Chapter 6 - The Conversion.

Gretchen had selected fifty slave girls as pony girl candidates. Now it was her cousin Anse’ responsibility, as trainer, to narrow the choices to the final twenty-five girls who would comprise the pony girl stable. Anse would rely on her past experience in training horses as her guide in training the ponies. Those slaves who were able to meet her rigorous standards without being broken in body or spirit would be the finalists. Anse relied on three governing principles for training horses, which she intended to use to train human females. First: issue simple commands and be consistent. Do not, in any circumstance, give contradictory commands. This caused confusion. Second: show determination. Do not give the pony the perception that your command might be withdrawn or that you would tolerate any delay in the pony responding to the command. Third: deal with disobedience or recalcitrance immediately. Horses, as well as humans, could be stubborn and cunning. Punishment for failure to obey a command must be sure and swift. Those three rules had served Anse well in training horses. She was confident that they would apply equally to training pony girls.

The girls were now installed in their new stable, which had been built exclusively for them. Two ponies occupied each stall. When their number was finally reduced to twenty-five, each pony would have her own stall. The stalls were roomy and clean. Fresh, sweet-smelling straw had been spread abundantly on the wooden floor. The girls had already been fitted with headstalls; bits would be inserted after the four back teeth had been removed to vacate the area in the rear of the mouth to accommodate placing the bit behind the teeth resting on the gums, thereby insuring proper head control. A large shower room was built adjacent to an adequate "head". A blanket cupboard was well stocked with warm pony blankets, but given the tropical climate of Tambura, the girls would normally be nude twenty-four hours a day. A separate galley, complete with dietitian, was built for the preparation of the pony girls’ nutrition. A special vegetarian diet was formulated by the dietitian which, coupled with their anticipated muscular development, would give the girls the strength required to perform their physically demanding pony girl tasks. The girls would, of course, learn to eat as real ponies did, that is from a feed bag suspended from the headstall. One female groom was assigned to the two ponies in each stall. It was anticipated by Anse early on that the grooms would meet with resistance from the girls in adapting to their new situation, so she equipped them with leather "discipline straps" to encourage compliance on the part of the ponies. The first few days in the stable were filled with the sounds of straps contacting thighs and buttocks, but soon enough the girls began to adapt to their new lifestyle and the straps were used mainly to hurry them through the showers and other routine group activities requiring cooperation on their part.

Anse wasted no time in launching her training program. Each day the ponies were awakened at dawn and taken for a cross-country run across the estate's hills and dales. Anse was astride a gelded Palomino wielding a long whip over the heads of the girls, occasionally directing its lash to the thigh of a laggard. An hour later the girls would come rushing into the staging area, hot, sweaty and exhausted. The grooms were awaiting them, hoses in hand, to wash down their sweat-covered bodies with cool, refreshing streams of water after which they were fed a hearty breakfast of bran and oats. If a girl should happen to collapse during the run she was eliminated from the program. Boots always did well on the runs, leading the pack, taking long strides, her breathing adjusting to the pace enforced by Anse. Gretchen was usually waiting with the grooms when the girls finished the run. After they had been hosed down she walked among them and soon found Boots. "Hello, Beauty," she said and patted the tall blonde’s rump affectionately with her riding quirt. Boots was forbidden to speak, as were all of the pony girls, or to smile, grin, or to show any other human facial expression. Yet, she was already somewhat attracted to her beautiful mistress and wanted to show her some sign of her feelings, so she placed her forehead against Gretchen’s shoulder and slowly rubbed the elegantly clad shoulder with her cheek. Gretchen was touched by the display of affection on the part of her "pony queen". "Ah Boots, you are a joy," breathed Gretchen. "I’m impatient for the day when you are in harness drawing my sulky and I can caress your sweet behind with my whip." Boots was taken aback. The reality of her situation overwhelmed her feelings of love for her mistress. She was to be her mistress’ horse. Only that. No matter how much her mistress might come to love her, her fate was to be put between the traces and harnessed to her cart, controlled by leather reins pulling on the bit in her mouth, driven by her whip. A tear rolled down Boots’ cheek, but Gretchen, seeing the tear, mistook it for a sign of her slave’s affection. "Yes, sweetheart, I know. You love your mistress. You want to be my pony. Soon you will be, I promise." Boots further reflected on her future. A deep feeling of abject humiliation washed over her. She had been born into slavery. She knew that. Yet, she had rarely been treated like a slave. She had received an elementary education; had worked as a nurse in a school. She anticipated a married life together with her love, Jock. Now, she faced an existence heretofore unimaginable to her. A pony! A horse! An animal! Bitted, harnessed, drawing a carriage, naked for all the world to see!

