Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
by Nob

This report will provide a picture of what it is like for us ponygirls 24 hours a day, for most of what has been written about us focuses just on the more exciting experiences we undergo. There's much more to being a ponygirl than glamorous races and fancy parades, as you must realize. Most of the time we are forced to engage in much less exhilarating activities. The ranch has to be kept up, and this involves many different kinds of work. Not all of them are easy, and if any are, you can be sure that the girls' restraints will be such that even an undemanding chore will be made more difficult.

In terms of personnel, the Ranch usually has about 30 ponygirls, ten or twelve grooms (both male and female), and ten male trainers, along with such specialized employees as a physician and some engineers who see to the Ranch's mechanical stuff.

The Captain of the Guard at Bork Ranch is named Javalyn, but to the grooms and trainers, and to the ponygirls when they are (rarely) without gags, she is simply "The Jav." She has ebon hair, cut in a Betty-Page bob. She is better than six feet tall, broad-shouldered and deep-breasted, and in excellent muscular good health. She is also stern, cruelly imaginative in the design of torments and restraints, and totally in control of everything at Madam Brenda Bork's Ranch. And the fact that she prefers women rather than men as lovers means that she enjoys every aspect of her job, even though this means that her charges fear her more than Mistress Bork herself.

Madam Bork maintains a network of people with tastes like hers who are in contact with young women, mainly on college campuses, and who can identify those who likely candidates for ponygirl service. When they are found, their photos and records are sent here, and Madam Bork selects those whom she would like to have in her stables. Those chosen are of course interviewed and tested, and the "winners" are invited to join the Ranch on a permanent basis. Oh, we get a few girls from other Masters and Mistresses, but for the most part Madam Bork prefers to start with what she calls "fresh meat." So we receive three or four girls a year through this process, and manage to sell an equivalent number to private owners elsewhere. Once in a while, a ponygirl will "retire"to some specialized work such a cooking and making new restraints.

As a willing veteran of several years here at Mistress Bork's Ranch, I have come to think of the jobs I have been assigned to as falling into several categories. For instance, there are those that involved moving things. Manure has to be hauled to the exercise yard to keep the grass healthy, foodstuffs have to be unloaded and stored properly, and the water-wheel must be kept moving so that the tanks above the stables will be kept full. Some girls have to pull the roller that keeps the exercise yard smooth, and others have to keep the fans circulating so the stables will always have fresh air.

Then, there are those chores that focus on cleaning up. The yards must be constantly policed, stalls must be swept out and restocked with fresh straw, and the toilet facilities have to be emptied and cleaned. Feedbags and other aspects of the girls' diets must be taken care of as well.

Hygiene and beautification form another area of work. For any special occasion, the girls who can do it are required to fix the hair and makeup of those who will take part in the festivities. And the girls' health is a serious concern as well. Madam Bork paid the entire med-school expenses of a wiry Lesbian named Dr. Del Thorkin so that she will work fulltime as a plastic surgeon here at the Ranch. Dr. Thorkin, sadistic, wiry, and thin-lipped, is adept at treating the occasional scrapes, bruises, broken bones, and other ailments that beset ponygirls as well as all other people. Her chief skill, however, is in piercing, boring, liposuction, and other methods of reshaping the human body. Nearly all the girls here now were fitted upon their arrival with heavy silver D-rings fastened through holes bored just below and well behind their aureoles, and most of them can thank her as well for their nose-rings and tongue-studs.

Dr. Thorkin's ability to enhance a girl's breasts to truly spectacular dimensions is remarkable, relying somewhat on the scar tissue that results from the infibulation of breast-rings but also for other techniques that firm up and also as increase the erotic sensitivity of the patient's frontal equipment. I know she has had offers from many other Ranches, but has chosen to stay with Madam Bork for obvious reasons.

Record-keeping is another important job. There is a file on each ponygirl and it must be kept up to date in terms of arrival, age, weight, competition results, health, special equipment needs, disciplinary actions, and so on. These are kept in the ranch office, and a number of girls who can type or file are assigned there each day. One might think that office work is relatively easy, but none of us really like it. For one thing, we are always directly under the eye of The Jav, and for another, we are put into such restraints that even the simplest jobs become demandingly difficult and often painful as well.

