PLIGHT OF MY ( VERY ) LITTLE PONIES
A TV ad made tiny Shetland ponies a trendy pet — only for dealers to overbreed them with cruel consequences for their health. Now, as many are abandoned, big-hearted sanctuaries are riding to the rescue
THE 28 extremely small residents of the Munchkins Miniature Shetland Rescue Centre toss their teeny heads, stamp their tiny hooves and swish their shaggy manes in the golden afternoon sun like little princes and princesses. From a distance, it seems they glow with good health. Their tummies are round and full. Their eyes are bright. Their spirits are high — judging by the odd well-aimed kick or lunge. And their appetites are insatiable.
They eat all day, every day — munch, munch, munch — barely lifting their heads to take in the stunning views from their pasture.
But these miniature Shetland ponies have been through seven circles of hell.
Many have been physically and mentally abused. Some were abandoned in waterlogged fields, sheds or outhouses; left tethered, thin and louse-ridden, in car parks.
Others spent years cooped up in suburban back gardens — neglected pets that had lost their novelty value — before being offered on second-hand websites for as little as a fiver.
All are victims of people’s obsession with dinkier ponies. They have been bred smaller and smaller, to barely 38 inches high — not slowly over time by evolution, but quickly by unregulated breeders to meet a passing fad.
Closer up, the scars are visible. Butterscotch, a gorgeous cream dun, has an open wound on his face where horse-sized teeth far too big for his miniature head have caused an abscess. The sixyearold is scheduled for an operation next week.
Meanwhile, mis- shapen bones in their hind legs cause Teddy and Felicity such pain they’re struggling to walk.
Bijou, a 23- year- old miniature white- spotted horse, is completely blind and is guided around by her mother, Dainty, who has had her front teeth removed and has to ‘gum’ the grass to eat.
The wounds on Barney’s black face and the lash marks that left the skin on his back in tatters have healed, but he is still nervy and jumpy.
All suffer from problems with their knees and teeth.
Patchwork, a ten-year- old piebald with a gorgeous flowing mane, had such bad laminitis (a potentially devastating condition affecting hooves caused by the wrong diet of over-rich grass) that vets recommended he was put to sleep the day he arrived at Munchkins, four years ago.
‘I just couldn’t do it,’ says Tammy Marx, who runs Munchkins, just one of several sanctuaries around the country. ‘I had a feeling he’d make it.’
And miniature Shetlands are just the latest in a long line of animals to be catastrophically overbred to satisfy human fads and fashions. They are the equine equivalent of miniature hand-bag dogs, or pugs with faces so trendily flat that the poor, benighted animals struggle to breathe.
The trigger for the Shetland crisis appears to have been two adverts.
One, in 2013, was for the mobile phone firm Three, in which, thanks to special effects, a Shetland pony appears to be dancing to a Fleetwood Mac song.
The second, far more damaging, was an Amazon advert in which a miniature Shetland with dwarfism was shown popping in and out of a cat flap and watching television. Suddenly, it seemed, everyone wanted a pet pony — and the smaller the better.
‘If If you look at the advert in detail, tail, not only is the pony a dwarf warf Shetland, you can see it’s s lame,’ says Tammy, 50. ‘Shetlands hetlands with dwarfism are the e least healthy — with a dish sh face, pot- belly, short limbs b and d sarcoids id (viral ( i l or cancerous growths).’
But people who ooh- ed and ah- ed at the adverts didn’t realise.
All they could see was an impossibly cute horse that could join their family as a designer pet, be saddled up for their tot to ride, cost next to nothing to care for and even mow the grass into the bargain. ‘ They call them “lawn-mowers” but they’re not even supposed to eat much grass,’ says Tammy. ‘S ‘Some people l might i ht t take k th them out for a walk on a lead, like a dog. But lots didn’t bother.’
The fact is that Shetlands couldn’t be less suited to suburban life. They’re designed to roam remote Scottish islands, foraging for seaweed, scrub and thin,
marine m grass — not be idling in suburban su back gardens. ‘ The poorer the grass, the happier they are,’ says Tammy.
While small in stature, they need lo lots of exercise and space — the sa same as a fully-grown horse — or th they soon become overweight with diabetes and joint problems.
Some become so fat that their legs can no longer support them and they have to be put to sleep.
Laminitis, which is incredibly painful, can be fatal and, at the least, will need to be managed for the pony’s entire life. They should live for about 40 years (the oldest Shetland on record is 54). But as a result of the unregulated overbreeding to make them still smaller, they end up suffering from all sorts of horrific medical complaints.
So the vicious circle continues. Treated like pets — given sweet morsels and dragged about on leads — they can quickly become difficult and prone to kicking and biting.
Children, of course, outgrow them. They suffer endless health problems, yet few owners are happy to pay £45 a month to insure them for vets’ bills. As Tammy says, Shetlands are cheeky and wilful — ‘some people would say stubborn’.
And they’re strong — they were originally bred to carry farmers across the Shetland Isles.
While a super-cute, teeny young horse can go for up to £3,000, an unloved older horse with laminitis and diabetes has no resale value.
The market is saturated so many end up as dog food. The lucky ones find themselves in rescue centres such as Munchkins. Tammy has been horse-mad since childhood, but it was the horsemeat scandal (when it was revealed that meat products in supermarkets routinely contained horsemeat) in 2013 that galvanised her to set up Munchkins.
The setting is spectacular — 12 acres of Devon pasture owned by Tammy and her husband Paul, 65, a former maths teacher who had hoped to enjoy a relaxing retirement of golfing and gardening.
Instead, the couple — and their team of volunteers — regularly work 16-hour days coaxing their teeny charges back to life, grooming them, taking their pulses every morning, dishing out medication and monitoring their health. The steeds are kept on short, thin grass, taught to forage again, encouraged to walk and graze together.
‘They’re herd animals — they love to interact and make friends. They need the company,’ says Tammy.
They also have regular sessions with an equine behavioural expert, who seems to work wonders with broken spirits.
Bruno, a chestnut with flaxen mane and tail, had terrible behavioural problems when he arrived – constantly rearing up on his hind legs to kick and bite — but is now contently chomping away.
January, a piebald, who stamps, swirls and kicks her heels up in a flurry of excitement, was skeletal, louse-ridden and terrified when she was rescued from a field that also contained a dead foal and emaciated horses.
But not all are success stories, yet.
Rocky, a chestnut with liver problems who barely reaches up to my hip, is still not a horse you’d risk standing behind.
Birthdays for the animals are marked with homebaked equine- friendly ginger cookies. Come Christmas, the tinsel will go up and, thanks to a charity lucky dip, all ponies will receive presents — halters, hay-bags, polos.
I’d be astonished if any pony would ever want to leave, but the holy Grail for Tammy and her team is to rehabilitate and make room for more.
While some will never be fit enough, physically and emotionally, so far more than 30 ponies have been happily rehomed. The TV chef hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who lives nearby, has one.
Towards the end of my visit, an emergency call is received about three ponies discovered cooped up in a lorry container in Kent with an Alsatian dog.
It’s a long drive from Dorset to Kent, but let’s hope that somehow, they find their way to this little corner of equine heaven where they will be loved, cared for and, most of all, respected.
If only they hadn’t had to endure such torture in the first place.