Welsh ponies take to Clare climate

MICHAEL Galvin is still getting to know his 14 Welsh ponies. One of his prizewinners, Hope Carrick, nibbles at a sop of hay, while at the same time keeping an eye on its owner.  He might be small in stature but ‘Bobby’ as Michael calls Hope Carrick, who is up to 12 hands in height, has plenty of attitude.

This emerges whenever Michael is heading for a show but isn’t bringing the miniature Welsh pony with him.
“When he’s left behind, he goes mad,” Michael revealed. “He’ll turn his arse, fart at me, walk away and pretend he doesn’t know you. Unless you see it happening, it’s hard to believe his carry on. He’ll walk away, the two ears back. I’ll be calling him but he won’t recognise me. The minute I come home in the evening, he’s above on his hind legs with a welcome,” he laughed.
Hope Carrick probably knows he’s a winner having picked up prizes at shows in Midleton, Kilkenny, Athlone and Cork.
“He’s six-years-old and he was in the mountains in Wales. I broke him last winter. I had him for three months in the stables and he wouldn’t come near me. Another fella told me a trick; turn off the water inside in the stable. Get him thirsty and he said ‘he’ll come to you’. That was a Connemara fella I knew over in England. He was around ponies all his life. That’s how I got him. Into the fourth day, he came to me,” Michael explained, adding that the pony’s bloodline can be traced back to 1958.
Michael worked abroad for more than three decades before returning home and establishing Malbay Stud, a Welsh pony breeding operation.
“I was 15 and a half when I left this county. I came home 10 years ago. I was 48 then.  It was the best education I ever got. Better than any school because you learn the hard way. You don’t forget. It was a change all right going from the country into the city of London but sure everyone had to emigrate that time. The minute you were able to work you had to go,” he reflected, ruminating on his time in the buildings in England, Holland and Denmark.
“I came back a few years ago and I was doing a bit more drinking than I should have. I thought there was more to life than that and I was always interested in the ponies anyway,” Michael added.
So he bought two Welsh ponies, one of whom was in foal. “They’re bred for showing and jumping for kids. You don’t have to train them for jumping, just guide them along a bit. They’re natural jumpers,” he said.
Weaning foals sounds like a tricky business but Michael says he has worked it out.
“You leave them with the mother until they’re six-months-old. Eventually. she’ll run out of milk and she’ll be pushing the foal away all the time. So they have to drink the water. Some people would wean them at four but they get very distressed. I find that at six months, put them in for a month and they’re perfect. The trouble is when you wean them, they look on you as their mother then. That’s when they get close to you,” he noted. 
Long-term, his aim is to develop a unique bloodline. “It’s a matter of trying to get your own bloodline and your own stamp on it. It takes seven years before you have it the way you want it. I’m about half way there now. It’s then you’d start making a few bob out of it. Before that it’s all cost.”
Bringing a pony to a show involves very early starts. There is no point in arriving minutes before the showing is due to start.
“You’d allow yourself to be there nearly two hours before it would start to get them out and give them a bit of exercise. If you take them straight out of the box, they’re going to be lazy. You have to get them moving again but they’re good travellers. You’ll know when they don’t want to go, they won’t go into the box. They have never done that yet,” Michael said.
Years ago, Welsh ponies were used to work in the mines in their country of origin. Working in partial darkness led to numerous ponies going blind. Many of them were subsequently released and left to fend for themselves in the mountains.
Michael Galvin’s Welsh ponies have little to worry about in comparison even if Hope Carrick’s reaction to being left at home suggests otherwise!