About Re-homing Our Ponies

The ponies that we take on at market or are donated to us every year stay with us until they are happy to be around people. When we feel that they are ready to be re-homed we start looking for possible loan homes for them.

At the moment we have quite a few ponies who have been returned to us through no fault of their own and who are looking for homes. We have been carefully reviewing our rehoming policy to try to avoid this in the future and are thinking of transferring ownership to loaners after 6 months or a year, depending on assesment and providing all parties are happy to go ahead.

We ha in the past looked for homes who can take two ponies and while this is still the ideal, the ponies we have looking for homes now are all between 2 and 5 so as long as there is other equine company we will consider single loans, as this makes them feel more secure in their new homes. It also means if there are three of them it is less likely a pony will get left by itself whilst say the other is being ridd

We try to vaccinate and castrate all the ponies that come to us before they are re-homed. If we feel a pony is ready to be re-homed before they can be castrated (they are too young to be operated on or perhaps had not developed in time to be done that year,) then we would either ask the loaners to arrange for the castration, or try and sort out alternative arrangements e.g. the ponies coming back to us for the operation. This doesn't apply to any of our current ponies as they are all happily castrated.

We try and make sure that all ponies are happy to be caught, led around, have their feet picked up and be tied up before they are re-homed. However, most ponies will always require more work when they go to their new home and some may not have had their feet worked on. Again we assess the home's capability and the ponies available at the time and if we think a new home is able to carry on the ponies education we are happy to home them before being fully trained.

We like the ponies we home to be able to live out 24/7 with shelter.

Most of the ponies we take on have absolutely nothing “wrong” with them. They are just normally a bit wary of people. The ponies that we work with can go on to be fantastic riding, driving or therapy ponies, or just fantastic companions. We don’t require that you break them to ride or drive when they are old enough. Actually the most important thing to us and to them is that you can provide them with a loving, stable, long-term home. Oh and a bit of hay in the winter and lots of cuddles!

If you are interested in re-homing then either download a copy of our loan home questionnaire (you will find it on this link http://www.dptc.org.uk/rehoming.html) and send it back to the address on the form, or give us a call on 01364 654609. We are happy to discuss any queries you may have and are always on the look out for good, kind, long-term homes for our fantastic ponies.