FRESHLY GROUND

Freshly Ground was donated to us from a very generous stud in the Drakensburg, South Africa, together with three other cremellos. These ponies were born and grew up in the mountains, never touched by a human until they were chosen to come to Healing with Horses Zimbabwe. Within 10 days, they were brought in from the mountains, vaccinated, microchipped, gelded, and standing in one of our paddocks in Bulawayo.

Not only were they generously donated to us by the stud, but they were kindly transported here free of charge by Roxy Ellis (RE Trading). As you can imagine, these poor boys were highly traumatised by the whole process. We had a couple of kind volunteers, together with ourselves, who spent hours just sitting in the paddock with them, until they lost their fear of humans, and we began their training.

Fresh was the most dominant of the four and would actually attack us if we threatened to come too close to his band of brothers. He was four years old. We took our time with him, and he was the second last one to be backed. Once he learned to trust us, he never looked back. Fresh is now one of our steadiest, most reliable and versatile ponies.His forte is definitely physical challenges, but he is also happy to serve the children with ASD, and the trauma youth from the crisis centres, as long as he is not asked to do too much trotting, and no canter work!! It is very important to us here at Healing with Horses Zimbabwe that our horses are given a voice, and so, no canter it is, and 90 percent of Fresh’s work is done at walk.

Fresh also goes to shows with a couple of our kids, but he is very picky about which kids he will go to shows with, and we listen to him! Every wish is our command. This beautiful pony is much loved by all the kids, who clamour noisily for the right to ride him each time they come to riding! We have had to write a roster for turns to ride Fresh.