creature feature: The Pony from Princess and the Pony

Not so much a "creature" in The Asylum's sense, as it is an "animal," the pony featured in our favorite studio's first full-out family flick is still one of god's "creatures," so thus he/she has earned a spot here.

And I'll be honest with you, there's not a lot of info on this particular horse out there, other than his/her name - her, I'm hoping - which is Twinkle. Nice name for a horse. 

That's really all there is on Twinkle. And believe me, I looked. But the sheer madness that comes from poring through Google returns on the phrases "princess and pony horse," "twinkle princess and pony," and perhaps most disturbingly, "twinkle pony asylum," is enough to make you puke cotton candy.

However, being the resourceful blogger I am, I guessed at the type of horse Little Miss Twinkle is, and found info on that. Ha!

So then, if my image-comparison skills are adequate, Twinkle is some sort of Arabian Horse, which Wikipedia is quick to note are distinguishable by their distinctive head shape and "high tail carriage." Awesome. Furthermore, Arabians are like the Adam & Eve of horses, one of the oldest breeds still in existence, dating back some 4,500 years (holy cow!) and an element in the bloodlines of every major racing breed in the world (insert your own horse/Da Vinci Code joke here; i couldn't think of one).

And here's an interesting tidbit: seems the height distinction between a pony and a horse (not an age distinction, as I naively assumed) as laid out by the United States Equestrian Foundation states that a "pony" is any equine that stands 58 inches (or 14.2 "hands" in the lingo) or less; a "horse" is any equine that stands above 58 inches (still 14.2 "hands"). Arabians, like Twinkle I think, range between 57 and 61 inches, meaning that while technically she'll classified as a horse, Twinkle could stay a real pony for all her life.

Little girls, rejoice!

(Worth mentioning that "all her life" is, on average, 25-30 years. Seemed a macabre statistic to throw in at the end of that last paragraph.)

And so there you have it, an in-depth look at, if not Twinkle specifically, then the type of breed Twinkle may been, in this Creature Feature that's really just about an animal. 

Some days around here you gotta stretch a little farther.