Topaze and Diamant

 

If you have been following this blog from the start, you may remember this article I wrote: The First taming of the horse. In it, I described how I had interacted with a little wild piebald foal on the moor, how “he” came up to me, blew on my hands and face and seemed so intrigued by me. 

I thought this foal was a colt. I was wrong, she was a filly. I saw her again on the moor last summer, still following her mother. She was no longer a boisterous, playful foal, but a wary young mare. 

I am now, since last week, the owner of this young mare. And of her half-brother, a little skewbald colt born the same year as her. They have the same father and different mothers. They are “Dartmoor Hill ponies” but look like Shetlands. They probably descend from pit ponies, used in the mines. 

The story behind my ownership of those two ponies is rather long and complicated. It is linked to all the problems surrounding the ponies that roam on Dartmoor. Too many of them, breeding indiscriminately and often facing a dire fate when they are rounded up to come off the moor. Not all the ponies end up at the Chagford Drift sale where they at least have a chance of finding a good home. 

There was heartbreak and disappointment in the story of how those two ponies came to me. There also was unexpected generosity. And the realisation that the equestrian world is a complicated place where nothing is wholly black or white. Where there are mostly grey areas and a fine line between what is right, what is ethical, what is respectful and what is not. Which is, I guess, what has always been the case in the long history of the relationship between humans and horses. 

I called the piebald filly Topaze, because of her striking blue eyes. And her half-brother became Diamant. 

They have lived on the moor since their birth, one and a half years ago, and had never been rounded up. They are completely wild. So it will be up to me to tame them. Which will be interesting since I am, in parallel, studying how horse-training and breaking was done in the Middle Ages. 

It is already obvious that they have very different characters. Topaze is both more dominant and wilder. She kicks, she fights. While her brother shyly hides behind her. It will be interesting to see how they turn out and I will be giving regular updates about them on this blog. 

Some of the handling has already started. In an ideal world, I would have liked to take my time with them, let them come to me and accept me. However, they both urgently need to be wormed, microchipped and Diamant also has to be gelded. This puts pressure on all of us and warrants the use of methods that I might not have chosen otherwise. Again, there is a fine line between what is right in terms of welfare and ethics and what is not so right. 

Yet all that matters in the end is that those ponies become healthy, happy and safe to be around. This is what I’ll try to achieve. It’s going to be a steep learning curve for all three of us. But it’s certainly going to be an interesting journey!