has struggled with health issues, as well as one who loves kids and horses, therapeutic riding is a cause that I support. My horse, Indy, and my kids' pony, Sugarfoot, were loaned out for use as therapy horses years ago, and while I am no longer involved with therapeutic riding, I firmly believe that it is beneficial.

My friend, Peggy, has a granddaughter with spina bifida who participates in therapeutic riding. Peggy invited me to join her at the annual Reins of Grace Therapeutic Riding Center gala and fundraiser last night. I was absolutely all in and looked forward to the event.

(I, too, have a form of spina bifida - I have spina bifida occult.)

Peggy and me at the Reins of Grace gala.

 Reins of Grace is about a two hour drive from my home and I had never been there before.

 The grounds were beautiful - this is the sensory garden for the kids.

The horses had all been brought up to the indoor arena and you could visit with them while you socialized before the fundraiser.

 A Gypsy Vanner!

Sadie is thirty years old and came from a prior home where her tack did not fit her well. As a result, she has two white patches just below her withers.

All the horses were quiet and very, very gentle.

Heat lamps had been placed around the arena and despite the chilly fall evening, I was very comfortable without my coat.

 Tables with food and drinks were placed around the building.

Peggy and her husband had sponsored a table. The decorations were lovely.

The arena itself had sensory items everywhere. I was told that the kids loved to ride under this particular hanging and touch the items.

 I was impressed with the variety of tools available to help the kids in their therapy.

 Dolls and puppets.

Numbering activities.

I expected that I would be bidding on items like tickets to a football game or a vacation somewhere. Instead, it was for donations of feed, vet and farrier care, bedding, and adaptive equipment for each horse. (You could also sponsor a rider.) The hostess would say, "Who would like to donate $200 for food for Beamer?" Those who did would raise their paddles and she would thank each person by paddle number and then ask, "Who would like to donate $100 for food for Beamer?" This continued on, through all the categories and amounts for each horse.

 At your table was a form with each horse's name on it with the categories and amounts, and you circled anything that you raised your paddle for. When you were finished for the evening, you took your paper to the Checkout station and gave them your money, check, or credit card.

I loved how this worked and the fact that everyone could contribute, not just those who won an auction for something.

After the fundraiser wrapped up, I walked over to look at the adaptive equipment before before heading home.

 There was quite a range of tack, all designed to help individual children.

 This was such a beautiful saddle that had been modified for use.

 Another view of it.

No stirrups on this piece of equipment, but there's a bar for the rider's hands. I am still puzzling over how this would look in use.

My guess on this one is that it is for a rider with weak abdominal muscles who tends to fall forward. Perhaps the assistants who walk on each side keep the child from tipping backward?

I am no longer directly involved in therapeutic riding like I was when Indy and Sugarfoot were being borrowed, but it sure was nice to be able to support a cause which I strongly believe in.

I told Peggy to be sure to invite me next year.

More Hobby Ephemera Treasures

Now that Pepper is settled in and doing well, I have more time to work on the research I am doing for the Mares & Tales project. Yesterday I opened the third box of ephemera that Nancy Kelly had generously given me. It was full of old hobby publications from the 1990s and early 2000s.

There were a lot of familiar ads in them, like this one from the Bentleys (how I used to pore over their sales lists!) They carried Marney's book when it was first published.

I thought that this ad was a good example of how the introduction of "home computers" (as they were called when people first began buying them) changed and influenced hobby publications. The photo doesn't show it very well, but it is a good example of the dot matrix printing of texts and illustrations.

Paola Groeber took over Hartland and brought it back in the late 1980s only to close a few years later.  "Hartland is back" once again made news a year or so ago when hobbyist Lisa Perkins bought Hartland's molds and began producing them.

There were also some non-hobby magazines in the box. Serious collectors (then and now) often subscribed to magazines that included model horses as part of a larger subject, in this case American made pottery.

 As I flipped through that publication, I found an ad for a familiar place - I had shopped at the Blossom Shop when we lived in Illinois. (According to an online search, the place is still in business twenty-five years later.)

 Some familiar faces appeared in those old magazines, too.

I've been buying my new model horses from Lynn (Luther) Anderson's The Model Trading Post since the early 1990s. That's where I got my Lightning Ridge and Dominante XXIX a few weeks ago.

Karen (Lebeda) Beeson and I met when she was a student at the University of Illinois. I lived in Urbana for twenty-seven years while Craig taught on campus, and it was so much fun to have hobbyists Karen Beeson, Julie (Poremba) Propes, Kay (Biberstein) Schlumpf, and Chris Wallbruch in town during their undergrad days. (Not an undergrad at the time, but Kathy Bateman was there, too.) All became lifelong friends.

 It was interesting to find an ad about the British side of the hobby...

 ... and an article about Project 88, an early attempt to standardize judging for model horse shows. (The project stalled after a time and then disappeared.)

While this box contained some very valuable materials for our collective hobby history, I am going to set it aside for the moment. I am looking for the earliest roots of the hobby and focusing on the 1960s - 1970s. That first box was a treasure trove for those two decades and will be given a very thorough reading. This box is going into storage and will be used when I already to move into researching the 1990s-2000s.

One more box to open. I am looking forward to perusing its contents!

Tail Collateral and Halloween

She may be a beautifully trained guide dog, but she still has a very thick, long tail.

I suspected that something like this might happen eventually. I told her "Fooey!" when it happened (the word she has been trained to understand means that she has done something she should not), picked up my ponies, and gave her a couple of hugs. There was no harm done, either to ponies or to Pepper.

She is becoming our shadow and follows Craig and me wherever we go. Yesterday we were together upstairs in my horse room while I sewed on Susie's quiet book. (Craig was across the hall in his office; she divided her time up equally between the two of us.)

 Like any good guide dog, Pepper went under the table to wait for me to finish.

It made me think of my friend, Kathy, and how Nacho always sits by her feet as she teaches or when she is at a speaking engagement.

It was also Halloween, and we got the first snow of the season.

The view out my front door as the snow begins to fly.

As the afternoon rolled on, the snow continued until we had about a half an inch. Temperatures dropped and the winds picked up enough that a wind advisory was posted. Wind chills were 16 degrees! Not a good night for trick or treaters!

 Pepper with one of her favorite toys, the pink frosted donut, waiting with me for the doorbell to ring.

Our neighborhood gets a lot of trick or treaters. Last year we had bought fourteen bags of candy and we ran out before trick or treating was over. This year we were prepared with nineteen. Sadly, we only used five of those - the weather really cut into the number of children out trick or treating.

The last child to visit us was wearing my favorite costume of the night. (Not hard, when they all seemed to be unicorns or superheroes...)

 A REAL horse! Well, a fake horse that is not a unicorn! (That's its mane sticking up, not a horn.) I told him that I loved his costume and asked if I could take his picture.

Now to figure out what to do with the fifteen bags of candy that are still sitting on my kitchen counter.