The weekends are special. If Madam Bork is not giving a two-day party for other ranchers in the area, some of us are taken to whichever ranch is holding the affair that particular weekend. Races are the chief reason for these events, but when Madam Bork is the hostess, we must not only race but also provide entertainment, decoration, and services. Those who are not racing will be assigned duties as waitresses or as living decorations (in the most bizarre bondage The Jav and her staff can devise), or forced to perform stunts and other humiliating activities for the amusement of the guests. And if a guest wants the company of one of us for the night, Madam Bork is always willing to grant that request.

Then there are always the exercises we must engage in to keep each of us in top physical shape. Several hours of each day are devoted to calisthenics, training in running and steeplechase, and whatever else the trainers think we should undergo. Since the trainers have freedom to determine what we must do during these periods, they have also devised for us such odd exercises as hopping races, crawling races, and even a game called, naturally, "fetch." How many times have I had to run as fast as I can in a ten-inch hobble so get a stick that my trainer has thrown far down the exercise field? I have to kneel, bend down, and take the damned thing between my teeth because my arms are strapped up behind me in a forearm-X, and then race back to the trainer. Being treated like a real bitch is always a source of shame, even though I find it strangely satisfying as well.

The whole idea, of course, is to keep us busy, always aware of our servitude, and prepared for whatever Mistress Bork may demand of us. The fact that it is The Jav who schedules each girl's activities, and often takes personal charge of disciplinary measures, merely makes life more difficult for us. But since every girl here is in fact a volunteer, a devotee of bondage and discipline who loves physical restraint and harsh servitude, complaints are rare and mild when they are expressed.

Perhaps a detailed description of several typical scenes will make life at the Ranch clearer to the reader. . .

Scene I: Policing

The trainers and grooms are free to dispose of cigarette and cigar butts, trash, gum wads, wrappers, and whatever else they want to be rid of around the stables and yards, for they know that ponygirls on police duty will pick up their waste as soon as possible. Stray dead leaves, plastic bags blown in by the wind, and tufts of grass brought in on the wheels of wagons and sulkies are also in need of policing. This is not an easy chore, for The Jav has worked out an arrangement that we girls despise, even though it guarantees that the job will be done.

Here are Tinki and Quill, two ponygirls who learned to their dismay at lineup this morning that they will be assigned to policing today. Tinki, blonde and shapely, will be the "crawler," or one who actually picks up whatever must be disposed of. Quill, on the tall side with dark red hair and a truly magnificent pair of boobs, will serve as her guide. Two trainers take them to the equipment room for their special restraints.

Tinki is first fitted with thigh-sheaths that will hold her legs sharply doubled. Fortunately, the knees are well padded so she will not suffer from pebbles and other sharp things on the ground. A corselet comes next, laced snugly but not too tightly, and its crotch-strap is drawn tight between her legs more as a reminder of her erotic potential than for continual punishment. Each hand is then fitted into a padded mitt so that her fingers will be useless, and a two-foot hamperbar is locked between her wrist cuffs. Finally, there is her helmet, a close-fitting item of glossy black leather that encloses her head entirely except for the generous opening at her mouth. She will thus be totally blinded, and the helmet's ear-plugs will keep her in a world of complete silence. The trainers help her to the hands-and-knees position in which she will remain all day.

Quill's outfit is not so restrictive, but it allows her only a slight bit of freedom. High-heeled boots are drawn up to just below her buns and laced to severe constriction. She is allowed only six inches of chain between her ankle cuffs. Then her hands are secured inside padded mitts like those Tinki is wearing, and twelve inches of chain are locked between each wrist and the breast-ring nearest it. After this, she is gagged with a monstrous leather gadget that clamps her tongue, covers her lips, plugs her ears, and the head-straps that hold it in place are tightened so that she must bite down on the device at all times. Finally, a low, two-wheeled "collection cart" is fixed in front of her by two long iron rods attached at the sides of her corselet. She will thus have to push it ahead of her, ready to receive whatever Tinki has picked up with her mouth.

