@One First Matter All
As you can see there is conflicting advice for how to handle Ponderosa pines. I've been growing Ponderosa for over 20 years, and have killed my share of them.
First - keep in mind, the tree you have is not a seedling. From the looks of it, it is probably over 50 years old, might be 75 years old, and could be as much as 125, depending on where it was collected. That is not a young tree. Old trees like this do not "bounce back" from things in a single season.
IF you have only had it a year or two, you need to go slow. Just continue to grow it and feed it. Put away the pruners.
If you are going to repot, no pruning the season before and for at least one growing season after. You need all the buds intact to generate the hormones needed to get the roots to respond to repotting. When you repot, take the care necessary to position the tree correctly and to use a good quality potting media, so that you do not have to repot again for at least 5 to 10 years. Older Ponderosa should not be repotted more than once a decade if possible. So take your time, plan the new position for the tree, and get it right, because it will be a while before you repot again. Now we all know stuff happens, but repotting older Ponderosa more than once every 5 years is risky.
Wire your tree every year. Wire may be left on for many years if it does not bite in, but each year adjust and or re-wire to get it to shape.
Pruning - only remove branches clearly not useful for future design. Downward pointing or other "out of bounds" branches. NEVER routinely take off growing buds to force backbudding. Removing buds will weaken tree and not give you the backbuds you hope for.
Fertilizing, allowing the tree to grow, will naturally cause back buds to sprout. So let the tree grow if you want back buds.
A back bud will be strong enough to take over as a branch, usually by end of its third year. So basically you can prune back to interior back buds maybe once every 3 to 5 years, making sure that the apical, or terminal bud is at least 3 or more full seasons old. Pruning to a tiny, weak bud will simply result in the death of the whole branch.
This means in general, we don't prune ponderosa, we just let them grow. If you plan on pruning only once every 5 years, you will be less likely to kill the tree.
I'm conservative, but I have not lost any 100 year old Ponderosa lately. There are others that will tell you to prune more aggressively, more often. But check to see how their trees did afterwards. Being conservative will not hurt your tree.