Posted By Admin on January 23, 2009

By Elizabeth Ranger and Robert Boswell

Editor’s note: Owen Hooks and his wife, Kathryn Adkins, recently purchased The Kite Koop, a book and kite store on Chincoteague Island.

The colt that Owen Hooks’ family got when he was 10 and the summer weeks and holidays he spent with his grandparents who kept the pony on Chicken City Road in Chincoteague forever tied him to the island and its barrier neighbor, Assateague. Like so many of the thousands who return each year to attend the Pony Penning, in July Hooks was there for his 44th time.

The pony’s name was Silver, and was only four hours old when young Hooks first laid his eyes on him. “He was born silver but, by the time he was four years old, he was a dapple gray,” Mr. Hooks said, “When we got over to Chincoteague, we were so happy to see Silver that we didn’t worry about getting a saddle

Kathryn Adkins and Owen Hooks with their four-year-old Chincoteague pony, Sienna Valentine

ready-we just rode him bareback.” Unfortunately, Silver was sold when Owen was five.

Hooks says there is no part of Chincoteague or Assateague he hasn’t explored. He likes to go and just spend all day on Assateague, especially on the extreme southern end of the island.

Hooks’ experience with horses, in particular Chincoteague Ponies, is a deep part of his life. Now, with his family he owns a five-year-old Chincoteague-Arabian pony named Sienna Valentine. She was the last pony sold at the Chincoteague fire company auction five years ago. The pony is one of four equine residents on the Hooks 30-acre farm on Shavox Road in Salisbury, they call the Pine Ridge Horse Farm. Their other horses are Rancher, a 26-year-old Appaloosa male; Kara, an 18-year-old Arabian female and Nottingham, a 21-year-old Arabian male.

Hooks isn’t the only family member interested in horses. His wife, Kathryn Adkins, runs a private counseling practice at the farm. She’s a mental health counselor and uses horses to promote self esteem, team work, and other characteristics for people with mental health issues. “It turns out that a horse can be a thousand-pound training tool,” said Ms. Hooks.

She left her position as acting director of the Salisbury University Student Counseling Center seven years ago and went into private practice.

When they met eight years ago, Hooks brought five sons into the household and Kathryn, a daughter, Annie Reading. Their farm home is a busy place, filled not only with horse activities, but with projects and ideas and plans. In his education, career and his outside life, Hooks has never veered far from home. “I love the Shore,” said Hooks, “and I’m not leaving.”

Hooks grew up in Salisbury. He went to St. Francis Elementary School and later attended Bennet Middle and High Schools. Hooks said he had good English teachers all through school and he gives them credit for much of what he has accomplished.

Hooks also became involved in the Catholic Church. Around age 19, he went to work in a program with the Diocese of Wilmington, doing peer counseling and raising money for a children’s hospital. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” he said.

With the church, he got to work with the Ulster Project that brings 20 high school age Protestants and 20 Catholics to America for a summer from Northern Ireland. “The idea was to show them that in America most of the time we can get past the sectarian violence they had back home. “Some of those people are running the country now,” he said.

Later Hooks heard of a pre-med program at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore that guaranteed admission to graduate school.

While in college, in a previous marriage, he became a father of the first of five sons, Richard. He had to work at several jobs just to pay for his college tuition. In a doctor’s office, he worked as a laboratory technician running tests on blood and joint fluid. While taking a break from the laboratories, he made pizzas at Pizza Hut, later becoming a manager.

After finishing college, he went on to father four more sons, Neal, Brian, Alexander, and Patrick, all of whom attended Worcester County (Maryland) schools. Hooks became a board-certified medical technologist, and worked at the Peninsula Regional Medical Center for a decade.

Today he is an environmental scientist and laboratory manager at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island. He is employed by a NASA contractor and the lab he manages tests drinking water, waste water, soil samples and fuel samples. “I enjoy having a career that gives back to the public,” said Hooks.

Nothing that Hooks does takes him very far from Chincoteague and the famous ponies.

“When we were first married five years ago,” said Kathryn, “Owen was talking about publishing this book about the auction, but you know…,” she said.

Hooks said he went to the auction dozens of times as well as other horse auctions and it hit him there was no catalog about linage, performance and awards as other auctions usually have. “You can’t really do that for the Chincoteague auction,” he said, “but I felt you could give people more information than they were getting.”

Several years earlier Hooks had started keeping records on the pony sales, recording their colors and prices. “I thought I started seeing some patterns,” Owens said. “Females brought more than males, and the lower prices were at the beginning and end of the auction,with the highest prices coming in the middle. I noticed that chestnuts and bays were frequently the lowest sellers because those colors are very common.

“What makes the Chincoteague ponies so unique is all these white colors thrown in,” said Hooks.

Hooks kept records for over a decade, writing down things he found interesting. “This is what I do as a scientist,” he said, looking for patterns or disruptions of patterns.”

So despite Kathryn’s raised eyebrows, the records and a ton of other pony information finally found their way into the “Pine Ridge Horse Farm’s Illustrated Guide To: The Wild Pony Auction.” Kathryn even helped take the photos.

Paying for the printing himself, Hooks published 1,000 copies and sold them all for $20 each in 2005. The next year he published an updated version of 2,000 and didn’t sell them all. This led to a decision not to reprint them this past year, but the second edition is on sale in about 20 stores.

One notion Hooks wanted to dispel in his book was that Chincoteague ponies have gotten too expensive. “You read about the ones that go for $10,000 and you get the idea they are no longer affordable,” said Hooks, “but it is not true.”

For example, the rare black pony may sell for the high price of $4,400, whereas a dun, a pony with a washed-out body color with dark, primitive marking, might sell for a much lower price of $500. The majority sell for below $1,500. That’s a reasonable price,” said Hooks. They paid $1,600 for Sienna Valentine.

When the ponies are raised on a farm and are fed good food they are not more expensive than other horses, Hooks said. “They are easy keepers, don’t need fancy food or fancy care and have strong hooves.”

The guide includes plenty of helpful information for prospective pony buyers. Readers get a quick history on how Pony Penning evolved from sheep and cattle roundups 300 years ago. “By the mid-1950′s, the sales had become full-fledged, open bid auctions that served to raise money for the fire company and to maintain the size of the herd,” Hooks writes. “Low auction prices of this era were below $25 and high prices rarely exceeded $100.”

The guide provides a lesson in horse colorings and plenty of advice. “It is critical that those who wish to make a purchase find some time…to view the foals.” There is a chart of average prices paid by color and several pages that give how many of each color and markings have been sold and prices paid. There are pages with outlines of ponies so buyers can fill in markings to identify ponies they want to bid on.

There is another primary pursuit in Hook’s life. His music. Last summer, with some of his friends from Wallops Flight Facility, he played at the Blarney Stone Pub in Onancock but he might turn up anywhere with the group known as the Saltgrass Ramblers, playing contemporary folk, bluegrass and Celtic music.

Hooks has always loved music. He sang in the every year in school. He also played the guitar when he was a teenager. The band got good enough to play for restaurants, at coffee houses and even weddings. They released an album of original music. After that the band played all over the East Coast. Hooks still plays his guitar and sings, Jay Brown is on the bass guitar, and Chip Blackwell plays the fiddle. Sometimes Hooks’ sons join him, also singing and playing.

Hooks admits that what got him into horses was partially the Misty story and partially because he had his own pony.

Perhaps it all comes from his ancestry. His mother is descended from Scott-Irish Catholics, and his father was part Native American and raised Southern Baptist before converting.

Hooks said many of the things important to him, the Ocean, the sky, the wildlife, a little touch of freedom, are all on that island, Assateague.

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