When we began the epic task of finding a first horse for our four- and five-year-old son and daughter, I was bound and determined that it would come in a small package. The undeniable fact that there is less distance for a child to fall from a pony versus a 15-hand horse was foremost in my mind. I also promised myself that I would keep in mind these three key words as we began our search for a suitable pony for the kids–Temperament. Temperament. Temperament. I vowed to make it my mantra and to not deviate. No matter how cute any of the little critters were.
Now a pony with an excellent, even, and reliable temperament is just about as mythic as the Holy Grail, unless you have several thousands of dollars to spend. And my epic quest included a modest budget. $1,000 or less, to be exact. Many ponies, because of their diminutive size, have had years of handling by little children (think of how some of them tease their dogs and cats), and the petite equines are either spoiled, or ruined, or both. Or more.
I had no idea where our pony quest would lead us.
As the first seller on the weekend’s list led a licorice-colored Shetland pony out of her barn, I was off to the races, imagining my children cantering around the backyard on the picture-perfect pony like Rhett and Scarlett’s Bonnie Blue in Gone With the Wind. When I asked the adorable mare’s owner if I could ride her for a couple of turns around the arena, she looked mildly surprised, but when I told her the ages of our children, she agreed that a test-drive was a good idea.
So I swung my leg over the Shetland pony’s back, grabbed a handful of her deliciously thick and glossy mane, gathered up the lead rope that was fastened to the halter rings in both hands, and asked my tiny mount to move forward. No response. I squeezed and released, very lightly with my legs. No response except the thwack of her wavy tail against her hindquarters. (A clear expression of equine annoyance.) I clucked with my tongue, three times in quick succession–at which point the pony princess swung her head around, tiny ears pinned tight against her head, glaring at me with an evil eye, and sunk her teeth into my thigh.
Later that afternoon, a man hauled from his lopsided shed a terrified-looking sorrel gelding not quite 14 hands high, manhandling the pony like it was some kind of wild bronco. And when he turned the pony around to tie him to a fence post, I was startled to see that the little fellow’s lower jaw was jutting out like a bulldog’s, bottom teeth protruding. The man hadn’t told me about this when I inquired after the pony over the telephone. “Broken jaw,” he grumbled at me, almost daring me with his glowering eyes to say something about it, go ahead, his swagger taunted, as all of a sudden he was hollering loud enough to set that pony back on it’s haunches, “Hey you kids! You get back inside that house right now!” to the three or four children who were half hanging out of the open windows of the doublewide, anxious to see the strangers in their driveway.
I cast a beseeching look at my husband. You know, the man who can read my mind. He knew I wanted to rescue that pony right out of there, right then, as quickly as possible, but he took me by the arm, nodded at the man who’d just tossed a saddle on the down-and-out pony’s back like a fifty-pound bag of sand, and said, “Let’s go.” As we got back in the truck he reminded me that I can’t save all of them.
I still think about that pony sometimes.
At the end of the day it was starting to spit tiny flakes of snow, and we found ourselves at the foot of The Manzano Mountains, eye-to-eye with a grizzled, blue-eyed, polka-dotted Pony of the Americas (POA) in all of his furry winter glory. The wooly beast looked more like a bear than any equine I’d ever seen. Red and gray and black and white with one blue eye, the pony reminded me of one of those modern artist’s paintings. You know, where the creative genius listens to esoteric music and throws bucket after bucket of paint at the canvas to just kind of see what they get?
He’s twenty something,” his owner said, although she didn’t know the equine senior citizen’s exact age. A registered nurse, all warmth and smiles, she’d introduced us to each and every horse on the place before we met this old guy–all well taken care of Spanish mares, each just a little on the zaftig side.
She told us that the pony’s name was Rocket Blue Eye. Her five-year-old son named him that when they brought him home. “This pony carried that kid for miles in the backcountry,” the woman told us, “before he became more interested in mini bikes than horses, that is.” She scratched the droll pony’s neck and ruffled his salt and pepper mane, none of which he seemed to mind. “I just haven’t had the heart to sell him, but I really can’t afford to feed him through the winter.”
The Rocket Man and I had a successful, albeit choppy, short-strided trot around the paddock. The old pony was all business, and I did my best not to fall off of his bony back as we rounded a corner together–which would have been really embarrassing since I’d just finished telling his owner that I’d been a horsewoman nearly all of my 45 years–but possibly a good way to gauge the exact distance to the ground. The pony’s ears were short and stout with an impish flair, although one stayed trained on me during the entire ride, as if asking me just exactly what we were going to be doing next and was he doing alright.
And I knew I’d found exactly I’d been searching for for weeks. A furry, polka-dotted, blue-eyed Holy Grail of a pony. You never know what kind of package one of those little equines is going to come in. The words temperament, temperament, temperament rung in my ears with each hoofbeat. I knew he’d be safe for my children, just as he had been for his previous five-year-old charge.
The nurse and her husband delivered the Rocket Man to our house the following week, at which point the old Pony of the Americas assumed the name Thor (for the God of Thunder, in honor of his handsome white stockings and feathery fetlocks) and began to teach our kids things we would never have expected, taking them on the epic adventure of a lifetime.
But that’s another story.
