Wild Wild West Show

In my previous post, I mentioned that many of the horses at the sale were raised and trained by the Amish. These ponies are very well broke. The kids play/work with them almost all day, every day; many of them are ridden to and from school.

The Amish men are also very good salesmen. On more than one occasion on Saturday, when John Wayne went up to a man and asked him about their pony, their response started with “Oh you mean my babysitter…”

The kids ride/drive the ponies into the sale ring and awe the crowd.
These ponies go for a premium.

The most impressive show of the day was when an Amish boy probably around the age of eight, rode his pony into the ring by standing up on him, proceeding to do a back flip off of him and then crawling on the ground in a figure eight pattern through his legs. This pony sold for $3,400!!!

After a full morning of walking through the barns, visiting with the sellers, we had a list of about five ponies that were strong candidates to become the Little Lady’s first pony. Well, these ponies had made the short list of quite a few other people too…people with deeper pockets.

At almost 4:30 we were headed home, with an empty trailer. John Wayne and I remarked to each other that we were glad the Little Lady was only two and luckily therefore, we weren’t going to have a hissy on our hands because we were going home without a pony and made a mental note that for all future sales to leave the kids home. Nonetheless, it was still disappointing; we had came with high hopes and spent a long day there.

As we were leaving, I spotted three little spotted ponies waiting to go in the ring. These ponies weren’t being marketed by well behaved little Amish kids or their Dads, these three little spotted ponies were being promoted by two little cowboys. After learning all that we needed to know about these little spotted ponies in the four minutes we had before they entered the sale ring, the Goldings turned around, went back in and bought ourselves a pony.

Their sale ring show was quite different than what we had seen most of the day. These little cowboys rode into the ring bareback, turning and working the little ponies like they were cutting horses. One of the little cowboys swung his rope in a big loop, further trying to push his selling point that he was trying to use on us, that “this pony is rope broke.” After two of the ponies had sold, one of the little cowboys jumped off of the pony he was riding and ran over to hop on the unsold pony. That pony proceeded to take off and dump him in the middle of the sale ring.

Terrible picture, but I wanted to show the three little spotted ponies in the sale ring.

So there you have it, the story of how the Little Lady bought her pony from the Wild Wild West Show. Those of you that know the Little Lady, know that this is more fitting anyway!