EVEN BEFORE I SAW Honey, I knew she wasn’t for me.
My husband, Dale, made the mistake of reading a mid-November Peninsula Daily News classified ad aloud.
“Buckskin quarterhorse $500” was all it said, along with a Port Angeles phone number.
I’m so irrational about buckskins — golden horses with dark manes, tails and leggings — I bought one sight unseen in 1993.
I’m not in the market for a horse, but I dialed the number.
Pat Tenneson, co-owner of Acme Septic Pumping, who’s better than a foot taller than I am, bought Honey for himself but no longer had time to work with her.
“Too tall for me,” I said, but my young friends whose horses live in my barn are both considerably taller than I and were actively looking at horses.
Latasha Hanna, 13, had already realized it was time to have her aged mare put down (described in my Nov. 27 column, “Dignity for Elderly Animal Friends”).
Bethany O’Connor, 14, was struggling with making a decision about her unrideable, but otherwise healthy, appaloosa.
We visited the buckskin.
Honey’s a real eye-popper and sweet as her name.
When we went to leave, she tried to follow.
I asked Tenneson if I could take the girls back with saddles to try her out.
He didn’t want them riding in that field, but offered to bring Honey to Ireland Farms for a trial.
He dropped the mare off Dec. 3. Inside a stall, Honey appeared even bigger, but it was obvious that Latasha was in love.
One look at the tall, short-coupled horse, and her father, Dave Hanna, was smitten as well.
Wanting Honey to be a Christmas surprise, Dave strung Latasha along, saying he didn’t know whether he could work out finances.
(Actually, he and Tenneson had agreed on a partial trade.)
Meanwhile, Yvette Ludwar of the Native Horsemanship Riding Center on Taylor Cutoff Road, just west of the Dungeness River, where the girls volunteer as junior wranglers, accepted four horses from a man who recognized that he couldn’t maintain them.
We visited them Dec. 5. Bethany fell for a sorrel gelding, but she didn’t yet have an empty stall for him.
Kim Beus of Hartnagel Building Supply, wife of Washington State University Extension agent Curtis Beus, made the rescue on icy Dec. 6.
Her own driveway was impassable with a loaded four-horse trailer.
Lost Mountain Ranch agreed to take them briefly, but it took a whole lot of help from the driver of a Clallam County Road Department sanding truck to get them there.
Bethany sadly called Clay Richmond at Olympic Game Farm.
Richmond miraculously connected her with Jan Wilson at Gardiner who was looking for another pasture pet to pamper.
Valerie Jackson and Diane Royall of the Native Horsemanship Riding Center Rescue Annex hauled Bethany’s old appaloosa to Gardiner on Dec. 12, and went to collect the sorrel from Lost Mountain.
Bethany soon called to ask if they could also bring Ringo, a dark bay gelding whose potential adopters had settled on a different horse.
I repeated her request aloud, Dale shrugged and we wound up with five horses in four stalls (Sunny Girl and Annie occupy the end stalls).
Bethany will work off the adoption fee for the sorrel she renamed Pokey Joe, because he softly pokes her with his nose.
Latasha’s Christmas present was a framed bill of sale for Honey.
A new chapter of Ireland Farms’ horse saga is off to a happy beginning.
Having learned all they could from two “been there, done that” appaloosas they rescued Jan. 31, 2009, the girls are now ready and eager to train their new young horses.
Better horses than boyfriends, their parents say.
Ringo’s still here, waiting for the right home.
And Diane’s also looking to place another too-tall-for-me horse — a cute dark grulla 2-year-old filly.
My barn’s overcrowded. How about yours?
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Martha Ireland was a Clallam County commissioner from 1996 through 1999 and is the secretary of the Republican Women of Clallam County.
She and her husband, Dale, live on a Carlsborg-area farm. Her column appears Fridays.
E-mail her at irelands@olypen.com.
