The Project

The Project.

Ponies are powerful, friendly, have amazing all terrain capacity, are cheap or free to acquire and cheap to run yet do almost no work as service animals. With the iBex, a pony can provide safe all terrain access for those with mobility problems. Beaches, mountain and moorland, forest tracks, parks or gardens are all accessible to those in wheelchairs or with limited mobility.

Each pony can work with an unlimited number of people. Service dogs need extensive training and only work well for one person. But they do that brilliantly, Guide Dogs for the Blind and Hearing Dogs for the Deaf are obvious examples.

Ponies have different strengths. While multiple users cause psychological problems for dogs, ponies as herd animals, are used to complex relationships with a wide range of individuals. Wolves, dogs' ancestors, operate in nuclear family groups . Packs are the result of captivity and insufficient territory. They are not a natural wolf behaviour.

One pony can happily interact with, and provide all terrain access for ten people per day. 200 people could have a regular monthly session with the same animal, and would build a relationship with that animal. Not as close or as personal as the relationship with a guide dog, but providing a simpler service to vastly more people.

Since the iBex has all the necessary safety systems built into it, training the pony is a far simpler, and vastly cheaper process, than training a Guide Dog. Under £1,000 can buy and train a suitable pony for use providing all terrain access. With experience the pony will improve, and become a progressively more useful member of the team.

Again, because the safety systems are built into the iBex, training the people is cheaper than might be expected. Starting with a suitable, responsible caring adult, the training should be under 10 days.

The users of the service need no initial training and no formal assessment. If the user can get to the location where the pony and iBex are working, they can use the service. For those who can walk with or without assistance, a range of seating options are available. For those in wheelchairs, the wheelchair will fit, and can be loaded onto the iBex without lifting, and without ramps or hoists. Most powered wheelchairs seem to fit, and the iBex can be modified if necessary to fit ANY wheelchair system.

The infrastructure isn't much. You need the iBex, a pony, and a system to get iBex and pony to the days location. A Transit van and pony trailer can carry two iBexes, two ponies and two handlers. Take them to Exmouth Beach and forty people a day could have a fifteen minute session on the beach. Ditto for Dartmoor or Haldon Forest. Base camp is a field for the pony and parking for the trailer. The point of the system is that it doesn't need road or rail or infrastructure. If you want to get into the great outdoors, lack of infrastructure is what you want.