The Ponies

The Ponies

This project is as much about ponies, as about people. Those who use the service, give the ponies a purpose and a future. So the ponies we want are the ones, almost by definition, which the horsey world don't want, ie the ones who need us.

Traditional equestrian activities all want ponies to go out boldly on their own. Forward going is their description of an animal that is always ready to accelerate. We want ponies who feel safer being led, whose default position is stop, or more likely graze. We don't care about high stepping, bouncy, snorting, lunatics. The concept of a fiery steed is an anathema to us. We want the boring, the slow, the halt and the lame, the ones everyone else sends for catmeat are just what we need. And with a bit of love and affection, quite a few of them become quite keen, handsome and enthusiastic, which suits our braver, more adventurous users.

If you have twenty ponies and a competition, you have 19 losers. But if you have twenty ponies and this project, you have twenty winners, and loads of happy people. Some ponies will be young, tough and bouncy and will have a whale of a time taking injured army veterans at stupid speeds across impossible terrain. Some ponies will be old, or weak, or disabled and will be happier being scratched behind the ears by children in wheelchairs, and taking people for gentle walks round the park.

People with mobility issues don't fall into neat categories, therefore a bunch of ponies that don't fit into neat categories will be just what we need. As the ponies mature, they will change, and their job can change to suit them.

I like working with small ponies because they are more inclusive. Even big tough hairy bikers like small ponies. But not everybody feels comfortable with large horses. I know they scare me.

Ponies will not be excluded from the project on the basis of race, breed, colour, sex, shape, or who their parents may or may not be. We will treat people the same way.

Training Ponies

Training ponies is easy if you want them to do something useful. The ponies strength is strength. If I want a pony to take a person in a wheelchair up a mountain, or across a soft sandy beach, it is because I have no intention of trying to push the wheelchair myself. The pony is there to save me effort. So all I need to do is to lead it while it does the hard work.

Leading animals is easy, people with dogs do it all the time. With a herd animal it is even easier. Herd animals follow a leader, because the lead is the place of danger from surprises. Lions ambush from in front, because ambushing doesn't work from behind.

Leadership and ambushing are both positional. They are done from in front. Lots of things can be done from behind a horse, but leadership and ambushing aren't in the list. When you walk in front you are leading, and when you walk into an ambush, you, not the pony, are the lion's lunch. This is the simple explanation of why a pony follows a leader. The pony isn't stupid.

Training a pony to be safe is easy in some ways, impossible in others. Ponies are placid herd living vegetarians. They don't stalk their prey and kill with a savage twist of the victim's neck, unlike man's best friend. To turn a pony or horse into a killer takes work but being kind to it, keeping it happy and active does the opposite.

Ponies and horses are a prey species. Their response to anything strange is to get ready to run. If it gets too close, or is too strange, they run. Evolving on open plains, they don't run to safety, but from danger, so destination isn't factored in. They just run away.

No form of training will remove this behaviour. You can reduce it, but in extremis a pony or horse will run. Imagine someone shoots the pony in the backside with an air rifle, unlikely, but possible. Try working out a training scheme to cope with the scenario that does not involve shooting the pony to get it used to being shot, (to which the RSPCA would quite reasonably object), or training it that the punishment for running is totally savage.

Not only is this cruel, I can prove it doesn't work. In war, horses had their lower jaws shot off and didn't stop running. No bit, however savage is more vicious than a bullet through the bone, which demonstrably doesn't stop them. Only loss of blood stops a terrified running horse.

The iBex can't stop a scared pony running, it can stop it being a problem. The iBex has an instant pony release system. If the pony is scared, release it. The iBex is no longer a wheelchair enabled pony drawn vehicle, it is a wheelchair enabled bit of garden furniture, and consequently safe. The user in the iBex is safe, and in control because the user can release the pony when the user is worried.

Now the user is safe, we can look at the helper. A pony can tow three tons in a coal mine. The helper is unlikely to be able to stop the pony, while the pony will have no problems towing the helper. So the helper lets go. You now have a loose pony running to safety which is by definition away from threats. Therefore away from anything that isn't open grassland. Therefore away from people, cars, picnics whatever. A pony running away from everything that isn't grass, isn't a threat to anything that isn't grass. OK, it is loose. It was loose this morning when you caught it for work. So what.

You can't train a pony to be safe. If you choose to ride them, the only way off if they won't stand still, and panicked ponies won't, is to fall off. Driving conventional vehicles, the solution is to hope the pony won't panic. With the iBex, the solution is to pull the release rope, and let the problem go away.

Training to make the Project go smoothly is an ongoing process and the longer you work with a pony, the safer the team becomes as you learn to trust each other, but when things go pear shaped, as inevitably they do, pull the release cord and watch the problem run away. That is safety.