Both Ted and Aaron were supremely impressed with the way she handled herself in the sulky get-up, which was often frightening for a filly at first, but Mandy performed as if she was born to it… until Ted attached the bearing rein. A bearing rein was used on horses drawing smart carriages in the past – it forced the beautiful beasts to arch their necks while they pulled, which made a prettier display, but made it harder on the horses to do what was required of them. In the case of a pony girl, it pulled their heads back at a rather awkward angle, which appealed to the ponygirl owners and breeders because it accented the sleek lines of their bodies, packaged and paraded as they were, as well as putting those marvelous udders in magnificent relief as they wobbled and jiggled their way around the ring. Essentially, it forced the poor girl to lead with her chest, which did made it somewhat harder to pull.
Mandy had a terrible time of adjusting to it – she was thrown completely off stride. Aaron and Ted could both see that she was close to tears but they knew she was trying to please them, having enjoyed her earlier successes and the lavish praise it brought. Neither of them ever punished true effort. They stood in front of the proud, beautiful, yet agitated animal together, as a team, where they knew she could see them even with her blinders on. Ted caught her attention through the haze of her tears.
“Mandy.”
She focused her eyes on them, and watched with astonishment as they each cast their crops to the side. “We will help you learn to do this and you need have no fear of punishment as long as we see that you are genuinely trying to learn.” They both came very close to her, Aaron cupping a wet cheek and Ted a soft shoulder. “We know this isn’t easy and it’s an awkward stance, but we know you can do it and we will do everything we can to help you get it. If you can learn this, we believe you’ll walk out of that show ring with your conformation title on your first try out.”
And they did. The implements went right back into their hands as soon as the training sessions were over, but while she was trying to accustom herself to pulling the cart – eventually with Aaron in it and once with Aaron and Ted in it – she heard suggestions and encouragement and praise, and only felt very, very occasional hand smacks to her bottom. That first day when she tried so hard to please them and didn’t necessarily do the best job of it, once they’d gone around the ring a few times using helpful encouragement and praise, Aaron and Ted had gotten her out of the sulky contraption and had done something that made her cry harder than anything they’d done to her before – they’d hugged her tightly.
Aaron had done it first, pulling her into his arms and crushing her against him, whispering into her ear how proud he was of her and that she was going to knock them dead in the ring. Ted had done and said roughly the same thing, telling her how beautiful she’d looked, even though Mandy knew she’d looked as awkward and clumsy as she’d felt. Then Aaron had taken her back in his arms and just rocked her there for a minute, stroking his hand down her flank possessively and telling her what a good ponygirl she was.
Mandy couldn’t hug them back, of course, but she adored being held – she hadn’t realized how much she missed that kind of contact. And it didn’t really matter to them whether she wanted to be hugged – or bred or paddled – or not. It was simply another thing they did to her, but Mandy worried about how happy she was to have pleased them finally, and how much she wanted to please them. She was terrified that her personality was changing; that her drive to succeed in whatever environment she was put into was working against her, and her sexual predilection towards submission and masochism wasn’t helping her any. She refused to admit that she was getting to like this lifestyle. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
Of course, she still got punished with alarming regularity – she was always doing something wrong. Until now, Aaron was the only man who had serviced her. Aaron was trying to impregnate her. But, as a ponygirl, she had to learn to be handled by other men without flinching – without resisting in any way – especially the judges in a ring, who would disqualify her in an instant if they saw any signs of rebellion. This point brought her a whole new field of welts across her bottom and the backs of her thighs. Her introduction to this concept was quite brutaclass="underline" she was put at “attention” – arms bound behind her, breasts, of course, thrust out before her, in a harness but not attached to a sulky, wearing pony hooves but not hobbled, head back, eyes straight ahead. Aaron had given her a general idea of what was coming and a very specific list of what was expected of her – it was things she’d heard a lot before: “A pony girl always stood still whenever she was being touched or serviced or inspected by any man at all. Any man
– a hand, a groom, a trainer, a potential owner, a judge, etc. She did not flinch, she did not move, she did not fidget or cry out in any way. She adopted any position they required quickly and without delay.” He and Ted stood behind her, stiff leather straps at the ready as a succession of grooms she had seen around the barn came up to her and deliberately hefted and fondled her breasts, often cruelly twisting her nipples just to see if they could get a reaction out of her. Each man looked directly into her eyes each time, and she was expected to simply stare straight ahead
– not look up or down.
The first several men merely did that – touched and massaged her breasts in that painful manner they seemed to all have. The next few did that as well as running their hands over her body, pinching various places as if they were looking to buy her. Mandy definitely felt like a horse or a slave at auction. One of them made her open her mouth very wide so he could inspect her teeth, poking her tongue and touching her teeth with his big callused finger. She bore all of this in stoic silence, although she did cough and choke a little afterwards, but she wasn’t punished for that reaction, in fact Ted went and got her a glass of water to help her recover, and then it was back to attention and more groping.
Eventually, she ordered to “bend and display”, which meant she was bent over at the waist so that one such pretend judge or buyer could squat behind her and inspect her most private area. This she had an understandably hard time tolerating – understandably anywhere else but at Generations Stables, at least – and when she balked – jerking upright with a loud squeal and taking several steps away from him – Ted and Aaron caught her upper arms, bent her at the waist again, and let loose with those awful leather straps on her bare butt.
“What did we tell you about not moving while you’re being presented and inspected?”
Aaron scolded under his breath. He was putting all of his considerable strength into the whacks he was delivering to the naughty girl in front of him.
“A good ponygirl remains quiet and still during an inspection. She makes no sounds, and takes no steps except those that are ordered by her handlers,” Ted added, laying a particularly vicious stroke along the underside of her bottom and making that full, dense flesh wobble beautifully until Aaron’s next smack landed, which sent it jiggling again in a different direction.
Only when they felt any resistance had been thoroughly and completely conquered did they pull her back up and stand her at attention again, tears still dripping down onto those magnificent udders. The next man to walk up to her was a groom from the foaling stables that Aaron was sure she didn’t know. He tensed, waiting for her reaction. The first thing he did was wipe away the tears on her cheeks. Evan was an extremely good man, or he would never have made it into the foaling barn. Those guys were highly trained experts at assisting a mare in foal, calming their fears, and assisting in the birth.
Drugs were only used in a birth at Generations if the ponygirl’s obstetrician truly thought they were necessary – and that was not very often. Aaron employed a veritable army of medical personnel – indeed, the medical costs of maintaining this particular operation were astronomical; there weren’t any HMOs that covered ponygirls. From the moment they were diagnosed as being with foal, the ponygirl was assigned a medical team who saw her through the entire gestational period, so their personal medical team got to know the mare and any medical conditions she might have as well as her temperament and pain tolerance. The mare was given daily medical attention, but her additional groom was also a physician’s assistant, specially trained in obstetrics and gynecology.