To complete the job, the two girls are connected by reins that run forward from Tinki's breast-rings, up through rings set at each side of her collar, and then are locked to Quill's wrists. Only by a special series of jerks at the reins will Quill be able to guide Tinki to her target, for Quill cannot speak and Tinki cannot hear even her muffled nasal grunts. The fact that her mouth is free means nothing, for Quill cannot hear her at all.

To tell Tinki where to go and what to do, Quill must jerk at the reins by moving her own hands. Two simultaneous jerks at both reins mean "go forward," a jerk on the right or left rein tells the crawler which way to move, and three jerks on both mean that there is something in front of the crawler to be picked up. A series of right-left, right-left jerks tells Tinki to back up. She does her best to obey these commands, even though her movements may require much adjustment before she can do her job. There is no way for her to know what it is she must pick up with her lips or teeth, but when she feels the three jerks she must lean down until her mouth finds the object.

What can she do with what she has picked up? Quill must maneuver the cart until it is directly under Tinki's mouth. Tinki can feel its presence and drops her finding into the cart. She thus locates the cart with her chin, and deposits her trash in it. Cigarette butts are the most common things to be collected in this manner, and there are used Kleenexes, empty match-covers, and an occasional bit of plastic packing, but the crawler must always be prepared for larger or more disgusting objects. A cigar butt is one thing she hates, as are dusty wads of previously used gum. Dead leaves are a nuisance but not bothersome, and once in a while there will be a tuft of grass or ball of mud that has come in on the wheels of a manure cart. Pigeon feathers are especially difficult to pick up. Tinkin can often tell what it is to be picked up by its smell, but all too often she is surprised (and disgusted) at what she must deal with.

The team makes its way along one side of the spacious yard, covering a swath perhaps ten feet wide, and then makes a U-turn at the end in order to cover the next swath. Tinki and Quill must empty their collection cart now and then, dumping it into a larger basket in the middle of the yard, before they continue. It is past noon by the time the have covered the main area. The grooms give them twenty minutes for an unappetizing lunch of liquid gruel, squirted in at the corner of each one's gag, and then they are led to work the front yard of Madam Bork's mansion. Only after they have covered this entire area are they relieved of their day's work.

During the day, the girls are always vulnerable to corrective "encouragement" by anyone with a lash or quirt, and so the guide must be constantly alert for whatever is foreign to the area. A missed cigarette butt, for instance, can lead to several stinging swats across Quill's bare buns, and a candy-wrapper that fails to fall into the collection cart can earn the Tinki similar punishment. After ten hours of cruising the stable yards and the lawn in front of Madam Bork's mansion, both girls are exhausted and Tinki is begging for water to wash out her mouth.

After the girls have been released from their grotesque restraints they are allowed an hour's rest in their stalls, still in heavy bondage but without their helmets. And after "dinner" eaten dog-style at six o'clock, an hour of strenuous exercise makes them more than ready to be put into evening bondage in their cells for the rest of the night.

Scene II: Exercise and Training

Some scenes from a ponygirl ranch are rarely written about. When we ponygirls aren't being used for racing, parade, or decorative purposes, our trainers have lots of time to keep us busy - usually in the most degrading, erotic, and exhausting ways they can devise. But training for the races is always the first order of business.

We have an oval track for real races, but spend as much time if not more on stamina training and learning to obey the reins in different outfits. For instance, there is a set of drawbars fastened not to real sulkies but to small two-wheeled carts, each of which is in turn connected to a heavy rope that leads back to a ground-level pulley and then up to a twenty-foot high pulley and then down again to the ground. At the end of the rope is a fifty-pound weight. With a 25-foot path ahead of each cart, we girls are hitched up astride the drawbars and prepared to go, leaning forward enough so that the weight is just off the ground. At the trainer's signal, each of us must shove off and run as fast as we can to the end of the path, cruelly hampered as we are by the weights we are pulling. Reaching the end of the path of course means getting the weight to the upper pulley, and then the girl is suddenly halted because she can go no further. Wow, that hurts!

