The late Roman empire

As Rome prospered and spread throughout Europe, so did pet girls. While the practice was most common in Rome itself and concentrated among the patricians and very wealthy, the elite of other great cities in Italy and the provinces soon followed suit.

It was in the provinces that the culture of pet keeping evolved further and quickly diversified as new practices and styles developed independently before being imported back to Rome.

Egypt for one, heavily leaned into feline and vulpine forms. The local elites, still influenced by ancient Egyptian cat worship, fully embraced cat and fox girls. It was here, in the diminished but still great city of Alexandria, that the first movable ears and tails were developed. The mechanisms of these faux cat or fox ears were intricate and expensive, involving fine metal work as thin bands of leather were weaved beneath the hair of the pets and attached with glue to different parts of their head. Minute muscle contractions of the face and head muscles were enough to create expressive movements of the ears.

To create movable tails, a different solution had to be found, as there were fewer different muscles to allow for intricate movements. The solution was to abandon the attachment of tails to the tailbone, which had been the style of former pet girls, and instead use plugs and the anal muscles. The plugs themselves were made from brass and created in four different parts, each responsible for moving the tail in one direction. Similarly the tails attached to the plugs were intricate mechanical designs, transforming small contractions into elegant motions.

Of course, both the ears and the tails required extensive training in order to properly use, which was why trained cat and fox girls in addition to the accessories soon became a major export of the province.

Gaul, on the other hand, took a different route. Here the culture of keeping pets transformed into the so-called pony girls. While other types of pet girls, such as dog girls and the occasional cat girl were popular among the roman elite of the province, the gallic nobles observed the strange practices of their new rulers and turned it into a sport. Soon, the traditional horse races were gradually making space for pony girl races.

The first races, simply saw naked girls wearing faux horse ears and tails racing each other. But over the years, the rules and decorations became more and more intricate. To avoid sabotage and injuries during the race, pony girls first had their arms firmly tied behind their backs for each race. Surprisingly, this led to an increased incidence of pony girls biting each in the heat of the competition. The solution were bite gags that were soon required for ever girl.

As the rules became more and more strict and the races became more competitive, the status of the girls also changed. The first pony girls were mostly ordinary free women or slaves that were paid both to race for entertainment and additionally if they won. The events were infrequent and the girls were only playing the part of a pony girl for the duration of the race.

With the increased difficulty and competitiveness that came from having to run without the use of their arms and the increasing popularity of the sport this changed. The increased profits allowed many to devote themselves to the sport full time, while more slaves were raised by their masters to become pony girls for profit. To become accustomed to running without their hands, many pony girls began keeping their hands bound most of the time and remained nude in order to acclimate their bodies to the temperatures.

Soon, a successful pony girl could count on a steady income and considerable wealth while having to devote increasingly more time and effort to staying competitive. The most prolific girls were entirely dependent on others to take care of themselves as they spend most of the day training themselves for the races and had no more energy to take care of their other duties.

As a result, most of them soon ended up in what would come to be called stables. They were originally training centers for pony girls, mostly created by the owners of **** pony girls to take care of their racers. Some were created by groups of free pony girls in order to be able to compete with their enslaved competition.

Both were fairly similar in that they consisted of a building containing multiple rooms for the pony girls, training facilities, and a group of caretakers that took care of them. While the 'free stables' started out more like communal housing, they soon developed similarly to the larger stables of the **** owners.

By the late empire, a pony girl stable was both an expression for the physical building in which pony girls were usually trained, as well as a moniker used for teams that competed in the races. Most were owned by one or multiple noble families.

A late empire stable was built similarly to a horse stable and indeed often was a former horse stable. Pony girls were treated like the animals they imitated, their arms permanently bound behind their backs, entirely dependent on and obedient to their handlers. Their status was that of prestigious property, though only a small proportion of them were actual slaves. Many were free women, serving their time as pony girls before retiring wealthy once they grew too old. Many others, especially the most elite pony girls, were the noble daughters of the houses that owned the stables themselves.

Producing top tier racers was a matter of great prestige after all.

Of course, pony girls and their races found their way to Rome, where the Circus Maximus soon hosted the largest and most prestigious pony girl races of the empire.