Welsh section B placed on Rare Breeds survival list

[Errin Paddywack]

How very sad. My section B was a fantastic pony. She was a great old fashioned stamp. Born and raised out on the Welsh hills based on what we could trace. Then a career as a very good show pony before family sold her when her elderly owner went into care and she found herself sliding down into bin end markets, at one point being kept in a tiny paddock next to a cemetery where she was skin and bone and was kept alive by the kindness of a little girl and her dad who brought her water and hay when they could. They said one day she vanished from the paddock never to be seen again until they saw a ‘tracing horses’ as we put in Your Horse magazine and recognised her instantly and gave us a call. She eventually ended up being sold to the riding school I attended. They were told she was 8 but turned out she was in her 20s with broken knees and blind in one eye after a kick to the head. She bucked all the riding school kids off except me so when the school decided she had to be sold, I begged my parents to buy her but she failed the vet spectacularly. She was sent to market and only the meat man was bidding so my parents offered just above meat money for her. She was my first pony (followed up by BBP who is 1/4 section B), old, broken and very much loved.

She lived to be about 39 and up until her early 30s was still in work hacking. She learned half pass at 29.

She must have been about 31 in this photo.View attachment 137806

That is my sort of welsh, so much nicer than the modern equivalent.

 

[piebaldproblems]

The only horse who made under 100 at Brecon today was a Welsh B 1yo colt. Good looking but there were unregistered Welsh A yearling colts making more. Just no use for them I guess when a Sec A can carry the same weight, and a Sec C can carry a small adult.

 

[Snow Falcon]

As I understood it, it's the number of breeding mares that the rare breeds list counts, not the total of ponies registered.

Whilst it is a concern that breeds are on the list, we need to be breeding responsibly. The main reason that the stallion scheme was introduced for the NF's was to reduce the number of poor quality foals. This has been a great success and the prices and quality of stock at the sales has improved considerably.

I rode a section B when I was much younger. Nice pony, good bone but had his quirks!