Breyer Profiles: Bet Yer Blue Boons
Bet Yer Blue Boons is an American Quarter Horse mare who, along with her rider Lindy Burch, 
earned the highest score ever awarded in the sixty year history of the National Horse Cutting Association World Finals. Bet Yer Blue Boons is a red roan mare with a champion pedigree, and she and her rider practically qualify as Quarter Horse royalty.
The American Quarter Horse is a short, stocky breed developed in America as a cattle working horse. It is named "quarter" for its speed over the quarter mile - as a working breed that has to sprint, stop on a dime and turn, the American Quarter Horse has a remarkable speed over short distances.
The American Quarter Horse also has the largest breed registry in the world, with over four million registered horses, and an unknown number of unregistered Quarter Horse and Quarter Horse mixes. It certainly qualifies as the most popular horse in America, and is (numerically) one of the most popular horse breeds in the entire world.
This history and its physical characteristics make the American Quarter Horse a natural for the sport of cutting, where the horse and rider are challenged to separate (or "cut") one cow from a herd of cattle. To complete the challenge, they have to keep the "cut" cow away from the rest of its herd for a set period of time.
Cutting is a very challenging sport, because cows - being a herding animal - do not want to leave their flock, and desperately wish to return once they have been separated! Cutting requires strength, agility, and fast reflexes on the part of both the horse and the rider. One of the amazing things about cutting is that once the horse and rider have picked out a cow, the rider loosens their grip on the reins, and the horse itself is the one who keeps the cow from returning to its herd.
As with many other western riding and "rodeo" sports, cutting is a male-dominated sport, among both horses and riders. Geldings are frequently considered the "default horse," in the same way that the "default gender" for rodeo riders is male. Therefore it was doubly exciting when a female rider, riding a mare, won the National Horse Cutting Association World Finals.
You can see Lindy Burch and Bet Yer Blue Boons at work in the video on this page. It's an advertisement for some kind of dietary supplement, but the video of Bet Yer Blue Boons working cattle is just amazing.
The Bet Yer Blue Boons model itself is from the Roxy mold, which was created in 2009 for the BreyerFest Celebration Model "Whizards Baby Doll Roxy." This is a unique mold, in that I believe it is the only model of a horse in motion where three front feet are on the ground, and only one rear foot is in the air. I like the mold a lot, it shows an easy grace and speed, and Bet Yer Blue Boons' unique red roan coloring is rendered very nicely.
