TheEquine |

TheEquine : "Fifty years ago, there were 73,00 ponies working Britain's mines. 'The best miners in the world', was the tribute of one who looked after them for 30 years. Pony and handler have always been very close.
In Yorkshire pits they play 'snap' with their owners by sneaking pieces of sugar from pockets, trotting forward to sample the sandwiches and fruit that should have been the miners' lunch.
The tale goes underground that once the late Sir Harry Lauder, when he was a miner, called his pony Catherine. But Catherine refused to budge. Minutes later there was a pit-fall just in front of Catherine, and they say she saved Harry's life.
The table has been turned. Six years ago a 19-year-old miner died trying to save his pony when it galloped into mine workings in thick gas in Derbyshire. Such is the bond between man and beast.
Now the end is near, Mr. Gordon Bagier, M.P. for South Sunderland has sought - and got - from the Coal Board chief Lord Robens, an assurance that these stalwarts of the black industrial revolution will not be exported for slaughter.
And next month, on May 9, is the third reading of Sir Robert Cary's bill calling for greater assurances of the ponies' welfare.
The fear is they will be exported for slaughter. But so stringent are the Coal Board and the R.S.P.C.A. about new homes for the ponies that even Lord Robens himself was turned down when he asked if he could keep one."