007 Breyer Benefit Horse
Every year, Breyer makes a new benefit model to help a breed of horses.

The Nokota horse is a rare breed descended from wild horses that roamed the Little Missouri badlands in southwestern North Dakota for more than 100 years. Descended from early ranch and Indian horses, including horses the U.S. Army confiscated from Sitting Bull's people after they surrendered in 1881, the wild horses were accidentally enclosed within the boundaries of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the late 1940s. When the badlands herds were removed from the park and sold in the 1980s, brothers Frank and Leo Kuntz of Linton, North Dakota, purchased many of them. Together with Castle McLaughlin, a graduate student and park ranger who researched the history of the horses, they developed the Nokota name and breed registry. The Nokota Horse Conservancy was founded in 1999 to preserve and protect this unique and historic mustang strain. Now, you can help this Honorary State Equine of North Dakota.

A portion of the proceeds of Breyer's 2007 Benefit Model will be donated to the Nokota Horse Conservancy for the purchase of land, feed, water and shelter.

Nokota horses share a set of physical and behavioral characteristics that reflect their known history since the late 1800s. Their ancestors include early Native American and frontier ranch horses bred for use as war horses, buffalo runners, and all-purpose saddle horses. Many of those horses were descended from Spanish colonial stock. During most of the twentieth century, they lived wild in the rugged Little Missouri badlands, an area of rugged topography, erratic climatic conditions and long, sub-zero winters. During that time, their survival depended on avoiding capture by humans. These physical and social pressures combined to form durable, athletic, intelligent horses.

Nokota Horses are characterized by a square-set, angular frame, tapering musculature, V-Shaped front end, angular shoulders with prominent withers, distinctly sloped croup, low tail set, strong bone, legs, and hooves, and "Spanish colonial" pigmentation. Their ears are often slightly hooked at the tips, and many have feathered fetlocks. Nokotas tend to mature slowly, and some exhibit ambling gaits.

The overall type is somewhat larger and rangier than the Spanish colonial horses of the southern Plains ("mustangs") while retaining typical Spanish coat colors (especially roan, frame overo, and dun) and other points of conformation. During North Dakota's open range days, ranchers deliberately crossed Spanish colonial and "native" (wild and/or Indian mares) with larger stallions, hoping to preserve the agility and stamina of Southwestern strains while increasing their size and strength. The result was an all-purpose ranch horse that could be both driven and ridden and required little care.

Official Website: www.nokotahorseconservancy.com
Buy Nokota Here: http://www.e-modelhorses.com/pc-1063-4179-nokota-horse-2007-benefit-breyer-model.html