"Pony Training: 5 Case Studies" Review
Pony Training: Five Case Studies on Pony Play - A Book Review
Written by cPony on
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The book I'm reviewing today, "Pony Training: Five Case Studies on Pony Play, Ownership and Kinky Submission", was written by Garth Mundinger-Klow and published by Olympia Press on June 10, 2010. The book is 150 pages and is available as a softcover paperback1 or in electronic form.
Reviewing this book was a bit like a roller coaster ride. At Amazon's suggestion, I bought this book along with my copy of The Human Pony (which I reviewed here). Actually, I was both impressed and surprised that another informational book on pony play was even available, and after reading part of the blurb, I was excited to review it:
"Dr. Garth-Mundinger Klow sets his naughty academic gaze on the curious act of pony play...The five case studies herein, taken from three years of precise sociological research, reveals the inner makings of human to pony"
From that excerpt, I was expecting something akin to Wilcox's "Human Pony", but perhaps focused on the mental aspects of play. Whereas Wilcox's "The Human Pony" discusses the mechanics of pony play and can serve as a well rounded intro for those unfamiliar with the fetish, I imagined this book would be an informational text that fpcused on the pony headspace and its variants through several case studies. The blurb, which is pretty much all I had to go on, did not disabuse me of this idea by making statements such as:
"these in-depth true stories of pony training"
So I was rather surprised when my "Pony Training: Five Case Studies on Pony Play, Ownership and Kinky Submission" turned out to be a set of five dirty little erotic novellas slapped between a couple pages of boilerplate "pony play is the erotic transformation..." and "those who engage in this bestial play...".
No in-depth accounts of anything.
No truth to the stories.
No years of precise research performed.
And no academic gaze was trained on, nor anywhere near, pony play in the "making" of this book.
Rather, the book represents the antithesis of anything academic, right down to foundation of the text, which, as far as I can tell, is outright plagiarism.
Needless to say, I was rather annoyed. It's not that I don't like pony play stories (believe me, I read them regularly), rather I felt completely mislead by the book's description. Admittedly though, if I had looked into the book beyond its blurb, I probably could have guessed its content from its author's other publications (e.g. "Return to the Anal Altar"). However, I should not have to carefully research an author's pseudonym to determine the veracity of the titles and descriptions of his publications.
Honestly, after my initial flip through, I seriously contemplated not even bothering with the review. However, after spending the money to buy it, I figured why not? Indeed, it might actually help another pony or pony enthusiast save a few dollars from going into a likely scammer's pocket.
As I mentioned above, the "case studies" are ponygirl or ponyboy stories, but it gets worse: not only is it a collection of erotic stories masquerading as a well-researched infromational text, but the stories appear to be someone else's - multiple someone elses - pony play stories.
The book has 5 chapters. Each chapter starts with a little intro (somewhere between 1-2 lines) that makes it sound like the author is introducing the next "interview" subject. After the brief intro, the chapter is a story that, from what I can tell, was taken straight off the internet (typically from Sir Jeffs or BDSM story sites) with no credit to the original author.
I'm still in shock that I actually paid for this. I'm not sure if the authors gave their permission to have their stories used in this book (I doubt it given the number of authors involved, but there is a remote chance they agreed to it), but either way the stories are available online for free at Sir Jeffs ponygirl site (and sometimes another similar site), so I'm not sure why anyone would ever want to pay for this.
To hammer the point home, here are each of the book's chapters (keep in mind the book was published in 2010) along with the corresponding original story (with original author) that was used to "make" or "inspire" it (but if we're being honest, they were simply copied whole cloth with a few word substitutions made here and there, likely to avoid easy detection of the plagiarism via searching with quotes or other online plagiarism detection tool):
- Case Study #1: Tigerpet: The Making of a Ponygirl - This chapter looks to be very similar to the 2003 story by Alex Bragi entitled Ponygirl Tigerpet on Sir Jeff's website (also called The Ponygirl on BDSM library).
- Case Study #2: Training Linda - This chapter looks to be very similar to the 2002 story The Bar None Stables "written by Kilogram for use on SirJeffs Ponygirls" (it can also be found on BDSM Library under the same name).
- Case Study #3: Joe Trains a Ponygirl - This chapter is very similar to the 2007 A Ponygirl Story by John Brand (also can be found on Sir Jeffs under the same name).
- Case Study #4: Zach Becomes Big Boy - This chapter is very similar to the 2005 story Big Boy by "PR squared".
- Case Study #5: The Making of Bijoux - This chapter is very similar to the 2006 story Bijoux the Pony Girl Maid by Missy Crystal (it can also be found on BDSM Library as Bijoux, the Pony Girl).
The and the blurb describing the book were incredibly misleading. The book is actually a book of erotic stories, likely plagiarized, that may or may not involve pony play. That alone would be annoying, but what made it a thousand times worse was the fact that the stories themselves appear to have been taken in their entirety from the Internet, specfically Sir Jeffs website (a story compilation site with many pony play stories), without crediting the original author or acknowledging in any way that the stories were not the book author's own.
Rating
My rating is 0* out of 5 stars. Don't waste your money on this book - go to the source from which they were copied (I've provided links to all of the stories in their original form above).Again, I'm not sure if the stories were used with permission - if so, then it's just a little irritating because the title and description were misleading, and, again, while I do enjoy fictional pony play stories a lot, I decided to buy this particular book because it sounded like it had something new to offer: the exploration of pony play through several case studies, carefully researched and curated to provide valuable insight for those of us interested in the history and diversity of pony play.
Aside from the stories being freely available online, I'm not even sure the actual authors of the stories themselves are making any money from it (they are certainly not credited), so I see no reason why anyone should buy this book and contribute money to someone that seems intent of scamming people.
Footnotes