Paint Horses are a part of our lives, from the show ring to the cattle pen to the fireplace mantle.

Fireplace mantle?

Over the years many Paint Horses have been immortalized as model horses. To find out the stories behind a few of the painted model stars, the Journal chatted up the owners of four real-life Breyer® models.

Sam I Am
The 1982 bay overo stallion entered the Hendersons’ barn almost by chance. He earned a Register of Merit (ROM) in reining when the discipline was just entering its heyday. He survived a broken leg and went on to celebrate his 20th birthday in the company of thousands..

Sam I Am is a big little horse.

“He was not named after Dr. Seuss!” says owner Beverley Henderson of Jackson, Ohio.

Henderson was a friend of the stallion’s former owner, Edna Burton-Miller, whose grandfather had nicknamed her Sam. In 1982, Henderson was admiring one of Burton-Miller’s horses, a bay overo colt she describes as “the cutest little thing I’d seen.”

The colt soon appeared in the Hendersons’ barn, and Burton-Miller refused to take him back. She took a saddle home instead.

It was Henderson’s husband, Jerry, who suggested changing the colt’s name—originally Calico Sample—to honor their friend. The colt became Sam I Am.

At the same time, Jerry noticed a great craze of the 1980s: Cabbage Patch Kids®, which came with their very own adoption certificates. Beverley contacted Breyer Animal Creations® with an idea modeled after the trendy dolls—why not create a Breyer model of “Sam” and let buyers own a small share in him, too?

The idea took off. Produced in 1984, the models of Sam came with a registration certificate.

“Everyone who bought one of those models owns a little part of Sam now,” Henderson says.

Sam had more personality than he seemed to know what to do with, but Henderson doesn’t seem to mind. She laughs about his pranks and says that despite his silliness, he’s a solid mount.

“You could lope on him from here to California and back,” she said.

Sam earned a ROM in reining as a 5-year-old, but he soon faced a greater challenge. At age 8, he broke a hind leg just above the hock. Despite his usual antics, he remained calm throughout the ordeal, even for the six months he spent in a sling. Henderson says he has, however, shown a clear preference for being outside a stall ever since.

Sam sired just one foal—a “quiet-minded” 1985 sorrel overo mare named Eeka Adeca (“red deer” in Comanche, says Henderson). Like her sire, the mare earned a ROM in reining. One of her foals, Trash A Smoking, carried the reining tradition to a third generation, earning an APHA reining ROM and multiple NRHA reining titles under the Hendersons’ daughter, Beth.

Sam, meanwhile, continued serving as a personal mount of the Henderson family. He was still working under saddle when he was invited to the 2002 BreyerFest® at the Kentucky Horse Park, an annual gathering of model horse enthusiasts.

“He performed two or three times a day,” Henderson said. “He could still spin some then.”

Photos of Sam in Lexington, wearing the signature blue BreyerFest cooler, still cross the Internet. His Breyer models, too, are still traded and shown, some 25 years after they were introduced. Sam, meanwhile, is enjoying a well-deserved retirement.

It’s a long-lasting tribute to a long-living horse named in honor of a long-time family friend.

Leahs Fancy Chick
 “A girl among men.” That’s how Anita Horn of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, describes her 1993 buckskin tobiano mare, Leahs Fancy Chick.

“Fancy” has done what few mares have achieved. She not only ventured into the male-dominated roping pen, but she beat the boys at their own game.

Foaled in 1993, Fancy is a “big, strong, physical mare,” Horn says.

When the Horns first bought her as a young prospect, they considered training her for reining. But after an early accident, they instead sent her to roping trainer Steve Orth. Horn recalls that Orth said Fancy was a natural, and the mare proved him right.

She earned her first three ROMs as a 4-year-old in heading, heeling and steer stopping, followed by a ROM in tie-down roping the next year. Over the next two years, Fancy earned three Superior titles, two world championships and three reserve world championships—all in Open cattle events. In 1999, she became the first mare to earn the Oscar Crigler Cattle Award, presented at the APHA World Show.

Fancy’s Amateur show record—accrued with Horn’s husband, Hoby—reads much the same, with three ROMs, three Superiors and world championships in Amateur heading and heeling.

People noticed Fancy’s talent in the cattle pen, but they sometimes missed a key fact.

“I did have people ride up and ask me what the stud fee was on her,” Horn recalled with a laugh. The unofficial rule was that nobody takes a mare into the cattle pen.

Horn says she thinks Fancy’s talent and her unusual buckskin tobiano coloring are what caught Breyer’s attention.

“They contacted me [about doing a model],” she said.

She couldn’t have predicted what would unfold, but Horn didn’t question it.

“When you’re fortunate enough to have a horse of that caliber, things just happen,” Horn explained, “and you just go along with it.”

The enthusiasm with which model horse fans welcomed Fancy at the 2000 BreyerFest, though, did surprise her. That weekend was rainy, she says, but people stood under umbrellas for hours waiting to get their models signed.

Accompanying Fancy to BreyerFest was her 3-month-old filly.

“Everyone was amazed by how quiet, how gentle they were,” said Horn.

BreyerFest participants were invited to name Fancy’s filly, who shared her famous dam’s buckskin tobiano coloring; Breyer introduced a special limited-run model of the filly.

“My daughters and I chose the final name, Leahs Fancy Breyer,” Horn said.

So enthusiastic were the fans, Horn says, that it was hard to leave the Kentucky Horse Park when BreyerFest ended.

“People kept coming up and asking, ‘Please, could you sign just one more?’ “ said Horn.

