same as the other – went a step further in their commitment to the Stables, though.
These men were promoted from their status as hands – only. Aaron never hired a groom or a trainer off the street – ever. They had to have been with the Stables at least five years and have exhibited exemplary behavior in that somewhat menial role. They were temperament tested during the hiring process, as well as by the job itself every day – any abuse towards the animals, verbal or physical, or any hand found dipping his wick where it didn’t belong or not within specified parameters was set off the property immediately, and he would be damned lucky if the rest of the crew – especially Aaron himself – didn’t give him some gut-punches and broken ribs as going away presents.
If a hand applied to be a groom or a trainer – or both – then they went through an incredibly extensive battery of personality tests as only one small part of the exceedingly stringent application process. There weren’t usually a lot of those slots available – this was a man’s lifework and he didn’t leave it easily, although Aaron did automatically retired them at fifty due to strength and health concerns, but the men with huge pension and stock option benefits, as well as a lifelong ability to come back to the Stables and indulge himself with any mare that was available. Aaron had also started a program whereby those retirees that wanted to could come back on a consulting basis in whatever area they liked best – breeding, training, grooming, stable construction… Aaron appreciated and accepted suggestions from any man – but the retirees had a wealth of knowledge and experience that no one could replace.
But when there was a coveted position open, there were usually upwards of twenty-five applicants for each job, and Aaron would only pick the best possible of the candidates to entrust his babies to. It was a tradition that when a hand became a groom, he had the GS crest tattooed into his skin right beneath where he would proudly display the patch on his uniform.
Ted had been at the stables for fifteen years. He rivaled Aaron in size, strength, and ability with the mares. Their temperaments, personalities, and philosophies about ponygirls were very much alike, which is why Aaron had chosen Ted to be Mandy’s groom. He knew Ted would reinforce anything Aaron decided to do with her without question, just as firmly as if Aaron himself was doing the reinforcing, with an eye to praise and positive feedback, but with a complete willingness and ability to use the whip – well, the crop or the tawse or the paddle; whips were not allowed on the premises except in the ring more for show.
They were opposites in looks, however. Aaron was tall and very dark with black hair and eyes, and a wide, trimmed mustache. Both of them were tanned and extremely muscular, but Ted was tall and gray since he was twenty or so; he defined salt and pepper hair, but he still had a full head of it – Aaron used to tease him that if he were a stallion he’d throw gray colts – along with a somewhat bushy gray mustache. If either of them had had a mind to, they could have easily been models. Ted, in particular, made a striking picture of the quintessential cowboy, although Aaron was no slouch in the masculinity department, either, nor were any of the men that worked there – they were all big, strapping men with extremely high levels of testosterone (blood and drug tests were mandatory upon application, and drug testing was randomly conducted for the length of any man’s employment at GS. No alcohol was ever allowed to be consumed around the animals, either), but they treated the animals entrusted to them as if they were priceless – hell, they never even swore around the mares, and any man that did was frowned at so much that he stopped immediately. The men all used particular words and phrases that made the ponies feel and act submissive – they were often spoken to as if they were little girls – words like “naughty” and “disobedient” and “little” were used a lot, as were either animalistic or babyish words for body parts or functions – “breasts” became “udders”, nipples were “teats”, “vagina” became “cunny” or “pussy”… They were all tough, macho, dominant men who thoroughly understood the psychology employed in the intricacies of wrangling their particular breed of little fillies, which they enjoyed a helluva lot more so than they preferred working with real horses.
It was Ted who, when they had decided that she’d had enough time to wallow, bent and picked up the crumpled little mare to set her down with the utmost care on her bed. Aaron loosened her arms from behind her, only to use the same leather gauntlet to rewrap her forearms together in front of her, adding thumbless mittens to her ensemble just incase she decided to harm herself – occasionally a filly was so unhappy she tried to harm herself, so this was merely a preventative measure. Lord knows everyone here hated to see any sort of blemish on a mare’s hide. Once Ted determined that she was stable enough in her new life not to do that, she would no longer be required to wear them at night.
