The end of an era: Ponypark Slagharen is getting rid of its ponies

Six months after it was immortalised in a video urging US president Donald Trump to ‘make the Netherlands second’, Ponypark Slagharen is getting rid of its 60 ponies.

The holiday houses which can be rented complete with pony are being demolished because they ‘no longer fit in with the park’s future plans,’ broadcaster NOS said on Tuesday.

When the video by satirical tv show Zondag met Lubach went viral, the park’s commercial director Niels Dijkstra told the Volkskrant he was originally not quite sure what to make of Slagharen’s election as the ‘best pony park in the world’. But his doubts were soon dispersed.

‘I saw a message on LinkedIn from a Swiss man who wrote: ‘My girls are ready to ride the best pony’s in the world’. The amount of attention we’re getting is just bizarre. Our site had 10,000 visitors in one day,’ the Volkskrant quoted him as saying.

Slagharen first opened for business in 1963 and although it dropped Ponypark from its name 25 years ago and phased out the ponies a while later, they were brought back again in 2014.

‘The houses are the oldest we have and now they are being demolished, it was time to look at the entire concept again,’ director Wouter Dekkers told NOS.