Fancy returned to the Horns’ ranch and retired to broodmare duties. Of her five foals, two have APHA show records.

Horn says the Breyer experience, and Fancy’s achievements, have been amazing.

“We’ve met so many wonderful people,” she said. “There’s so much camaraderie in the show pen; even your competitors recognize a great horse.”

Today, the mare lives what Horn calls a grand life. It’s a good thing no one told Fancy that mares aren’t cut out for cattle work. She wouldn’t have believed them anyhow.

She’s that kind of girl.

Sacred Indian
When Karen Banister of Brighton, Colorado, picked a colt out of a Texas horse herd in 1986, she wasn’t thinking about legends or legacies. She wasn’t even thinking about Paint Horses. She was looking for hunter/jumper prospects.

But one all-white colt with a distinctive black medicine hat marking stood out—in part because he was at the front of the other horses as they raced up to her. Although other people tried to talk her out of buying the colt, she refused to listen.

Two fast years later, the 1985 bay tovero stallion—registered as Sacred Indian but nicknamed “Hatter” after Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat character—earned ROMs in hunter under saddle and jumping.

Over the next seven years, he added nine more ROMs in events that ranged from Western pleasure to working hunter. By the time he retired, he had amassed 11 ROMs, three Superiors, three world championships, two reserve championships and one national championship. He tied for the High-Point English Horse title at the 1990 World Show and was named Reserve All-Around Horse at the 1992 World Show.

Showing wasn’t enough for Hatter, though. He raced, too.

“Two months after he won a national championship, he was racing against Quarter Horses,” Banister said. “He had 30 days of race conditioning, and we had three weeks of the race season left.”

Hatter raced three times during those three weeks, placing third once and winning one race.

Even more impressive is the little-known fact that Hatter earned his accolades with vision in only one eye.

“When he was 18 months old he had an eye infection,” Banister explained. “The medication he was on cleared up the eye infection, but it left him blind in his left eye.”

Hatter’s adventure as a Breyer horse started when Banister received a letter from Breyer letting her know that someone had suggested him as a model. She signed the paperwork and didn’t think much about it, she says. A couple months later, a local toy store called.

“They wanted to set an appointment for Hatter to come and sign some models,” said Banister. When she told the caller she wasn’t sure whether Hatter would be made into a model, they said, “ ‘No, we have a book and you’re in it.’ “

Hatter attended BreyerFest 1998, an event Banister says could unnerve even a seasoned show horse. For model signing sessions, the (live) horses and their owners are positioned at designated spots.

Then, “someone blows a whistle and everyone comes stampeding to the horses,” waving their models in rattling plastic bags. Banister laughs at the memory.

Hatter, who died in 2006 at age 20, sired 335 Paint foals. More than 100 of those foals have show records, and they include the earners of 33 world championships and 39 reserve world championships.

But beyond her stallion’s breeding record, beyond his talent and versatility, Banister says, were his friendship, his heart and his mind.

“Hatter was a horse ahead of his time,” she said.

Silky Keno
Sometimes a horse is more than a horse.

That’s the case with Sherry Carr in Winder, Georgia. In 1991, she bought a weanling black overo filly named Silky Keno. Something about “Keno’s” blue eyes, serene expression and striking presence, on top of flashy overo coloring, caught her eye and touched her heart at the same time.

Carr needed that energy and inspiration. She was recovering from advanced ovarian cancer, and the filly offered her a respite from her fight.

That close relationship didn’t keep Keno out of the show ring. In APHA’s Paint Alternative Competition program, she earned a Certificates of Recognition and Certificate of Achievement for in-hand events in 1991 and 1992, followed by a Certificate of Recognition in Western pleasure in 1994. In the APHA show arena, Keno earned ROMs in Western pleasure, barrel racing and pole bending. She also competed in hunter under saddle, reining, trail and Western riding. Video footage of Keno shows the same relaxed look and smooth athleticism, whether she’s jogging down the rail in a Western pleasure class or blazing around a set of barrels.

But Keno wasn’t done yet. The mare who had buoyed her owner’s spirits during cancer treatments grew up to offer something even bigger.

“When Keno was a baby, I sent Breyer a letter about her being an ambassador for the American Cancer Society,” Carr explained. “I loved being able to give something back.”

Partial proceeds from that model, introduced in 2001, were donated to the American Cancer Society. That same year, Keno attended BreyerFest with her colt, Shadow Of Blue, at her side. A special edition BreyerFest model of the colt was created just for participants.

Carr describes the Breyer experience as a rich one.

“I’ve met so many great people who are still great friends today,” she said.

After the Breyer models were crafted, the Peter Stone Company® made its own model of Keno. That model holds special meaning for Carr. It commemorates her late husband, John Tuvell, who was killed in a 2003 car accident.

More Stone models followed. Legend Of Atahri, a 2002 medicine hat overo stallion Carr bred to Keno, was one of the models; he is now a police horse with the Los Angeles Police Department. Other models paid tribute to some of Keno’s foals—Shadow Of Blue, Echo In The Night and Ruby Keno.

Today, Keno is retired from work and breeding. The mare’s greatest joy, Carr says, is “babysitting” children at family gatherings. Although her bloodlines and show-ring record would create a brisk market for foals, Carr has been conservative about how often the mare is bred.

She’s so much more than a broodmare to me,” said Carr.

Carr’s life today is simpler, too; she recently celebrated 20 years of being cancer-free, but she has not forgotten her fight with the deadly disease. By increasing awareness and generating income for research, she hopes a cure will one day be discovered.