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By Misty Thornton

He got his first horse when he was 7. When he was 12 he read Marguerite Henry’s “Misty” and Chincoteague immediately became a place he wanted to visit. His dad brought him to his first Pony Penning at age 14. In July Tom Garner, from Ayden, North Carolina expects to ride forn his 32nd year as a Salt Water Cowboy.

On that first trip, Mr. Garner said they actually missed the swim, arriving too late, but it didn’t matter because he got to see the ponies and the cowboys. But the mystic of Misty stayed with him. “It was about horses, that was the main thing. I enjoyed the story and knew it wasn’t that far from where I lived, at the time in Gaston, N.C.”

The next year, young Garner was back on the Island. “We had to come over on the ferry,” he remembers. “There was no bridge then.”

Mr. Garner, now 60, said he has loved horses all his life. “Both my granddads were horsemen,” he said. His feelings for the cowboy life were made stronger by watching the westerns that dominated TV. ” I grew up in the 50′s,” he said, “and I really liked the westerns.”

When Mr. Garner turned 17, he said, he made a commitment to the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company and he said it was an honor to take his first ride along side the ponies and 35 other cowboys in 1966. After that year he didn’t ride in a roundup again 1978 when he came back and has since ridden every year.

For several years Mr. Garner has ridden his horse, “Buzz,” a buckskin. He could fit right into one of the TV westerns, with his chaps, jacket, gloves, boots, western saddle and what might pass for a cowboy hat. But he needs all this gear, and a full can of mosquito repellent to deal with the hazards of riding in a roundup on Assateague.

Besides the heat, which can be overbearing in July, the cowboys have to contend with several varieties of biting flies, ticks, brier bushes, and holes that horses sometimes don’t see and, of course, mud.

“One spring roundup a few years ago a nor’easter moved in,” he said. “In the morning we had thunder and lighting and by the time we finished the rain had turned to sleet.” Mr. Garner said the cowboys really had keep a tight rein on their mounts. “In the driving rain if you don’t keep your horse in motion he will turn his back to the wind. It was the wettest and coldest I have ever been in my life.”

Mr. Garner said he has been thrown twice because the horse’s hooves got stuck in the mud. He said he was lucky he didn’t break any bones, but other riders have been injured during round ups.

“The job is definitely harder than it looks,” said Mr. Garner. “Getting out there and just riding through marsh and grass sounds easy, but it’s not. Each step your horse takes you hear the sound “squish, squash, squish, squash.” Bringing in the ponies is a lot of work and taking them through the town they seem to wander off every once and a while.” But Mr. Garner, nor any of the other cowboys, would rather be anyplace else. “It’s a real honor, to ride,” he said, “and I enjoy seeing spectators enjoying the horses and look forward to it each year.”

There are three roundups each year, one in the fall, one in the spring and the one during the July Pony Penning, an event that has gotten much bigger since it began around 1925. Now up to 40,000 people visit Chincoteague and Assateague for the annual event. Money raised from the auction of the foals and from the carnival supports the fire company which owns the ponies.

The Virginia ponies, about 150 plus foals, are divided into the southern and northern herds. The southern herd, sometimes seen on the range on the right side on the way out to the beach, is brought into the big corral on Beach Road usually late on Friday. On Saturday morning each pony gets a visit from Dr. Charlie Cameron, their official veterinarian. The much larger northern herd, is not seen by many visitors to Assateague. The only ways to see these ponies is by boat, by taking the tour bus operated by the Chincoteague Natural History Association, or by hiking about five miles out on a service road. No motor vehicles or bikes are allowed. This herd is driven into another big corral 3 ½ miles out on the service road and gets to see Dr. Cameron around mid-day on Saturday.

During Pony Penning, early on Monday morning the northern ponies will be driven from the corral to the Atlantic Ocean, then moved in a formation of cowboys along the sand, then down Beach Road to be put in the corral with the southern ponies. This event now draws over 3,000 spectators and is known as the Beach Run.

When all the ponies are in the Beach Road corral, it is not to the liking of the stallions that don’t want their bands of mares mixed in with all the other ponies. The stallions will sometimes rear up against each other, often biting and kicking each other. Things calm down somewhat after they have been in the pen for awhile but displays or pony tempers are frequent.

While in the pens Dr. Cameron will give them several medications and sSome ponies will have their hooves trimmed.

Mr. Garner drives 250 miles to get to Chincoteague, pulling Buzz in his trailer. His wife, Sandra, usually comes with him along with their 28 year old daughter, Jessica Garner Landmark, who has been coming to Pony Penning for as long as she can remember. Now making the trip they bring along their 3 year old granddaughter, Lauren. By the time they get back home they will have been gone eight days, staying the whole week in a rented cottage. “Some cowboys come from even further away than I do,” said Mr. Garner.

Jessica has been going to Pony Penning all her life, said Garner. “To Jessica and others in my family, going to Chincoteague over the years was Disneyland. They didn’t want to go anyplace else.”

