Speak for the Ponies

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Hoof beats pounding across the sand: this is the sound of ponies living freely on Assateague Island, which lies on the Maryland and Virginia border. Maryland leaves its Assateague ponies in peace and preserves them, but Virginia manages its Chincoteague ponies disparately. However free and wild the ponies may seem, they are property of the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Department (VFD). The selling of these ponies began in 1925; the VFD fully acquired the herd in 1947 (Holden). One of the most tragic aspects of the auction is that the most trafficable ponies are less than a year old; buyers prefer to sunder the foals from their mothers at the clang of the auctioneer's gavel rather than waiting for the foals to reach the proper age for healthy separation. The older a pony is, the lower their price. These untamed ponies, sold into domestication and transported away from the only home they know, now live surrounded by humans and must become domesticated. The treatment and auctioning of the wild Chincoteague ponies is cruel and unnatural because the ponies are not accustomed to human contact and forced to perform actions against their will.
Before 1924, these ponies lived in peace and harmony, coexisting with the natural world i n the wilderness. However, when the Chincoteague Township burned down twice within five years, the townspeople decided that they needed to restructure their fire department (Holden). Suddenly, the idea of selling off untamed ponies to fund the maintenance of the VFD became a reality. In the first year alone, the VFD sold fifteen foals, raising over a thousand dollars and an average of seventy-five dollars per pony (Robson). The uniqueness of these ponies contributes to the 1.4 million tourists that visit this ar...

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