Rita Lyttle wrote one pony book (under this name, at any rate.) She had a varied career; working first as a singer and songwriter on shows like The Black and White Minstrel Show. She loved horses herself, but only got one when she was 14 . Her three daughters she was determined would get ponies earlier, as they were all pony mad. At the time she was writing Pony Madness, rather than working with horses, she was running a fashion business.
Pony Madness is a good, traditional pony story. A fatherless family move to a fairly derelict house in the country, and it conveniently turns out to have stables and fields. The girls eventually manage to persuade their cash strapped mother to help them loan a pony, and in the end they manage to buy the pony.
Finding the book: the book is easy to find, and usually reasonably priced.
Sources and links:
Dustjacket of Pony Madness
Pony Madness
Hodder & Stouighton, London, 1987, illus Paul Geraghty, 175 pp.
Lissa and Cass have to leave their beloved riding stables when the family money runs
out and the family have to decamp to a distant farmhouse owned by their grandfather.
The new house, though fairly derelict, does have stables and fields, and the girls
manage to get a pony on loan. It looks as if life might be complicated by the lodger
who rents a cottage next to the stables, and the family money troubles don’t help
either.
Bibliography - pony books only