I literally cannot explain, even to myself, how I found him on the internet. I wasn’t looking for a pony. (I had no business even browsing horses, I was done with horses, I had spent days crying about no longer having horses in my life, but old habits die hard and I definitely had a horse shaped hole in my heart.) I have always loved ponies, but I’m 6′ tall and Jesse James (at 14.3h) was as close to a pony as I had any business riding. And this little buckskin was a proper Pony. 38.5″ – just over 9.5 hands. He was in Fresno, Ohio at a place called Twilight Farms, along with a bunch of other ponies. That was over 2500 miles away, even after taking the ferry ashore. But he had his eye on the horizon in a way that I resonated with and something in me quietly said ‘yes, please.’ So I clicked on his profile.

“A flashy buckskin gelding with the go-getter attitude and heart of gold everyone wants in a step-up pony! This 8-year-old, 38.5” miniature gelding is well broke to both ride and drive — and he’s done it all with style and stamina. Franklin comes to us with real-world experience: he was a school pony in New York, driven daily by children to and from school! He’s safe and seasoned, but he also has that extra sparkle.”

And just that fast my imagination caught fire and things started to fall into place. I couldn’t ride any more, but maybe I could still drive? A horse was now big enough to be dangerous, but surely I could still handle a pony? Of course, horses are herd creatures, they feel safer and happier if they’re not alone, so maybe Two ponies?

I was visiting the Twilight Farms website https://www.twilightfarms.net/ponies multiple times a day, mooning over Franklin and considering each of the other options as a possible team mate for him. All of the ponies there are trained to ride and drive and do tricks, but beyond that there’s a lot of variety. There was an adorable wee mule in white knee socks named Molly.. I was thinking in terms of visual metaphors and symbols and how horse people and mule people tend to be two distinct camps, so a mule was appealing on that level, but Molly was too young. There was a lovely little grey named Marshmallow, but he was 3″ shorter than Franklin and while I loved the idea of a cowboy pony and a princess pony, if anything I wanted to size up for the sort of adventure I was planning.

The website said that there were other ponies available that weren’t listed yet, feel free to call – but I was procrastinating (terrified!) It seemed like such a crazy idea on the surface, driving a pair of mini ponies across the country from Fresno, Ohio back towards Lopez Island, that I totally expected the person who picked up the phone to think I was a crazy person and hang up on me. I didn’t want to leave a message because I wanted the chance to explain myself. I was so scared that the door was going to slam in my face that I didn’t want to risk knocking. It was a familiar feeling. Once Gryph left the Free Range Rodeo and it was suddenly my job to knock on the doors every evening that fear was real, and then every time I took a rest break for more than a few days and had to start back up again on a journey that was obviously impossible I felt it again – I’d faced this fear down before, yet I still spent days and more days trying to psych myself up.

Then, one day when Karen and I were ashore looking for cheap comfy used furniture that we could plop ourselves down in for a winter of writing, I was standing on a street corner in Anacortes and suddenly I had a jolt of courage, took a deep breath, pulled out my phone and dialed the number. A woman answered the phone. I told her what I was planning, how smitten I was with Franklin, how I would love her advice on a second pony to pull a wagon across the country as his teammate, that I was a member of the Long Riders’ Guild and I had done a bit of driving years ago so I wasn’t coming in entirely green – and then I held my breath. “Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles” she met my idea with enthusiasm, asked a few questions, answered a few more and suddenly I had a co-conspirator.

It’s absolutely crazy to buy a horse long distance, crazy like a mail order bride, but there was no way I could drive out to Fresno and back on a lark and I didn’t want Franklin to disappear before Spring. I was getting a good vibe off the woman on the phone, the website looked legit, she was living in an Amish area and had a bunch of Amish kids and at least one Amish man working for her which said a lot about her character right there, and then I googled her. Kristin Mulhall. Turns out that at 21 she was the youngest trainer ever to have a horse run in the Kentucky Derby; I found a story about her performing an emergency tracheotomy on a 4 month old colt who’d swallowed a black widow spider that was right out of Steinbeck’s The Red Pony (but with a happy ending), she had recently decided that training for the track and that whole lifestyle wasn’t much fun any more and moved to Ohio to train and sell riding horses. This was a woman who knew about rearranging the useful pieces of her former life to make a new beginning. I couldn’t find a single person with something bad to say about her. That’s crazy rare in the world of horses (or any world, honestly.) And so I decided to go with my gut and trust this stranger with my dream.

We did a lot of texting back and forth over the next couple of weeks. Kristin sent me lots of photos of various options and while I was Very tempted by a little mule named Rufus who had a personality that sounded a lot like Finehorn, being a mule he was smart enough not to waste any energy he didn’t have to and I was looking for a teammate for Franklin who would match his enthusiasm for forward motion. Then Kristin sent a video of Franklin and Theodore trotting up the road pulling a cart and suddenly I had my Yes! Theodore is a dead ringer for a Shetland pony named Bozo that taught me to ride when I was 5 and 6 years old in Tennessee. At 40″ he’s a little bigger than Franklin but that’s not a bad thing. He’s 7 years old, which is just about perfect. Theodore’s mane flies in the wind like a flag and the two ponies are friends. Bingo! So that’s the story of how I found my team.

All photos courtesy of Kristin Mulhall, Twilight Farms, Fresno, OH.