This puts a real strain on us, and after ten repetitions of this exercise we are generally gasping for air and grunting at the pain between our legs. The fastest girl, of course, is identified as an excellent candidate for the next real races, even though the others have probably improved their leg strength as well. These exercises also allow the trainers to determine what sort of arm bondage will allow each girl to run her fastest, and to figure out how many strokes of a whip will be most effective in forcing more speed. And when Captain Javalyn ("the Jav") is present, she also takes the opportunity to test the effectiveness of different types of pony boots and bridles. One trainer is always assigned to keep records of what she has found.

Running around the track while pulling a weighted sulky is another exercise intended to develop our leg strength, although this requires more time and attention from the trainers. The result, of course, is that most of us are usually in top condition and ready to take on the most talented ponygirls from other ranches. Plenty of water and nourishing gruel are always at hand to support us in these exhausting efforts. Reluctantly, we must admit that this form of training is good for us, and we do our best to get better at this demanding duty. The trainers of course encourage competition among us so that one's relative prestige in the stable is recognized and the best of us can enjoy our superiority.

And there are other kinds of exercises as well. One particularly degrading one the trainers call "the bunny-hop." A girl is fitted with padded sheaths to hold each leg doubled and a two-foot hamperbar is fastened between them. Then her hands are laced into padded, fingerless mitts, and another hamperbar of the same length is locked between her wrists. Then she must simply hop forward as rapidly as she can, pulling her knees up close to her mitts and then leaping forward to land on the mitts well ahead of her. Repetitions of this sequence will move her ahead quite rapidly, even though it is tiring. And if straps from her bridle are pulled back to the rear of her bodystrap, she must keep her head looking straight ahead despite the strain on her neck. Races between girls in the bunny-hop are among the more popular entertainments the trainers have devised for us - at least for them! And they make an interesting addition to our repertoire when we must entertain.

Those of us who will not be racing or serving at one of Madam Bork's receptions must be able to amuse the guests by performing various difficult or humiliating stunts. Putting three of us together side by side, with the middle girl's legs strapped to each partners' inner leg, is a fairly common thing these days, even though it requires a good deal of practice to move effectively. The girl on the left side of the trio is called "Number 1," the one on the right side is "Number 3," and of course the unlucky one in the middle is "Number 2." So as Number 1 moves her left leg forward, Number 3 must do the same, leaving Number 2 to move her right leg ahead along with Number 3's. If we are all wearing stiletto heels or pony hooves, our balance may be at risk as well.

Although our twinned legs are always strapped the same - at ankles, knees, and upper thighs - this leaves a lot of room for different kinds of arm bondage. Often the middle girl's arms are joined with her neighbors' arms in a doubling sheath that holds them motionless, while the outer girls' other arms are drawn up behind them to be fixed at the back of the middle girl's collar. Or the girls' outer arms can be pulled down in front of them and then a strap from each wrist is pulled back between her thighs and up to the rear of the center girl's corset. The "eagle-spread" is another option, with the outer girls' outer arms stretched along a pole fastened across all of the girls' shoulders.

"Twinning" in this fashion is even more complicated when additional girls are added to the coffle. If there are five girls involved, three of them will be linked to their neighbors, and the manner in which they must move becomes quite complex. Yet the trainers have figured out how to manage this, providing proper directions for the group as a whole, and before long they have the girls acting like a Las Vegas chorus line. With fancy costumes and bizarre restraints, they eventually learn to provide some first-class entertainment when there are guests to be amused. Doing a classic can-can, dipping and swaying in unison, and dancing forward and backward as well as from side to side, their labors are always appreciated.

