Not that I was forgetting at all, but yesterday sure helped bring it to the foreground again. I had a great day. Made a really good friend who’s almost certain to be joining the farm soon; took Miss Button and Miss Izumi (another of the FFF Stable Mistresses) on a long cart ride with Jaydana; met a possible new owner….

I’m actually skeptical anything will come of it, but a visitor IMed me asking if I was interested in joining her herd (her term, not mine). We had a good conversation, and I let her know I was interested in meeting her fillies and getting to know her to see if there was a possible fit. We’ll see if anything comes of it. It does weigh on me from time to time, missing that feeling of being owned.

It was the cart ride and aftermath with Button, Izumi and Jaydana that was the best part of the day though. I’d just got back on after a, um, minor incident involving my 14 year old daughter, a concert and some subterfuge on her part . There was a big crowd by the entrance gazebo when I got on and Button decided she wanted to see how I was doing with cart pulling so she hitched up Jaydana and I and off we went! It was a lovely drive, and afterwords she sent us through the pool to cool off. With the help of a subtle hint (well, subtle like a brick…) from Button and the decidedly not subtle help of Jaydana (who immediately jumped right back in the pool) all three ponies jumped back in the pool doing out best to soak everyone nearby. It gave me my first real opportunity to start showing my mischievous side. What fun!

Just please don’t tell Button that it turned out Jaydana was doing all the steering when we were pulling her and Izumi around, though I was matching her moves pretty closely.

Related posts:

1. An Interview with Button Wright
2. My how things can change from one day to the next
3. Life begins on the farm

She was right of course, Button turns out to be a lovely lady with a very sweet disposition. I was quite surprised to see that she dresses as an Indian with a very lovely sari (or as they seemed to consistently spell it in Bangalore, saree). It turns out that she is not Indian, but has a strong affinity to India, still it was nice to see that small connection from the start. There were some obvious formalities, was I owned and if so did I have my owner’s permission; was I over 21 in RL, things of that nature. But more important were the non-formal part of the interview and what followed.

Button took my reins and lead me back to the barn for a physical. It just occurred to me, that Button is the first person, ever, to take my reins. I’ve been leashed many times of course, but never before have I been lead on reins. That’s actually pretty cool. At some point I should mention it to her, I’m sure she’ll be pleased.

The physical was very thorough and I realised part way through had a very serious purpose. It served to show how well I could role play, follow implied direction and emote. My nerves were still jangling so it took a while to relax enough to get my stride, but I think I did pretty well. Part way through we were joined by Jaydana and the two of them talked about me and about other things as Button continued her examination. They discussed me, my physique, just as you would imagine they would were I a horse being examined. Being treated like that was really powerful. I again experienced that feeling of being pulled inside SL, RL slipped away again.

Once the examination was over, Button took me on a tour of the grounds. Well, I should say drove me on a tour of the grounds. A cart was brought in and with Button and Jaydana aboard off we went, me pulling the cart. I’m afraid the first part of the trip was rather bumpy. Controlling a cart isn’t quite as easy as it looks… Button introduced me to the whip commands and I only missed a couple as we proceeded. Button and Jaydana sat in the back chatting away as I pulled the cart. One thing I learned is how important it is to keep my focus shared between the cart and the chat text, as they were talking Button was giving me directions and I needed to carefully watch to avoid missing them. The conversation itself I mostly tuned out, on the one hand, I needed to focus on pulling the cart and on the other hand I was pulling a cart, not having a quiet chat! I think there may have been a couple of compliments in there on how I was doing. I’ll need to take a look at the chat log to be sure.

The tour finished we returned to the barn and I briefly met a couple of other FFF residents. After Jaydana and Button left I went upstairs to claim a stall, my new home. This lead to one, slightly disquieting occurrence. A pony named erin came by while I was being unhitched, didn’t say much and rather suddenly trotted out of the barn. As I was standing by the stall I’d picked she walked up, staying about 15 meters away, stomped twice and ran off. Stomping twice is how ponies say “No”.

I’d read, and Button had mentioned, that some of the ponies had issues with males, weren’t comfortable around them, in some cases may have been abused. It’s a sad commentary on the world isn’t it? I don’t know what erin’s concern is, but I hope there’s some way I can help her see that not all males fit whatever image she has of them…

To be continued again…

Related posts:

1. New friends, new fun
2. A question of protocol
3. My how things can change from one day to the next

First and foremost, my wife is out of the ICU. CT and MRI were both clean, and the pneumonia appears to have completely cleared up. They aren’t quite sure why she had the seizure, but they also aren’t quite sure why she hasn’t been having them since the stroke.

The second part is a little less important, but will take a lot longer to tell. The quick summary: I have a new home. Let me tell the tale as it happened.

I was being very good, didn’t log in from work at all until around lunch time. Once inworld, I headed back over to the steeple course and continued practicing. Practicing getting frustrated that is. There was one turn and a couple of gates that kept giving me fits. At one point I popped back to the training steeple just to prove to myself that I wasn’t completely losing the ability to jump.

