Ponies past and present

by Sir Walter Gilbey

The strain of playing a single “period” in a tournament match, in which the pony is required to make incessant twists, turns, sudden starts at speed, is continually being pulled up short, and is sent short bursts of hard galloping, takes far more out of the pony than does a race out of a racehorse, or an average day’s hunting out of the hunter. The marvel is, not that fast and well-bred ponies capable of doing this should command fancy prices, but that such should be obtainable at any figure.

Under existing conditions, a small blood horse that looks like making a Polo Pony is neither more nor less than an accidental deviation from the normal. It is an accident that his height at five years does not exceed the regulation 14 hands 2 inches; it is an accident—unhappily, a rare one—that he has bone to carry weight; and before the trainer can make a Polo Pony of him he must be fast, handy, kind, and docile—another set of accidents; we might, indeed, almost call the first-rate Polo Pony a phenomenal chapter of accidents. For let us bear in mind that when we have found our 14 hands 2 inches endowed with the needful make and shape we have not by any means necessarily got our Polo Pony. Only the smallest percentage of the thousands of racehorses foaled annually prove good enough to pay their trainers’ bills; and when we reflect upon the nature of the work required on the polo ground, the sterling good qualities demanded of a pony for first-class Polo, we should indeed be sanguine did we look for high and uniform merit in the race of animals we hope to found upon a basis of pure blood! The clean thoroughbred, except in very rare instances, has not the power needful to enable him to stop quickly and turn sharply at the gallop. Speed he has, but he lacks the strong hind-quarters essential to carry 12 or 13 stone.

The pony possessing the needful qualifications of make and shape has yet to be “made;” and only a trainer of experience could tell us what proportion of the likely-looking animals that come into his hands turn out worth the trouble of educating. Herein we find the reason for the vast difference in value which exists between a pony that is untrained and one which has gone through the various stages of stick-and-ball practice, the bending courses, practice games, and has finally been proven in matches. In the raw state the best-looking 14-hands 2-inch pony is worth £25 to £50; when trained—when he has proved to his exacting trainer’s satisfaction that he is a Polo Pony, and does not merely look like one—he is worth, as we know, any sum up to 750 guineas, and there is no reason to suppose that this figure marks the limit which enthusiastic players are prepared to pay; on the contrary, the tendency is to go further.

Such ponies as Mr. George Miller’s Jack-in-the-Box, Lord Kensington’s Sailor, Captain Renton’s Matchbox, Mr. Buckmaster’s Bendigo, the late Mr. Dryborough’s Mademoiselle, Mr. Walter Jones’s Little Fairy, have acquired their fancy value through their amenability to the training which has fitted them for the game. As to the breeding of these ponies, it is doubtful if their respective owners know as a certainty whether they were got by a thoroughbred pony sire or by an Eastern sire; in the case of many high-class ponies nothing is known of their breeding. All probably have a strong strain of pure blood in them, but in the absence of certain knowledge concerning their pedigrees they are of comparatively little use to us as object lessons in Polo Pony breeding. Whether, in view of the extremely “accidental” character of the Polo Pony already referred to, that knowledge would be helpful if available is another matter.

And while we make the English Turf pony which can carry weight our ideal, we acknowledge the difficulty of procuring it by seeking ready-made ponies in every corner of the horse-breeding world. Arabs and their near allies—Egyptian, Syrian and Barb ponies; Australian, Argentine, Canadian and Cossack ponies; ponies from the Tarbes district of France; ponies from Texas, Wyoming and Montana—all these have been imported and are played on English Polo grounds, and though not considered equal in speed, bottom, and courage to the English pony, the best of them when “made” are good enough to command high, if not extravagant, prices.

The great object, it is granted once for all, is to get a pony as nearly thoroughbred as possible, for none other is good enough to play in the best class of game. At the same time, a large and representative proportion of players, while heartily granting the superiority of the well-bred pony when it can be obtained, consider it wiser to look the situation squarely in the face and admit that the supply of such ponies cannot be depended on to meet the demand.

If it be a choice between an utterly inadequate supply of English-bred ponies with blood, speed, stamina and weight-carrying power, to be bought only at prices which reserve them to the wealthiest, and a sufficiency of ponies with a strain of alien blood, somewhat less speedy, courageous and enduring, the latter must be chosen; and as already said the Polo Pony Stud Book Society has recognised this by opening sections of their Stud Book for suitable individuals among our Forest and Moorland breeds, with a view of obtaining foundation stock.

We may take it as an axiom in our endeavour to produce a breed of 14-hands 2-inch Polo Ponies that the sire must be a small thoroughbred, or, if not a thoroughbred, an Arab. The reader may be reminded that adoption of this alternative involves no departure from the principle of a pure blood basis. It was the Arab that laid the foundation of our thoroughbreds in England, and the best horses on the Turf of to-day may be traced to one of the three famous sires—the Byerly Turk, imported in 1689, the Darley Arabian in 1706, and the Godolphin Arabian in 1730; all of them, it may be remarked, horses under 14 hands 1 inch.

There is, indeed, much to be said in favour of the policy of returning to the original Eastern stock to find suitable sires for our proposed breed of 14-hands 2-inch ponies. While we have been breeding the thoroughbred for speed, and speed only, Arab breeders have continued to breed for stoutness, endurance, and good looks. By going to Arab stock for our sires we might at the beginning, sacrifice some measure of speed; but what was lost in that respect would be more than compensated by the soundness of constitution and limb which are such conspicuous traits in the Eastern horse. Furthermore, the difficulty of size, which first of all confronts us in the thoroughbred sire, is much diminished if we adopt the Arab as our foundation sire.