Our Little Pony

Part of it includes a short film screened next to a cart full of turf – the scenes are strangely familiar, and yet bizarrely distant at the same time.

The landscapes could be Connemara today, but the people are most definitely from the past. Young men in chunky sweaters ride ponies bareback through the surf. A breeder rows a boat out to an island of mares with his stallion, Island Night, swimming behind. 

A time gone by

Few Connemara ponies still pull carts of turf as they used to, and even fewer breeders swim stallions to harems of mares. Not all that long ago, the sure-footed and big-hearted Connemara pony almost disappeared from its native landscape. As one local breeder describes it, they were on the verge of losing a piece of their soul.

The strong comeback, she says, is the locals’ way of thanking a pony that has always been there for them.