The restraints were not apt to go away unless she behaved in an exemplary manner for a long time – although they could be reduced to a certain extent. Not only were her hands bound, but her supple leather collar was attached to a lead which was bolted into the floor, and the length of her hobbles was shortened by Ted, who was working at her other end, so that her ankles were essentially bound together as securely as her wrists. Mandy was lying on her side and this worked to their advantage when Aaron leaned over her hip from the front, pulling her towards him, almost over onto her belly but not quite. Someone, who must’ve been Ted, was behind her, and she soon discovered why: before Mandy even had a chance to register what was happening, she found her upper bottom cheek pulled up and something fairly thick but blunt pressed against her tight little hole. As it was pushed uncompromisingly up into her, Mandy emitted a low “unnghh”, and got a gentle reproach, “Quiet now, this is one of your fussy pills, little girl.” It popped up into her channel, sitting in there and filling it with its wide presence as surely as it had stretched her open to get there. Another followed just as quickly and easily, filling her to an uncomfortable extent, and the third one made her groan as it was worked up into her, then took its place with the other big rods inside her bottom. The men exchanged satisfied glances. She had taken them well. The fussy pills were fairly good sized suppositories – about an inch and a half around and about two inches long each – that were designed to melt very slowly inside her, but not irritatingly so. Only a very small part of them was actually the drug. They were deliberately large, hard to accept pieces to give the little filly something to distract her from her troubles and to seat her mind’s attention where it belonged for the rest of her life – at her bottom, her genitals and the area between her legs or at her breasts – in the places at which she was most female, most vulnerable, and most concerned with pleasure and breeding. To further encourage this concentration, Aaron reached towards her head and flipped something from her blinkers over her eyes, so that she couldn’t see anything – nothing – no light, no shadow, no motion.
In an almost fatherly gesture, Aaron leaned over and kissed the now soulfully keening woman on the forehead. “Sleep well, my lovely.”
From Ted, she received a light pat on the bare flank. “Get a good night’s sleep, girl, there’s a lot for you to begin learning tomorrow.”
Mandy would never know it, but she was far from alone that night. Ted and Aaron took turns watching her all night, not to mention the fact that the stables was staffed twenty-fourseven. Each stable housed sixty ponies in a building that was designed like a plus sign – sort of. Three arms of the plus had nothing but immaculate stalls, twenty to an arm, ten to a side. Each stall had its own food and spring-fed trough, electrical outlets set up high where the ponies couldn’t get to them, thermostat, air conditioning, aromatherapy equipment, vaporizer, air purification… anything he could think of to make each filly’s stay as pleasant as possible. They were kept cleaner than most peoples’ houses and were open and airy. The fourth arm was the indoor paddock and training and show rings. Grooms and trainers who had new charges always stayed with them at night – although the fillies didn’t know it unless they got into some type of trouble, but there was a night staff of hands who did nothing but make the rounds all night long checking into stalls to make sure that no mare was in distress in any way. Mares in foal were housed in their own stable, and their grooms, hands, and handlers followed her to that special stable once she was determined to be in foal, as well as any and all of her familiar accoutrement so that the transition was as easy as possible for her – her scents and colors were scrupulously maintained, as was as much of her normal routine as possible.
The overnight shift was eleven to seven, and there were thirty men on it in each stable to get the overnight cleaning done and watch over each of the girls. Aaron had been considering increasing this – he didn’t like the idea of any of his mares stressing at night because they were alone or lonely rather than sleeping as they needed to – especially the ones that were being actively bred. While he kept both eyes on his at first fussy and sobbing, then finally sleeping charge, he still had a third eye out for how things were running at night. Ben Two Deer, a sixfoot- seven, over three hundred pound half-Irish, half-Indian man was the supervisor on that shift in this barn, and his expertise was worth its weight in gold to Aaron. Ben could spot a problem-child mare at a hundred paces, and, for all his huge size and proportions, he had the gentlest touch with a fractious mare that Aaron had ever seen. The mares seemed to be drawn to him as if they expected him to protect them, and, frankly, he did with everything in
