Selling Childs 1st pony, how to wean?!

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Horses24-7

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Hi all

My little girl has a little mini Shetland shes been riding him for a year and has gained great confidence with him :)

She's fine at the moment but I'm dreading the day she needs to move on to something she can ride off lead rein.

Was wondering how you guys have weaned your children from their first love?

I remember the sale of my first pony, it broke me heart! I swear I could still get upset if I think about it too much!

Thanks x
 
It depends on the age of your daughter really and her understanding of the situation. If it were me and she were to be getting a bigger pony i would buy the bigger pony first (funds allowing!) whilst the shetland was for sale. Hopefully your daughter would get attached to the new pony and when the time comes it would not be so difficult to detach herself from the shetland as she has the other pony as a substitute. Alternatively you just distance your daughter from the shetland more and more upto the time you know he will be going.
 
Would you be able to overlap keeping the current pony and the new one for a few months? This will mean that a) if she has any confidence wobbles with the new pony she still has the shetland to ride for a while, and b) the excitement of all the things she can do with the new pony might help distract her a little.

We kept my first pony as she wasn't one you could sell, but I remember being devasted when I finally had to accept I'd outgrown her. Having my lovely young horse to ride made all the difference.
 
Steorra said:
Would you be able to overlap keeping the current pony and the new one for a few months? This will mean that a) if she has any confidence wobbles with the new pony she still has the shetland to ride for a while, and b) the excitement of all the things she can do with the new pony might help distract her a little.

We kept my first pony as she wasn't one you could sell, but I remember being devasted when I finally had to accept I'd outgrown her. Having my lovely young horse to ride made all the difference.
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thats what I would do too , I remember when my first pony was sold too , that was 40 years ago and I still think abou him - I was heartbroken
couldnt you just keep the little beggar :D
 
I could probably stretch to over lap if i did it over a summer? She's 5 years old , I can already see her admiring the other kids at the yard on their ponies! I tried to pit her on the lunge so she could feel a bit more indoendent but the pony was having non of it, thought that was his que to do as he please!

I'm gutted really as was suppose to be getting some land (instead of livery) which has now fell through. So in my head i had planned on keeping him for my other little girl (shes only 12 weeks at the moment!) but that's not going to happen on livery!

The other option I suppose is to keep the shetland and see if my daughter could share a pony on the yard if there's anything suitable? Or find him a home nearby as a companion on full loan so he's still theoretically hers?! .
 
I couldn't bear to sell my daughter's first pony so she is out on loan to my old yard for their little girl. A perfect solution as we still go and visit her but will have her back with us when they don't want her anymore! I can't sell any of my horses now as far too attached to them but I quite happily sold a few outgrown ponies as a child!
 
Why not keep the pony for a while just in case, you could get a sharer to help with the cost, and maybe progress on to loaning the pony out. It would mean that you would be in touch so she doesn't have to say goodbye forever and you could explain it to her that he has gone to teach another smaller child to ride as little sister is too little at the moment but he might be back when little sister is big enough to ride.

Childrens ponies are the easiest to loan as people are typically happy to accept that they will only need the pony for a couple of years and that lead rein and first ridden types have a very specific job.

If you can't find a good private loan home then consider local riding schools, they are often looking for decent lead rein ponies and will consider loaning. The riding school where my nephew learned to ride had a pony that could only ever be ridden on the lead rein and he had enough work. He has since been passed to a family with a few very small children so that he can have a quieter life but stay firmly on the lead rein.
 
Why not just loan the pony out locally and then take him back when your youngster is ready? There is a nice little queue forming for the lead-rein shetland on my friends yard!
 
If she's enviously looking at the other kids free ranging on bigger ponies, I'd simply introduce into the equation the fait accomplis of his imminent sale 'when you're a bit bigger and we've sold Shettie to a lovely home where another little girl can start to ride we can get a you a bigger pony like (other kid on yard) has that you can ride off the lead rein'. Then when it comes to it she may well be sad at moving on but she'll know what to expect as you've told her often enough.
 
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