One wonders what happened to the ponies. In one case, the father put the pony out to pasture 20 miles away; too far for the child to interact with the pony everyday. My Father who was raised in Iowa & moved to CA claimed many CAs were imported from Iowa.
Our first pony was an old mine pony: a shetland pony used to bring the heavy coal cars up from the depths of the coal mines in the southern Iowa region. She ws 35 when she came to live with us; had her first foal at 37 years old. Some ten years later, we sold her (out grown her, of course) and she had another foal for Alex M. who bought her. She was a white dappled mare, about 34 inches tall. She trained us well, and when she did not want to go the direction we headed too, she would do her side-step instead of going forward. We often hitched her up to a homemade cart and enjoyed driving her as well as riding her. Ah, memories!!!