I’ve been thinking about retiring Poppy for a few months now – she’s still seems happy and health but at a very decent age of 27, she’s quite slow now and likes to stop a bit too much part way through a pony party! I’ve been putting it off as Poppy is just SO perfect for little ones – calm, quiet, reliable, fluffy – and it’s like finding a needle in a haystack finding really good little ponies!
A chance post on facebook from someone we’d bought a horse from a couple of years ago piqued my interest and I messaged to see if she thought Anni would be happy and safe as a pony party pony. They are a lovely family who foster children so there are ALWAYS kids around their ponies. They breed Shetland ponies and suggested there were 3 that I might like to consider – would I like to pop over to Anglesey to have a look!
Temperament is key with ponies who work with little children and I know from experience that size can make the difference between a 3 year old being confident enough to ride and not, so it was important that any pony was no bigger than Poppy and was calm and unflappable.
So hubby and I hotfooted it over to Anglesey on Friday, trailer in tow(!) to meet 14 adorable Shetland ponies (including 2 foals who were absolutely tiny, very fluffy and adorable!). The two other ponies in consideration were slightly taller than Anni (even 3” can make a big difference when you’re only 2 or 3!) so they weren’t for me at this point. So I spent a little time just testing Anni out – saddle on, trotted up and down, leant all over her, took my jumper off (v scary!)
She seemed very chilled so we popped her into the trailer (adapted for travelling tiny ponies!) and brought her home!
Moving home is a big deal for equines – they’ve got to settle into their new environment, figure out who’ll be their new BFF and get used to a new owner. My trick is usually to ensure there’s lots of food available so that the new one isn’t over crowded. There’s always some fireworks and jostling for position – that’s all natural, if a little worrying to us humans. Almost always it’s for show, so the squeals and kicks don’t make contact or cause any harm, though a couple of years ago we did have to separate two of our big ones, leaving a paddock between them, as they looked like they were going to really damage each other. They’re best of friends now but it did take 9 months before we could risk putting them in a paddock together.
Anni has attached herself to Tess – which is interesting as I’ve heard somewhere that in the wild equines tend to buddy up with pals of a similar colour. (not sure if that’s proven tho?) Both Tess and Anni are black. Sounds adorable, however she follows Tess around constantly – a bit like a toddler or a cocker spaniel (if you have one you’ll understand!) and I thing at times Tess is trying to shrug her off – though it’s great for Tess’ waistline!
I’ll spend some quality time with Anni each day – not particularly doing anything just being in the paddock, finding out where she likes to be scratched and maybe taking her for little walks to somewhere with some tasty grass.
When I feel she’s feeling a bit more settled I’ll up the challenges to see how well she copes with the things visitors do – twizzle umbrella’s round, take coats off near her, kids moving their weight on her back, people brushing behind her bottom, as well as taking her over my obstacle course.
Hopefully I have a small rider lined up to test her ridden skills out too.
Once she’s been fully road tested we’ll introduce her to small groups and she can be in the orchard observing and assessing when we have parties. We can then start using her for parties.
How long will that take?
Well that depends entirely on Anni’s nature and my ability to get her to trust me and introduce things to her in a way that she feels comfortable to accept them. We’ve always said that until you’ve looked after an equine for a few months you don’t REALLY know them inside out. I feel I should be a little quicker at assessing equines now having studied equine behaviour for some time now but the relationship just evolves over time – sometimes equines are very open, sometimes they hide their feelings so you’ve no idea if they’re just going along with things or actively participating and enjoying time with you! The latter is where I want to get to with my equines – where there’s trust and they’re happy to offer what I ask and enjoy most of it (sometimes we all have to do stuff we don’t want to!)