The pony that was dangerous!
During the time I was a saddle maker I met a lot of different people because it wasn’t just saddles and bridles that I fixed, but also bags, rifle straps and sometimes tarpaulins.
One day a man came to me to have some work done and all of a sudden he asked if I was interested in buying a pony. I’m always interested if there’s a good deal to look forward to, so I asked him to tell me about it.
It turned out that I had actually seen it, because it was walking in a paddock not too far from me and I had ridden by a few times and seen it. It was a stunningly beautiful welshpony, dark mold, so there was nothing wrong with the appearance. It was just that, according to the man’s description, it was both nasty and life-threatening, so if I were to buy it, I had to pick it up and load it myself, he wouldn’t go near it again!
It turned out that they had bought an unridden 3-year-old stallion for the daughter. However, they had had it neutered after all.
We agreed on a reasonable price and I asked a friend if she would come along and pick it up, as I was prepared to have a good fight, from what the man had told me. I had brought various ropes and other tools for loading and we joked that I might need a sword if it was a dragon:)
When we arrived the horse was in a box and the man once again told me that it was on its own liability, but I thought, for one thing, that it wasn’t that big and it actually didn’t look that hostile. I took its halter, went into the stall and put it on, put the halter shaft on it and led the pony straight up into the trailer.
It didn’t so much as snort on the road. The man dropped his chin and said I must have been lucky and I promised I would be careful in the future.
The pony was out of sorts, the only thing it “did” was that it was very playful with the mule, but didn’t bite or anything. We got it in and there were never any problems with it, no matter how what we did.
When the man went to pick up his stuff that I had repaired, he wondered how it had gone and I could only be honest and say that I didn’t consider the pony to be a problem horse, so we went out and greeted him in the stable. The man went over and was going to pat him on the mule and the pony fiddled a little with the mule and the man drew back his fingers quickly and half shouted: Do you see he bit me?
Yes, it can be, I just agreed with him and thought that it was good that the pony came to me and the man was happy to get rid of it, and I wonder if the pony wasn’t also quite happy to change places.
