I had Ponyitis.
My bedroom was filled with Thelwell themed wallpaper, bedding, curtains etc etc. Books on ponies and horses, Pony club manuals, storybooks of girls and ponies. My favorite clothing was jodphurs and paddock boots.
Every weekend my Mum dropped me off at the local stables to be a helper. There my friends, fellow pony-addicts, and I mucked out stalls, perfected the steaming muck heaps into Castle like structures, hand raked the menage, polished the mirrors, swept the cobblestoned yards, raked the parking areas, cleaned all the tack and equipment, carried the water buckets to be filled, and groomed all the ponies for their lessons. We fed them polo mints, bought with our weekly pocket money allowance.
We were allowed to catch the ponies from the fields and ride them bareback in a halter (with our helmets on) back to the stables. This was, of course, after we had caught them. Usually a few of them would rather stay in the field than be ridden in lessons. It was our job to convince them to come in!
We stalked them around the fields with the ropes " hidden" behind our backs. Sometimes they tried to bite us or run us over, but we didn't care, we lived for those little, scruffy ponies.
Oh, how we loved those ponies!
Every year my parents would try to go on a trip to somewhere warm, since Great Britain is not the sunniest place to live. They visited Greece or Turkey or Spain.
I never went.
I always went to the local stables for a week long riding holiday. For a whole week you got to own one of those naughty ponies! Taking daily lessons, stable management lectures, group hacks where you stopped for lunch. We would take care of their every need and prepare for the end of the weeks competition. It was heaven!
When I was 13, I finally got my first pony. A beautiful 14.2hh Anglo Arab mare named Peaches and Creme. She was a light colored Palomino with dapples and a silky matching cream colored mane and tail. She was 4, very green and she was going through a terrible bucking streak.
On my Trial ride she spooked at some blue barrels in the field and bucked me off! It was love at first ride! I was getting my own pony!
I had taken lessons on her mother Lady Peach for a few years and had been terrified of her, she did not canter. She galloped, everywhere! My instructor made me ride her in my weekly lesson for 10 weeks straight, untilI I was able to control her on the canter around the field and over fences. Usually it ended up with me crouched on her neck with 10 yards of skid marks in the grass at the gate. But finally I became a rider instead of a passenger and mastered that nutty mare!
Creme and I had the best time, riding for hours around the local bridleways, woods and lakes. I did get bucked off a lot though! A few times after a bucking spree I hitched a ride down the high street with kind stranger, sobbing out of frustration with my crop in my hand.
Asking the kind driver to please "follow that pony! " She always ended up in the local retirees vegetable gardens, eating all their lettuce, right behind our house.
Once she bucked me off in the High Street in front of an oncoming bus, but we both survived and I got better at staying on, so she finally stopped trying to unseat me!
My sisters had ponies too Tina,Flame and Shuffles and we rode in the early mornings before school via the street lamps and for hours during the Summer holidays. We also met a few other friends with ponies on our adventures!
I have always had a soft spot for ponies and over the years have trained quite a few. My two lesson ponies for years were Dixie and Skippy. Dixie was a very opinionated little mare, part Welsh, Mini, Shetland and Arabian. I got her when she was a yearling. I bought Skippy when he was 11 and he was worth his weight in Gold. He was slow and steady, Dixie was fast and bouncy. I taught so many children on those ponies and they went to the local shows. I have trained Welsh ponies, Shetland, Connemara, Paint, Swedish Gotland, Heinz 57 ponies and POA's.
I also train Amateur riders on their ponies too. One of my clients has a wonderful Hafflinger pony who is such a reliable mare but at the same time fun to train and learn on. She can teach lead-line beginners safely and then train her Amateur owner how to do a leg yield or shoulder in. Ponies get a bad rap as being so naughty but they have an intelligence and sure footedness that is hard to find in a horse.
Have you ridden a pony lately?