Later, Jaydana signed on and asked me how things were going. She joined me at the steeple and proceeded to give me my first really serious pony training ever. I learned a whole bunch of things from her, including the fact that my 1200 score on the training course doesn’t really count. It turns out it is considered cheating to run the course as opposed to walking it. Sigh, most of my practice the previous night had been perfecting running the course to cut my time down as much as possible. I did make some really good progress on the harder course though, and I’m determined to start back at the training course and get the best score I possibly can walking the course.

After a while, Jaydana had another pony to train on dressage. She invited me to join them and suddenly we had an impromptu cart pulling training. She drove me over the dressage course where I met two of the stallions, Michaels and Luca. Luca didn’t stay long as he was saddled up and ridden off. Meanwhile, Jaydana proceeded to take Michaels through the dressage course, all the while keeping up a constant running commentary describing how dressage is done. I’ve watched a bit of dressage before, but never really appreciated it before. Part way through her training Button Wright turned up. At that point my nerves went ‘Boing!!!’ and I really didn’t hear a word that Jaydana said to Michaels from that point on.

To be continued…

Related posts:

1. No faults, 48 seconds, 1200
2. Forum’s second pony event started today!
3. More learning and an interesting observation

You see, something has changed in me. It might be permanent, it might only be for a time, but there has been a definite change. As I was driving to work this morning I was playing in my head how I expect that interview to go; what sort of questions she’s likely to ask me; what my answers are. I want to be prepared going into that interview. I want to be able to give well considered answers for any question she might throw my way.

One of the obvious first questions stopped me cold when I really started considering it. Not so much because of what my answer is, but more how it’s kind of the wrong question. The question is this: Why do I want to be a pony? It’s the wrong question. The right question, I realised this morning, is: Why are you a pony?

This is much different from when I was a tiger, then I was playing at being a tiger. Don’t get me wrong it was a lot of fun playing at being a tiger, but it never really resonated for me the way being a pony is resonating right now. I was practicing on the steeples and I was determined to make a no fault run somehow. All of my actions and reactions to how I was doing were pony reactions and it felt totally natural.

So why am I a pony? The simple yet honest answer for the moment is “I don’t know”. I’ve seen lots of human pony pictures, and read pony stories for years (aside: the internet has done more for allowing people to realise their fantasies than anything else on the face of the earth, bar none). I’ve been intrigued by pony play for quite some time but I never imagined that it would be so engrossing, so completely overwhelming. In order to teleport reliably, I’m finding that I need to strip off a fair piece of gear and the more I strip off the more uncomfortable I’m finding myself.

Why is it so comfortable, natural even, being a pony? I’ve been around horses my whole life, mostly from a distance unfortunately, but growing up in Calgary you cannot help but see horses almost every day. I realised that one reason I gravitated to the steeple course right off the bat was due to having one of the world’s premier show jumping facilities, Spruce Meadows, just outside the city. It’s very hard not to be familiar with show jumping living in Calgary. The Calgary Stampede is another avenue, I worked for three years at the race track surrounded by standard-breds, thoroughbreds and of course rodeo quarter horses. So there’s definitely a familiarity and admiration for these majestic beasts, but that still hasn’t come close to answering the question: Why does being a pony fit so well?

There are, of course some, obvious things that attract me to it. All the restrictive gear is like candy to a bondage slut like me. The heavily trust-based relationship between pony and trainer is also an obvious attraction point. Jaydana mentioned something about blindfold pony cart training. I’ve heard of that before, the idea is that the pony is completely blinded and only has the driver’s signals to tell him where and how to go. The thought sends a chill up my spine. The level of trust and of being inside each others’ heads that would be required to really make that work is breathtaking… and totally compelling. There’s the question of roles, when I was with Wednesdai it sometimes wasn’t 100% clear what my role was because we’d never really concretely defined it. That was fine, there wasn’t a need to, but being a pony is a clearly defined role and being a trainer is also a clearly defined role and how the two relate to each other is well defined too. That clear definition of roles is very attractive to me right now. It gets to the question of ‘order’ discussed previously.

But does that any of that really speak to why I’m beginning to seriously self-identify as a pony? It seems far to simplistic and far too shallow to account for the depth of what I was feeling last night when Kittanya was gentling me to her. It’s all well and good to say that it’s all role-play and I won’t deny that it is indeed role-play, but there’s a depth here that feels like it goes beyond that. Just like when I was first collared by Wednesdai, there was a depth to being her sub that I’d never encountered before in or out of SL. This feels very much the same, and it gives me pause. The fact that Wednesdai and I are no longer together has nothing really to do with whether or not I’m a sub (it raises the question of whether I’m a ‘good’ sub or not, but that’s a whole different question).

Whether Button accepts me into FFF or not, there have been changes here and I have to pursue them. I have to follow this trail to see where it leads me because it’s reaching very deep within me in ways I never, ever expected. Wednesdai introduced me to pony play and it was a lot of fun and quite intriguing. Aiden taught me some of the basics and helped to show me where the pony mindset is. Both of these wonderful ladies have brought me here to this next chapter. I can’t wait to see where this all lead because right now it feels like it leads somewhere wondrous.

Related posts:

1. On Toxic People and other random thoughts
2. Some thoughts after re-reading my entire blog
3. Sometimes life is just good, you know?