The Connemara Breed of Pony

The Connemara breed of horse is the largest of the ponies, standing between thirteen to fifteen hands tall. They are typically grey in color. Sometimes they are also brown, dun, chestnut, and very rarely palomino. Native to the Connemara Mountains of western Ireland, they are hardy, require less care than other horse breeds, are extremely versatile, and sure-footed.

Connemaras are a natural product of the environment. The mountains of Connemara are very rugged. The area is a land of wind-swept bogs and treacherous swamps. While all of Ireland is subject to much rainfall, the western shores are exceptional in this regard. The rains tend to be more torrential and fall over 200 days out of the year. Only the hardiest of animals could thrive in such an area, and that's just what these ponies became. Native Connemara ponies are kept outdoors from the day they are born.

In Ireland, they are bred for utility. They are used for farming and just about anything else you can imagine a horse could be used for. They even competed equally with bigger breeds, such as Irish thoroughbreds, in horse racing, since it was a popular local sport in western Ireland. This modern era of machines has not replaced them in the heart of the western Irish. In America, they are often used as pleasure horses, for therapeutic riding, and shows. They excel at endurance sports, fox hunting, eventing, dressage, and show jumping. They are also wonderful for use as ponies to learn how to ride on, especially for children, since they are typically very gentle.

So how did these horses come about? The breed is believed to go back as much as 2, 500 years, to the time of the ancient Celts. It was brought with them from the Indo-European area from which they originally migrated and all across Europe to the Connemara slopes. It is believed that the current form of the breed benefited a great deal from interbreeding with Spanish horses, such as the Andalusian, which resulted when Spanish peoples came to Ireland and assimilated sometime after the fall of the Roman Empire and on into the time of the Viking invasions. Particularly did the Spanish influence enter in when it is believed ships of the Armada wrecked on Ireland's western shores in the 1500s. Finally, in more recent times, the thoroughbred strain was added to the mix. During the last century the Connemara ponies have been rather stable as a breed.

Beginning in the 1920s, Connemara pony societies were established to protect and improve the breed and allow owners to register the ponies as genuine Connemaras. There are now many such societies worldwide. This includes the Connemara Pony Breeder Society in Ireland at http://www.cpbs.ie/ and the American Connemara Pony Society at http://www.acps.org/. You can also find more information about these unique ponies at http://www.connemaras.com/connemara.html.