Day Drinker

     I am not an OF collector. I have said that often enough, and I really do mean it. Breyer has really stepped up their game in the past several years and the horses have gotten better and better, and more desirable in my eyes. Some  of what I really don't like about OF models is that I can't fix them, because then they would no longer be OF. I am a prepper (even though I hate prepping) and seeing seams and weird lumps, and not being able to do anything about it, really kind of hurts me. Some people love the hunt for the "perfect" OF model. I am not one of those people. So I have shelf models, most of which I have lukewarm feelings about since, to me, they are not special horses. Performance models are... well, for performance. They don't have to be perfect models, they just need to be good for performance. That is most of the criteria for me to want to keep an OF model in my collection. Most of the live shows I went to in 2019, the last year I attended live shows, were for OF models only. Which meant if I wanted to show in performance, I needed to have OF models in my collection. And let's be honest, I always want to show in performance. 

     Anyway, today we are going to talk about Day Drinker, who is my Breyerfest store special model Hal. Because of the names of many of my horses (Bootlegger, Day Drinker, Three Day Bender, etc.) people might assume I am an alcoholic. That's not the case. I literally go months, and sometimes years, without having a drink. I can take it or leave it. I just find the names funny. There was one year I named a whole bunch of horses after different brands of whiskey. But back to Day Drinker. I showed him once, in August of 2019, at the Fun in the Sun show I talked about recently in the post about Lilith. Day drinker showed in the western division only. And while he did not do badly, he didn't do amazing things. I put him in other stockwork, with my working cowhorse entry that isn't perfect with any of the horses I have because I really need a cow in a slight turn, who is on the right lead. 

     I put him in games, where he got third, potentially because this game has been seen a lot and is not overly creative. 

      I put him in trail, where he got 4th place, with a slightly better than boring poles entry. Though it was not much better than boring, and the poles are actually super far apart (though I may have measured them, and they may actually be accurate.)

      And Day Drinker got 2nd in Other Western with his Extreme Cowboy cowboy curtain entry.  It is entirely possible I put him in some other classes where he didn't place at all. I don't remember and I am not motivated enough to go and look it up. 

       Some horses don't show well under particular judges. Some don't show well right away and it takes a bit to find their groove. I have plenty of horses that show very well, pretty consistently, and since I am not an OF collector, I thought about selling Hal. I am pretty sure he was even up for sale, but that was when the OF market was normal. When even semi-rare models would not always sell quickly (or at all). 

      Anyway, Day Drinker is still with me and will stay with me forever, unless some unseen circumstance forces me to sell almost everything. He lives in a box and I see him once in a while, but that's it. So why do a keep an OF model I don't really show and I almost never see? Because he was the last model I got from my friend Pat. Pat and I had sort of a standing Breyerfest trade deal going on. In 2018 I traded Pat a doll for the Breyerfest Crystal horse and Ichabad Crane, who I show consistently and do quite well with. 

     So I still have a horse that I got from Pat in a trade, why do I feel I need to keep Hal? I have no idea. Maybe because he is the last one I got from her. Maybe if I ever find a tack set that Pat made (I am still actively looking for a set since I sold both the sets she made for me years ago). Maybe it was just one of those weird 2020 thoughts that I will feel differently about on a different day. But for now, Day Drinker will stay with me. At least for now, he reminds me of Pat.