We love our huskies but we also love horses. Over the years we’ve had a few, from minis to full sized Arabs and quarter horses. It was partly why we bought the house we’re in now; we have livestock rights and can keep horses, chickens, cows, sled dogs, etc.

We’ve had some beauties, like Missy and Hobo:

Now we just collect the kind that don’t eat hay, as we can easily afford both them and the pups (since the price of hay has tripled since we moved here!).

Of course most collectible horses aren’t real. I mean, they’re real as in they do exist, but most of the ones you find at the antiques store or estate sales or on Ebay are replicas, like this one that was given to us by a friend years ago:

It’s great for decoration but not as an investment.

Either way, real or not, they are lovely to look at and they collect dust just the same. The only difference is whether or not you plan to use it to help fund your retirement and/or whether or not you are getting ripped off by unscrupulous sellers who are passing off replicas as authentic antiques.

There are websites that can help, but some of these knock offs can be extremely difficult to differentiate from the originals, like with our horse tricycle.

It has a lot of the hallmarks of an original like glass eyes, old style screws, a leather saddle, lots of wear (including a rather shoddy tail replacement) but again, reproduction artists are very, very good at faking these sort of things. When compared to photos taken of the originals, it’s hard to tell if it’s from the Victorian era:

There were so many styles from back then and finding one from old photos like these that looks just like ours has proven futile. Still, we do love it, but we kind of wish we knew if it was really real. And we kinda wish we still had Missy and Hobo around to snip some tail hair from so we can fix that ratty rope someone stuck on it.

Luckily there are scrupulous horse hair dealers online so I ordered some and it is just the perfect shade:

There will be plenty left over so I may need to get creative and figure out some crafty things to do with the rest!