Model horses

my longest running miniature obsession

Having spent my childhood making my Barbies run a riding school rather than getting married and having babies, the natural next step was more realistic model horses, and my first one was a gift from American friends which Dad brought back after a work trip.

From about 16 I started adding to my collection, mostly Breyer and some Schleich, and then when I went off to university I threw myself into the hobby properly.

Which involved taking the whole collection back and forth with me to both my second and final year houses. Not sure whether my housemates or my parents who were helping me move were less impressed with this decision!

I was lucky that the late 90s and early 2000s were the gold age for internet forum connections – some lifelong friendships have emerged from Small Horse Talk, a now-defunct forum for all things tiny pony related.

Through that I also discovered photo shows (done by post, not email or upload, which is showing my age!), live shows which I attended with my herd all over the country, a glorious shop called Utterly Horses run by my co-Cahooter Becky in her younger days, and customising.

I attempted everything from painting to resculpting to adding hair, had a wonderful time trying, and concluded I’d like my display & show herd to look like actual horses rather than toddler-painted nightmares, so have stuck to buying & commissioning actual artists ever since.

When I first left uni and moved home, I had a sort of unintentional postal LARP thing going with my closest model horse friend, where we would write each other letters and then also enclose letters from the fictional owners of our model horse stables. (How it took us both until our mid thirties to be diagnosed neurodivergent remains a mystery to me…)

My horse herd then lived in boxes in my long-suffering parents’ garage for several years while I lived in a flat with my best friend, solo in the same flat, and moved to a little house of my own. Finally in 2020 I ordered a big glass cabinet and finally added them to my living room. They make me smile every day and they make visitors and delivery humans do a double take, which I love.

A few models snuck to the new studio with me when I moved there, and somewhere between 2023 and 2025 I started creating composite photos of me in floofy dresses on model horses & unicorns. It was meant as a fun experiment but so many people asked if they could have one that I’m now developing it into an actual shoot experience.

Then in 2026 I headed to my first live show for more than 13 years and I suspect this hobby is about to cycle back into a more prominent position in my life again.

Because the miniature world is always joyful, no matter what is happening in the real world!