The weeding-out process continued apace. Anse subjected the girls to incredibly difficult physical tests. They lifted weights. Their bodies were coated with oil and they were made to wrestle each other, much to the amusement of Gretchen and Anse. But, it all served a purpose. Their strength and temperament were discovered by their relentless trainer, Anse. It seemed to Boots that she was receiving more than her fair share of the trainer’s attention. If she made the slightest error while marching in formation she felt Anse’s whip on her thighs. If she chanced to make eye contact with Anse, the quirt lashed her breasts. This undue attention was largely Boots’ imagination. Actually, Anse was equally attentive to all of the pony candidates. Her busy whips played no favorites. Finally, it was over. Twenty-five physically superb, mentally adaptable pony girls stood before their mistress and trainer, hands behind heads. Their glistening bodies had been bathed, oiled and buffed by the grooms to a high sheen. They wore black patent leather boots laced to mid-thigh with a matching wire-framed leather halter to contain and support their massive breasts yet exposing the nipples. Anse had ordered that a small amount of an aphrodisiac be mixed in with their feed. As a result, they were in a mild state of sexual arousal. Their protruding pink nipples were stiff and erect, seeming to stand at attention for their mistress and her cousin. Gretchen was very pleased. Mere words seemed insufficient to express her pleasure with the result of Anse’s rigorous weeding-out process. She walked slowly down the long line of future ponies, examining each girl from head to toe. Their chastity screens had been removed for the occasion on the orders of Gretchen so that she might caress their genitalia. Already excited by the effects of the aphrodisiac, the girls found it difficult to contain their expressions of pleasure when their mistress’ gloved hand stroked their outer lips. When she reached Boots, Gretchen removed the glove from her right hand and with her bare fingers stroked the blonde pubes of her pony queen. She then slid her index and forefinger into the vagina, which caused Boots to orgasm. Gretchen then withdrew her wet fingers from Boots’ cavity and while gazing into her eyes slowly put her fingers to her mouth and slowly licked them. Boots was astounded. She had never imagined that another woman would have such an effect upon her, much less do the things to her which her mistress had done. Gretchen pulled her kid glove back onto her fingers, all the while gazing into Boots’ lavender eyes. "Avert your eyes, slave, else you will feel my whip." she murmured, audible only to Boots. Then she moved on to the pony on Boots’ right and caressed her pubes with her gloved hand.

The ponies would now be subjected to having their nipples, ears, navel and labia pierced and ringed. Four molars would be extracted to accommodate a metal bit. Gretchen had lately decided that she would have the ponies branded. She and Anse discussed the design of the brand one evening while enjoying cocktails on the mansion veranda. A "G" inside a circle appealed to Gretchen, and Anse concurred. Anse had still another suggestion for Gretchen to consider. "What would you think of a pretty tattoo as well as the brand?" Gretchen was intrigued. This suggestion opened up the subject of exactly where on the slave’s body should the brand be burned-in, and if tattooed, where on the body should it be? In the end they decided that the right hip was the proper location for the brand since it would show well there above the top of the right boot. The tattoo, a looped whip with a short red grip and a long dark blue lash, would extend across the width of the lower back just meeting the upper curvature of the buttocks. The cousins agreed that the body-piercing be done first, followed by the branding, then the teeth extraction and finally the tattooing. Physical fitness training would proceed concurrently with pony skills training. The girls had the potential to be developed into pony girls, but their latent potentialities must now be transformed into physical strength. Anse knew that one of the prerequisites to being able to draw a heavy load was a strong pair of legs. The girls were all possessed of long, well-shaped legs, but none of them yet possessed the muscular development required of a functional pony girl. Anse had had built a device designed explicitly to develop the girls’ leg muscles. She had searched the estate for a long, straight tree of approximately seventy centimeters diameter. When she found her tree, a Phillipine Mahogany about twenty years old, she ordered it cut down, stripped of its branches and cut to a length of twenty meters. Steel rods were driven into each end of the log. The carpenters assembled planks to serve as a catwalk, then connected the assembly to the metal rods. Wheels were screwed beneath the board assembly to support it as it rolled on the ground just ahead of the log. The carpenters then screwed twelve equally spaced eye bolts into the leading edge of the boards; these to connect to the traces which were attached to the ponies’ ankles. The construction of the log assembly took place about a mile from the stables, adjacent to a smooth, gently rising incline. Anse calculated that twelve of the pony girls, harnessed to the log via the eye bolts, could pull the log and herself (walking the catwalk) up the slope. It only remained now to see if her calculations were correct. Riding her Palomino, Anse drove twelve of her girls to the site where she had the grooms harness them to the log. She stepped onto the catwalk and strode its full length drinking in the delightful scene that filled her eyes. The possessors of twelve magnificent pairs of legs and buttocks waited nervously for their trainer to command them. She did not keep them waiting. Her whip cracked like a pistol shot over their heads and the ponies strained to move the massive log. It was too heavy and wouldn’t budge. Anse now put into motion her long, leather horse whip. Walking methodically up and down the catwalk she lashed the twelve expansive pairs of buttocks mercilessly as the ponies strained to budge the log and catwalk bearing the weight of their trainer. The log assembly began to roll, very slowly, but it did move. "You’ve done it, beauties, it’s moving. Now pull! Pull!" The slave girls had never dreamt that pain could be like this, Anse’whip was unrelenting. As the team progressed up the slope their buttocks came to be at the same elevation as Anse’s eyes. In this arrangement the ponies’ legs presented a more reasonable target than the buttocks. Accordingly, Anse inflicted punishment on their thighs and calves with her supple instrument of pain. All the way up the slope she walked along the catwalk, moving from one pony to another, swinging her whip and calling out encouragement to them. "Yah, Brandy, pull. Clover, pull now. This will help you move." Crack. "Yah, Boots." Crack. "Move that beautiful ass your mistress likes so much." Crack. Crack. It took them twenty minutes to reach the top of the slope. Their bleeding legs ached. Their buttocks were criss-crossed with red stripes left by the lash. At the top of the slope Anse stepped down from the catwalk and walked around the team to stand facing them. "You did well, ponies. Now I can truly call you ponies. You deserve the title of Pony Girl. Your Mistress will be pleased." The sweating, exhausted, bloody ponies stood silently before their cruel tormentor. Then, on her signal, they dropped as one to their knees, placing their foreheads to the ground. Anse surveyed the twelve nude, bleeding, sweaty bodies kneeling before her. She felt the muscles of her vagina stir and could sense its wetness. She shifted the whip to her left hand and found her sex with her right hand. With very little effort she brought herself to climax, just as she had done so many times before in her girlhood, focusing her eyes on the huge, shiny hind quarters of Belgian draft horses who placidly waited to receive her whip.