Posted By Admin on July 21, 2009

By Robert Boswell

Men beware.

If you perk up one ear, lick or chew on your lips a little, or watch your mate with only one eye you have given yourself away. You are the submissive type and from here on out you are at the will of your trainer.

When Katye Allen steps into the ring to begin training a horse, these are the signs she is looking for. Once she sees them, she knows she has her subject’s attention. Before long, no matter where she moves in the ring, the horse will face her and follow her. “When I see those signs,” said Katye, “I will step in front of him and back up. I want him to turn and face me; I never want their butt toward me. That is a sign of disrespect.”

Katye is the lead trainer at the Chincoteague Pony Centre on Chicken City Road, Chincoteague, and captain of the Chincoteague Pony Drill Team. Her day begins early and ends late. She is up at 5 a.m., facing what most young women would not choose for that time of day, 15 stalls with poop to scoop, tack to clean, manes to clip and saddle pads to be washed. This is her side job.

By 8:15 she is at the pony centre. There she joins other members of the drill team who work at the centre. There are pony rides to give out front, riding lessons in the ring, water tanks to fill, hay to bring out, and more brushing and bathing and ponies to be trained.  She helps out with other duties throughout the day. Katye may get away for a few hours but by late in the day she is back, staying until around 10 p.m.

 Katye will be appearing with the drill team at the Chincoteague Pony Centre pony shows during Pony Penning week along with other drill team members.

 One horse Katye is training now is Misty II’s Henry, the 11 year old son of Misty II, who is buried on the pony centre property. Henry missed out on being trained at the usual age of 3 because he was given other responsibilities. “Henry was a stallion for the herd for a number of years,” said Kendy Allen, manager of the Chincoteague Pony Centre.  ”He is the sire of Misty III.”

Henry, by the way, is named for Marguerite Henry, the author of Misty of Chincoteague,. She was a great friend and inspiration to the family, said Mrs. Allen. “He was born the same year she died and we wanted her name to live on. So we incorporated the name of his mom, Misty II and Henry to come up with Misty II’s Henry.’

Katye has grown up in a horse family. Before moving to the Eastern Shore, the Allens lived on a farm in Lancaster, Penn. There is Keith and Kendy and their three children, the oldest now Kerra Allen Johnson, Katye and Kenneth.  Kerra Allen Johnson, is the manager and riding instructor at a farm in Assawoman. She rides with the drill team and is past captain.  Her brother, Kenneth, also rides with the drill team.

They got their first Chincoteague pony, Misty II, in the 1980s. She was the granddaughter of Misty of Chincoteague fame, 13 years old and untrained. The Allens gentled her to ride and she went on to become a hunter champion. Since then they have developed a herd of about 30 Chincoteague ponies and continue to breed, raise, buy, and sell and according to Mrs. Allen, “always love” Chincoteague ponies.

Katye describes Henry as “incredibly smart.” But he has a little bit of a stubborn streak, she said. “Once in a while he will swing around and kick his heels at me. With Henry, I just ignore it, don’t make a big deal out of it and keep on going.” Each horse has a unique personality and so, too, does Henry. “Henry likes to get dirty in the mud,” said Katye. “He likes to roll over and get dirty and I have to bring five changes of clothes just to give him a shampoo.”

If this sounds like she hates her work, she does not. Despite being bitten, kicked, bucked off, and thrown through a glass bookshelf, she rides every day and wouldn’t think of doing anything else. Well, almost nothing else. She does plan on starting classes this fall at Eastern Shore Community College with a long range goal of becoming a teacher.

Around horses, Katye said, you can’t be afraid. They will pick up on it. “Hesitate, they will know.” In any situation, she said, you always have to act natural and cool. She said her mother always says, “It takes a hundred falls off a horse to make a good rider.”  Mrs. Allen said her daughter qualified a long time ago.

When she begins to train a horse, said Katye, within a month she can be on his back. In two or three months he can be completely gentled.  But it takes a year or two, putting on as many training miles as you can, taking them to new places, to say they are “fully gentled.”

“I stand in the center of the ring, making them lunge (run) around me,” she said. They need to be able to listen to you on the ground. “If they try to swing their butts around, by the way I move my body in the center of the ring, I’ll push them right back around. I want them to turn and face me, and eventually I won’t need to hook a lead. “I want them to follow me, so I can move wherever and his head will always face me.”

It was evident Henry had learned his early lessons. As Katye moved around the ring, he faced her and yes, gave those fateful signs of submissiveness. “Some horses want to please you, pick up on things right away. Others are stubborn and seem to say, I don’t want to do this and you can’t make me,” she said.

Just like people, horses, said Katye, can have bad days. “Some days they will not listen, will not focus. Maybe they are bored. You have to do something to get their attention.” She said every now and then one of the stars of the pony show won’t feel like doing something. “You just have to smile and pretend it is part of the show.”

“Henry has the heart of a champion and soul of an angel, just like his mom, Misty II,” said Mrs. Allen. “She was a very special pony with great athletic ability and a loving heart.”

While some ponies at the centre are for sale, Henry and five great grand foals of Misty are not. “They will spend the rest of their lives with us,” said Mrs.  Allen. 

In addition to training Henry, Katye is also working with a yearling and helping with other Misty descendents, Heart of the Storm and Icicle. “I help my mom with the weanlings and all our horses in general as do my brother and sister.”

Katye, 23, has been training horses for 12 years. She graduated from Manheim Central High School in Manheim, Penn. She had her first pony when she was 3 years old and has been showing horses and competing in horse events ever since.

Her biggest moments come when a horse she has gentled goes to a show and wins. “There is no feeling like it,” she said, “knowing that all the hard work has finally paid off.”

A day after the interview for this article she took riders and mounts to a competition, the Evening Shade 2, at the Old Hope Farm in Elkville, Md. She won her event on a half-Chincoteague “Andante” that she had raised and trained herself. She competed in dressage, stadium jumping and cross country jumping.

Having already put in a long day, by 7 p.m. the team members who are riding in the show begin to arrive. All kinds of preparations take place, brushing manes and tails, and finally, blankets and saddles. The ponies get a dose of bug spray and at 8 p.m. the music begins. Katye’s mom goes to the center of the show ring and welcomes her audience for another hour long performance.

But when the show ends at 9:00 and the horses have been returned to their stalls, or to the paddock in front of the centre, Katye’s day still has time left in it. With help from the drill team members, a final poop scoop takes place out front and in the stalls and anywhere else the ponies have been. Tack has to be taken apart and cleaned, the glass displays and windows in the surrounding museum have to be wiped down, cobwebs are whisked from walls and the carriages outside the ring have to be dusted.

Then, it is out the door, hoping the ice cream parlors are still open.

For more information go to www.chincoteague.com/ponycentre.             

The writer is publisher of www.wildponytales.info, a website that covers Chincoteague and Assateague. <Mr. Boswell is a retired newspaper editor Accomack County journalism teacher.

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