Sable Island Pit Ponies
It would be dishonest to say I watched the entire movie. But when I learned that Pit Pony existed, it was immediately on my must-see list. While the movie features Sable Island Ponies being used in underground coal mines in Nova Scotia, the movie nonetheless had several Fell Pony connections for m
My Welsh/Shetland cross put to a manure sled
One of those connections was a DNA study done about ten years ago by Dr. Gus Cothran that included both Sable Island and Fell ponies. The study investigated the genetic diversity of the various equine populations in or related to native Canadian breeds. The study found, for the Sable Island equines, that they were more related to Nordic pony breeds than Mountain and Moorland breeds and that the Sable Island equines were highly inbred.
The Wikipedia entry calls them Sable Island horses. Other than having the height of a pony (13-14 hands), they are considered to have a horse phenotype (physical form and structure, behavior, etc.) Their history certainly suggests that their origin is in horse breeds; their short stature is due to adverse environmental conditions. Haflingers are another pony-like breed that are often said to have a horse phenotype, though in my experience, there is sufficient diversity in that breed that allows some individuals to be more pony-like and others more horse-like. The equines in the movie looked to me to be more on the pony end of the spectrum, but of course it is unlikely any of them were Sable Island equines since the Sable Island population is feral so unlikely to be available for use on a movie set.
The reason that I couldn’t watch all of the movie also has a Fell Pony connection. In fact, I started the movie one night and had to shut it off and come back to it another night when I had the strength to finish watching it. A recurring theme in the movie brought back to me a story that my friend Joe Langcake told me about a family he knew from his days delivering milk with a Fell Pony pulling a milk float (cart). The father of the family worked in a mine whose shafts went down then out under the North Sea. After a mine explosion (I would guess in the 1930s), the father didn’t come home. The tunnel in which the explosion occurred was bricked shut immediately after the explosion to keep the remainder of the mine safe. A few weeks later the brick wall was taken down, and the father of the family was found on the other side, deceased, and had left a note. He apparently had been able to escape from the rubble but found his exit to safety blocked by the brick wall. Perhaps it was Joe’s telling, but that story will be with me forever.
Joe also told me many stories of training small unregistered Fell Ponies as pit ponies when he was a boy. Then I learned a different angle connecting Fells to pit ponies in Roy B. Charlton’s book A Lifetime with Ponies. Charlton tells of how his Fell Ponies were crossed with Shetland and Welsh ponies to create the perfect sized pony for the pits. My first pony was a Shetland/Welsh cross with an incredible work ethic that I crossed on my Fells, so I have had firsthand experience with what working with a pit pony might have been like. I completely understand the love that so many miners had for their ponies, a feeling well conveyed in the Pit Pony movie.
© Jenifer Morrissey, 2020
A related story called “Colorado Pit Pony” can be found in my book The Partnered Pony, available internationally by clicking here or on the book cover.