Give Me a "P"

      In honor of Karen Crossley, a Canadian hobbyist and active blogger who unexpectedly passed away in July, Lynn Isenbarger, Jennifer Buxton and I are finishing Karen's alphabetical tour of her collection. Today's letter is P.

       Sometimes it is hard to do my part for this series. I don't own a lot of horses, and not all of my horses have names. My performance horses have names, and some of the minis and micros, but most of the smaller stuff just hangs out. I have noticed though, that while I might struggle to come up with horses I can talk about, when I have a horse that matches the letter, I usually have a good story to go with it. Today is no different. Today we are going to talk about Pacific Redeemer. 

     Pacific Redeemer is a Little Man Mango resin sculpted by Morgan Kilbourn and painted by Meghan Lorei. He's adorable and very well done, but he is a sleepy foal, so he is basically a halter horse. And I am not really a halter shower. 

       Not to say that I have not shown him in halter, I absolutely have...

         But mostly Pacific Redeemer is extra special because of what, or really who, he represents. This is P.R. (Pacific Redeemer) who was the first horse Travis rode in therapeutic riding. Sure, my model P.R. is the wrong color and a foal, while the real P.R. was a chestnut old man when we knew him, but he was a super special horse. Travis loved riding P.R. They had a nice time together. 

     P.R. was so gentle and good with people that he often got to wander the farm. I once caught him in the barn isle trying to eat a whole bucket of cookies that had been left out. I told him no, sorry, and I put the cookies away. He forgave me. He was also the easiest horse to catch. Just walk up to him, hold out the halter. and he would put his head in. 

     There was also this day that Travis got to ride P.R. without a leader. That was not normally something that was done. But Travis was a pretty good rider and P.R. was a really good horse. 

      These days (model) Pacific Redeemer mostly hangs out on my shelf and looks cute. The funny thing is, even though he is a halter horse, he is a horse I have never considered selling. I have had to sell plenty over the years, but P.R. was never on that list. He has some graying on his mane and tail, either his color has faded in a weird way or he needs a very deep and careful bath. But he is still awesome, and he even got to show in performance. Here he is with Enchanted Eve in a scene that I titled "The Babysitter". I thought they looked good together.

     P.R. also entered Tiny Performance in the Pandemic Performance Panorama, which I felt worked because he is a foal. Here he is dreaming of being a grown up horse in a show. It's funny how a real-life chestnut horse can be painted as a bay on a model and can then dream of being grown as a mare. I won't limit him. I should have put his dream self as the real P.R. That would have been cool, even if it only made sense to me. 

     Pacific Redeemer is a cool little horse and important to me in a lot of ways. He was sculpted by my friend Morgen (and is so cute!) and was the first horse Meghan painted for me (she also painted Bootlegger). He also represents one of the best therapy horses I ever knew. Even if he represents him badly.