It is 3 p.m. on a Monday, and a woman in a pink, feather-trimmed negligee is telling me to whinny. Outside, the 405 Freeway roars. The late afternoon sun sits hot and high in the blue of the Southern California sky.

Inside Lady Elizabeth's Dungeon, a scantily clad law student dressed in pale pink silk is telling me to whinny like a horse. Or like a pony, to be exact.

I am here at Lady E's to shed my human skin and get hip to the joys of animal play, the sweet release that comes with giving up your responsibilities as a coherent and cognitive being and submitting to the domination of the higher-ups.

I've just snuck down a few notches on the evolutionary ladder. I no longer walk on two legs. A black leather bridle with a cocky red feather plume has been placed over my head. A bit is in my mouth. I'm drooling. I can't talk. And I like to talk, particularly when I'm embarrassed, turned on, or uncomfortable. I am presently all three.

But talking is out of the question, so I do like the lady says and whinny. She seems pleased. She takes a perfect cube of sugar from the valley between her breasts and places it into my mouth. I can smell baby powder. The sugar is soft and moist with her sweat.

"Such a pretty pony," she breathes. "Such a pretty pony."

She's talking about me. I am the pretty pony. I feel alternately flattered and humiliated. I whinny again.

"Pony likes sugar doesn't she?" coos the law student. And then she strokes my back.

Lady Elizabeth is one of Los Angeles' few legally sanctioned dungeons and the only one to offer pony training. Lady Dallas, my mistress in pink, is originally from Iowa. She actually had real ponies once, as a girl, and according to her, human ponies aren't much different.

"The thing about this fetish is that it's about domination, but it's not about physical pain," she assures me. "It's about tender, loving care."

Indeed.

Throughout my hour-long session, Lady Dallas rarely raises the cruel-looking whip she is clutching, except to nip lightly as my heels when we're making a few turns around the make-shift warehouse track.

"To indicate direction," she explains kindly.

I am treated well, because I am a show pony. Human pony play is usually broken down into three categories: show, carriage and riding ponies. As a show pony, my job is to look as pretty as possible and to prance around a lot and get fawned over and fed sugar cubes. Occasionally Lady Dallas "grooms" me by running this real horse shedder, all mean metal and sharp teeth, down my bare back. It feels like a dream. Like fingernails lightly stroking my skin, it makes me a little crazy with uncertain desire. I am turned on. I am embarrassed. I am humiliated. I am pretty.

All in all, not a bad combination.

Most of Lady Dallas' clients are men, but pony play is a decidedly democratic fetish. Boy trainers/girl ponies, girl trainers/boy ponies, guy/guy, gal/gal, homo, lesbo, hetero, whatever. It's a free-for-all really - no rules, no hang-ups, just lots of people wearing hand-tooled saddles on their backs and rolling around in the hay.

Clint Miller has been a professional pony boy since "mistakenly" picking up a 70s porn mag with a girl dressed as a horse on the cover. Over the years he has had over 300 women ride him and explains the lack of strict definition as his main attraction to the fetish.

"I feel free as a pony. I feel more human in a way," Miller claims. "It's a game. You can interpret it in your own way and it always turns out looking beautiful."

Paul Reed, editor of Equus Eroticus, an internationally distributed pony play magazine (and personal trainer to a formidable stable of mostly female ponies), explains his own attraction to the fetish.

"It encompasses a lot of areas that people enjoy," says Reed. "If you were to walk in off the street and see me riding a woman, you would think it was male domination gone amuck. But things are not always what they seem. This is a pleasurable experience for everyone involved."

I can see his point. There are worse ways to spend a Monday afternoon. Lady Dallas has given me another sugar cube and, because I prance so well, she's given me a gorgeous long and luxurious tail, balancing it in the back elastic of my thong. I give a little shake and feel it brush softly against the back of my thighs. Dallas smiles and pats me proudly.

"You're a good little pony," she whispers, "such a good little pony."

She pulls another sugar cube from the warm darkness of her cleavage. She strokes me gently. I smile and drool a little through the bit.

Then I whinny again, high and loud-without even being asked.

BIO: Jessica Hundley is a writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. She is editor of the travel guide Horny? LA: A Sexy, Steamy, Downright Sleazy Guidebook to the City. She likes having sex a lot better than writing about it.