Help me find this horsey fiction book - please

[WhoahThereCrazyHorse]

It’s a bit niche. There were 3 young women who were looking after a hunting /eventing yard and I think one of them had to ride in a point to point race to win some money. Possibly on a horse with one eye who may or may not have been a racehorse in his youth.

The name Henrietta rings a bell.

Please help me with my nostalgic hankering for books from my youth!

I had an amazing book called 'Only One Pony' which I got from a jumble sale. I can't remember the author. I can remember that a family moved to the countryside. The children want a pony. There's a midnight pony ride possibly to thwart some criminals. One sibling reads Lorna Doone. I can't believe that's all I remember when I know I read it many times! Googling brings up nothing ☹️

@WTF0ver the Pippa series by Judith Berrisford, the mystery horse turns out to be very valuable (of course!), and she gets her own pony as a reward

@Ju5tAgirlstandinginfrontofaboy Yep I’ve got all the Riders series still, see my ridiculous amount of pony books further up!

Only One Pony sounds familiar....

@Amyspickledlime - Only One Pony is available as a paperback (used) on amazon.

I'm traumatized to hear Ruth (fly by night) didnt end up with Jonathan.. they would have been lovely together. Although I would have felt sorry for Peter, but he wouldn't have been right for her.

I'm trying to remember the boarding school series with Miss Primrose. The heroine had a pony called Spot who had no spots. There was a girl from a circus who's pony was trained to do everything backwards and there were 2 girls from India who enjoyed the curried eggs cook cooked in a dreadful mistake during a heatwave...

The boarding school series was by Mary Gervaise I think. I remember the horse which was trained to do everything backwards e.g. for halt it was walk on or something similar. Was the horse called Widdershins?

Pony Patrol! That was them. Thank you so much. They were fab. One of the members was a ‘rich girl’ that ‘lunched with a school friend’. I always thought how glamorous that sounded

"JillAmanda* thank you! I'm going to check it out now 😀

Widdershins! I remember that. Didn't get into them like the others though. Am reading I Wanted a Pony at the moment. Had a really shitty, horrible woman to deal with today plus a few other stresses so Augusta and Daybreak will make me happy!

@Didiplanthis I was talking about the Mary Gervaise naice boarding school series further up the thread (prob under Nation rather that my new Jill Crewe inspired name). I remember Georgia’s great grandparents (the “Grandies”) and their golden wedding anniversary featured heavily in one book. I think she also had a big ginger cat? Miss Primrose had a temperamental bay mare called Mademoiselle.

I also remember the curried eggs bit vividly! One of the Indian girls was called Teepoo.

Had totally forgotten about Widdershins. That’s a blast from the past.

Another book I liked was by one of the P-T sisters (I think): a family move from the city / town because the dad has a heart attack and can no longer work in his high pressured job. They buy an old house in Shropshire and the children (girl, can’t remember her name and boy, Fergus) buy a pony at an auction who they call Mimosa. She turns out to be in foal and has a colt they call Jasmin but as it’s a bit feminine they refer to him as Noodles.

It’s a bit more edgy as there are some local bad boys any Fergus ends up getting stabbed and needing a transfusion. I think he might have had a touch of sepsis too.

I think there were a couple more books in that particular series.

That one is Ponies in the Valley by Diana P-T. The girl is called Sandy and the others in the series are Ponies on the Trail and Ponies in Peril.

MrsCrosby - I read the mimosa last week at my parents !! They get a nice grey at the end as well. And the tracking centre owner is called Jake and lends then nice reliable pony to ride on the off season !

I now need to find the other 2 - thanks halycondays.

Didi was the grey pony called Silverstar? She was beautifully schooled and Sandy wanted to do with dressage with her, IIRC.

Ooo..maybe. I'll need to check next time I'm up at dads !

26/01/2020 14:18 NationMcKinley

Does anyone remember a book where a riding school was being closed and a girl was desperate to buy her favourite pony. She had to do loads of jobs to raise the money but ended up buying one of the other ponies as he looked so small and scared. She only had a small amount of money left but she remember that her fave pony was terrified of dog whistles so blew it a few times which made the pony go wild and look dangerous. Our heroine then managed to buy her for the exact amount she had left. Hurrah!

Anyone?

I’m sure you’re all going to be THRILLED! I’ve found it! It’s called A Very Special Pony by Elizabeth Douthwaite.

There’s a brilliant website called janebadgerbooks.co.uk where you can find all manner of exciting books. This is how I finally managed to track down my mysterious book!

I’m off now to see if I can find another one that was more aimed at teens and featured a slightly dysfunctional girl called Kelsie. Beautiful Arab horse on the front page called Mirri.

her fave pony was terrified of dog whistles so blew it a few times which made the pony go wild and look dangerous

I read a book written by the P-T sisters , ( real life) they had a pony on their yard called Tarragona (on loan from a dealer to use for their pupils while it improved ) The dealer would happily lie about a pony's age and cover scars with boot polish but would never sell one "Warranted Unsound" that was a danger to children.

Tarragona hated laughter , so when the had a would-be buyer that they thought wasn't suitable they let them get near then laughed . The pony changed into a toothy demon. They bought her for a song and kept her many years (telling themselves she wouldn;t have been happy with the dough-faced girl who rode like a sack of spuds!)

And little Shandy-Bass , a palamino who could jump anything (but I think he came to a sticky end)

A few years ago I bought a huge compendium of the P-T sisters books but they'd been updated and not the same

I’m sure you’re all going to be THRILLED! I’ve found it! It’s called A Very Special Pony by Elizabeth Douthwaite.

I'm thrilled! I'm going to look it up right now - would love to reread it!

Nation - as soon as I googled it I saw the cover of the very edition I had as a child! It gave me SUCH a flash of nostalgia - thank you!

Late to this but did anyone else in the whole world ever read Ride Across The Ocean or The One-Day Ponies by Zita White? Both set in Australia but published in the UK at the end of the 1950s. In the the former, an English girl has to leave her beloved mare and the Pony Club and move to a suburb of I don’t remember which city in Oz, where luckily she immediately meets up with a local girl with two ponies. And I think the second was about country children who ride to school and get a team together for a show...

I LOVED Jinny and Shantih and her family's house in the Scottish wilds with its own beach.

Anyone remember the Monica Dickens 'Favour' series? A girl called Rose lives in the boarding house her parents run. She's chosen as the messenger of a sort of ghostly horse called Favour, who in the olden days belonged to a dastardly local aristo (I think). These days his spirit tries to save people and solve problems; every time she hears a certain tune she has to run and get on his back and he transports her through space and into someone else's body, so she sees and experiences what they do but is also still herself.
He shows her snippets of the person's life and she has to work out what's going to go wrong.

They're great stories but the main thing that strikes me with hindsight is the author's depiction of Rose's feelings and her relationships with her parents and friends and the boy she has a sweet crush on (Ben). She (the author) is very perceptive.

@TheOnlyLivingBoyInNewCross yay! I’m so glad. I’m badgering my mum to let me rummage in her attic as I’m sure there’s a mega stash of pony books in there. Hopefully including The Perfect Pony .

Are you from New Cross? I have very many happy (blurred) memories of The Venue.

Not from New Cross, no - it's a shout-out to my favourite, favourite song from my uni years. Every time I hear it, I rewind nigh on thirty years (how? How is 1992 nearly 30 years ago?) and remember what it was like to be young and carefree before marriage and mortgage and kids and career...