And another imaginative idea, this one from the Jav herself, involves breast bells with different tones. For this trick, only the girls with the more "outstanding" breasts are used, and undercups keep their bosoms well forward. A complete "chorus," requires thirteen girls twinned in a single line, providing the 25 bells that are tuned to make up two full octaves. Each girl's gag includes a rod pointing down from beneath her chin, and at the lower end is a crossbar that is used to ring a single bell. Twisting her head to the right will make the crossbar strike the bell on her right nipple, and she can ring the other by turning her head to the left. Learning how to do this is a complex challenge, but the frequent use of a lash soon has her able to do her part. The girl at the right end of the line has a special bell on her right breast that clacks rather than rings, and it is she who must signal the beginning and end of each "concert" with this bell.

Getting the girls lined up and then teaching them when each must ring one or the other of her breast bells, they are trained to provide music for Madam Bork's guests. Each bell is given a single letter (for there are 26 letters in the alphabet), and the trainer in charge simply calls out which letter is to be "played" and when. Simple melodies are fairly easy, once a girl knows which bell to ring and when, but chords of three or four notes require lots of training and frequent use of the trainers' quirts. Popular songs are learned, along with a few more traditional tunes, and after a good deal of practice the girls are able to put on a satisfyingly melodic performance. The Jav is especially proud of this innovation and spends much time in working out the proper bondage for her bell-ringers.

Then there are the stunts. One involves strapping two ponygirls back-to-back so that they can do a series of cartwheels that will carry them across the stage. Their waists and shoulders are strapped together, pressing each one against the other's back, and then their upper arms are strapped firmly together above the elbows and their wrists are pulled forward about their waists to be drawn down between their legs and connected tightly to straps from the other girl's wrists. Once secured this way, one of them leans forward while the other shoves upward with her legs, flopping over the top of the first girl and landing on her feet in front of the first girl, and then the sequence is repeated. Training for this exercise involves many painful tumbles before the girls are ready for perform for an audience, but the Jav insists on continued training until the cartwheelers are fully trained.

Those girls who are least skilled at these exercises must serve as waitresses, sternly hobbled and equipped with high corsets that hold their torsos rigid while they carry heavy trays to the guests. The forward edge of each tray is linked by a thin chain to a girl's breast rings so that it cannot tip forward, and then she must kneel before the guest to present the food and drink she carries. It is of the utmost importance that she not lose her balance and spill the offerings. But this always happens once or twice during each service, and the clumsy one can expect severe discipline over the next several days.

And then there are the "decorations" - girls restrained around the hall in the most lascivious and stressful positions simply for the guests' viewing pleasure. One girl may be posed alone, or several can be fixed together in voluptuous closeness. Sometimes guests are invited to devise their own forms of restraint, and the Jav's assistants are at hand to provide whatever articles are needed and to force the girls into the positions designed by the guests. I recall once being strapped back-to-back with another ponygirl at our legs, and then we were forced to lean forward at a right angle from our hips by an iron rod that connected the backs of our collars and was held in place by more straps at our waists and shoulders. Hamperbars spread our ankles a good yard apart and chains from our wrists were pulled down to go beneath this bar and then up to the other girl's breast-rings. The chains were so taut that neither of us could relieve the painful pull at the others' nipples. The worst part was having a heavy rubber rope fixed from the center of our back-bar to the ceiling. Its elasticity allowed the guest to shove one of us forward until her face almost touched the floor, and then the elastic pulled us back and forced the other girl to lean down almost as far. This dipping back and forth amplified our miseries greatly, to the raucous laughter and hoots from the guests. Their frequent use of a sting-lash did not make the experience any less awful.

At the end of the day's activities, all the ponygirls involved in any of them must be freed and then put back into "normal" bondage. If we are at another owner's ranch, some of us must pull wagons so that our trainers need not walk, and this requires four girls per wagon, two on each side of the drawbar and fastened to it at their waists. The others are formed into two or three coffles and forced to march all the way back to Madam Bork's ranch. If we are at home, of course, it is simply a matter of taking us back to our stalls.

Those who have made errors are of course put into punitive bondage such as being spreadeagled instead of merely chained to a post in the stall. A few whippings are carried out, some of those needing punishment are chained astride poles rather than being free to lie down for the night, and others are more tightly bound and put into tight-laced discipline helmets with tongue-clamp gags. Yet all of us are glad that the day is over and we can look forward to regular training and service for the next week.

The End