Getting together with fellow riders is part of what the cowboys look forward to each round up. “Walter Marks is a very good friend,” said Mr. Garner and his daughter, Anna, and our Jessica are best friends. Mr. Marks is in his 29th year as a cowboy. He is a retired Virginia state trooper.

Mr. Garner is retired from the U.S. government Social Security Administration. He spends his time now taking care of his horses, goats and cows and he and his wife baby-sit their granddaughter three days a week. “This keeps me busy,” he said.

Mr. Garner believes that one day there will be cowgirls riding alongside the cowboys out on the range. “Women are good horse people,” he said. “This would be a great job for them.” He said that around the early 1960s there were women on the horses in the round up.

There is one outcome of Garner’s association with the Salt Water Cowboys of which he is especially proud. In 2004 he was made an honorary member of the fire company. “Not many volunteer riders are granted this honor,” said Garner. “I have the letter from the fire company on my wall at home.”

Prince, the record buy-back, runs in the corral after his vet check.

By Leslie Adkins

It was a steamy morning on Chincoteague Island, the weatherman calling for a 93 degree day. A big crowd had gathered early this late July 2007 morning , excited about the yearly Chincoteague Pony Auction which would soon begin. Those planning to bid and those coming to watch had gotten there early to claim their seats.

Also getting up early had been members of the Chincoteague Fire Company who had a lot of work to do, setting up the auction site, preparing to keep records of the sales and most importantly, getting the bucking, excited ponies safely into and out of the auction ring.

In the early morning as the bidders got into their seats no one knew auction history would be made this day. As the auction moved along, a pony that many had been waiting for was brought into the ring. He was a white stallion. The bidding began.

Up to $5,000 it went, then on to $10,000 and the crowd grew quiet except for some gasping as the price edged upward. No matter how high the bidding went a higher bid was called out by a group of women sitting to the right of the auctioneer. The women, known as the Buyback-Babes, had their hearts set on this white stallion pony and they were not to be outbid. When they called out their last bid, $17,500, the auctioneer said “sold,” and a sales record had been reached. The previous record for a pony at the auction was $10, 500 in 2001.

The three-month-old foal was to be named Prince, and the Buyback Babes had purchased another foal to be returned to the herd.

Anyone who has attended the auction knows of this group of women who try to purchase a pony every year to be released back into the wild. These women are from all across the nation. They pool their money together for one lucky pony. This was Prince’s lucky year.

Dr. Charles Cameron, from Eastern Shore Animal Hospital, the official pony veterinarian, gave Prince and the others a clean bill of health so he could be released back into the wild after the April roundup. Dr. Cameron and his staff have been giving inoculations to the wild ponies of Chincoteague for 18 years. The ponies are treated for the diseases encephalitis, West Nile, rabies, and equine infectious anemia. They are also treated for worms and given a tetanus shot.

Before Dr. Cameron can treat the ponies they have to be rounded up from both the southern and northern ranges. These ponies are on the Virginia side of Assateague, not to be confused with the Maryland ponies.

This year’s spring roundup began Friday afternoon (April 18) when the Saltwater Cowboys rounded up the southern herd, riding out on the range and shooing them along into a holding area off Woodland Trail. From there they are moved along to the big corral on Beach Road where they spend the night dining on hay and drinking fresh water from tubs.

Once in the corral, bands of ponies that belong to the stallions get mixed together and this often leads to conflict with the stallions who give off various signals of displeasure, with a little biting and kicking to make their points.

After a busy late afternoon on Friday, the cowboys had to be back on the job at 7 a.m., reporting to the much larger northern range for a full morning of riding.

Dr. Cameron’s morning started early too, with breakfast with his medical team and the wildponytales staff at Bill’s Restaurant. After breakfast, everyone headed for the corral where the southern heard was waiting. As Dr. Cameron backed his truck in and got set up, ponies were being separated into groups, by fire department officials.

When he was ready, fire officials ran the ponies into a chute, one by one. It was not a quiet scene. The ponies were kicking and whinnying, making an incredible array of noises. The ponies could not move around much once in the chute, giving Dr. Cameron’s helpers a chance to pry open their jaws. In a quick action, Dr. Cameron then gives each one a squirt of medication through a long tube connected to a pump, a contraption called a drench.

While all this is going on, seven miles away the northern herd was on their way into their corral, awaiting their own fate with Dr. Cameron. It took a huge effort by the cowboys as they worked to get every pony in the corral. At midday Dr. Cameron arrived and he and his assistants went through the same steps over and over until over 100 ponies had been treated.

But it was Prince that got the most attention, Jean Bonde, a member of the Buy-Backs said. “His Misty coloring made him stand out.”

The Buy-Backs knew they wanted to keep a colt when the Pony Association decided to keep males. They settled on Prince. The Buy-Backs only get to see their ponies at the three yearly roundups, but sometimes along Beach Road and from the tour bus run by the Chincoteague Natural History Association.

Prince was not released back into the wild until April 18, 2008. According to Bonde, Prince was kept over the winter at the carnival grounds along with several other foals. The fire department takes care of these foals during the winter months because they need time to grow stronger before released to the owners or back into the wild. Prince has now reached the age of about 15 months old and is living his life on Assateague Island.