*PONIES LEFT WITHOUT FOOD AND WATER ALL DAY*
*OVERCROWDED PENS*
*LACK OF ENFORCEMENT BY THE AUTHORITIES*

Every autumn the ponies are rounded up from Dartmoor and the unwanted ponies are taken for sale at Chagford market.  

For these wild ponies the sale is a terrifying experience. 

The sale is mainly of highly stressed and traumatised foals as young as four months, taken away from their mothers and thrust into an unfamiliar and frightening environment. There are also some older ponies at the sale including pregnant and nursing mares for sale. 

Every year we see many ponies held in extremely overcrowded pens, most without food, and the majority left all day without water.  It is an incredibly stressful experience for the ponies to endure as they are transported, left with no food (when they are designed to eat all the time) or water, put in close proximity to humans, penned with other horses they don't know and manhandled as part of the moving and separating for the ring. 

Last year People4ponies captured video footage of a buyer at the sale "karate kicking" a foal into a trailer.   Another video showed a pony being wrestled and dragged onto a lorry being lifted off the floor by its tail. Chagford Sale 2021

No home checking or background checks are required on the people who buy the ponies to see if they are suitable for the responsibility of having a pony, or whether they are suitably experienced.  Few people have the experience to handle these animals, especially the adult ponies who are extremely fearful.  .

The Welfare of Horses at Market Act 1990 is supposed to protect the ponies for sale but enforcement is continually lacking. 

The Act states that horses should not be kept in pens that are overcrowded and that  "It shall be the duty of the person in charge of the horse to ensure that the horse is provided with an adequate quantity of wholesome water as often as is necessary to prevent it from suffering from thirst".   The vast majority of ponies at the market have no access to water.

An online auction, where photographs or videos are posted of ponies for sale at the farms or on the moor would mean the ponies would not have to travel to and endure such a stressful, terrifying ordeal.  It is a much better and more humane option.  Bidding could also happen over a longer period (rather than a short moment on one day) in an effort to reach better prices.

PEOPLE4PONIES CALLS FOR AN END TO ARCHAIC CHAGFORD DARTMOOR PONY SALE AFTER CONTINUING WELFARE CONCERNS