REMARKABLY for a remote sea-bound settlement, the Shetland Islands, Britain’s northernmost community, has no fewer than five breeds of native domestic animals: a cow, sheep, pony, goose and duck. The most widely exported and ubiquitous by far is the Shetland pony, immortalised by Norman Thelwell’s comic and character-forming creation, Kipper, and the first riding pony for generations of horsemen and women since Victorian times.
Long before Queen Victoria put a pair of Shetland ponies between the shafts of a phaeton, however,
