By Cheryl Caswell
Daily Mail Staff
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Kylee Saunders almost got the kind of Christmas gift little girls dream of - a dappled golden pony named Freddie.
But easy come, easy go seems to be the story of Freddie, who escaped into the Calhoun County woods and mountains not long after Kylee's grandmother acquired him.
"I got him accidentally," said Patsy Buvoltz, who has a farm near Arnoldsburg. "I was standing outside in my yard, and a pony and a donkey came running down the road.
"The owner showed up and said he'd take his donkey but, 'You can have that pony if you want it,' " she related. "But he's real hard to catch."
Buvoltz once owned quite a few horses of her own and still had one mare. Getting a pony for little Kylee was something she had been thinking about.
"A 2-year-old pony for free? How could I go wrong?" Buvoltz said.
She put Freddie in a field with her other horse, cleaned out a stall in her barn and then went to tell Kylee about her Christmas present.
"The next morning both he and my mare were gone," she said. "She never even got to see him. She was on her way over when I had to tell her he was gone."
Buvoltz said the two went to the top of a ridge, where a gate separates her land from a neighbor's farm. The gate was closed, but she found some holes in her fence.
Buvoltz put a notice in the Calhoun County newspaper: "Last seen in the woods between Jesses Run and Jakes Fork. He's a new Christmas present and doesn't know where he is supposed to be."
Meanwhile she contacted the pony's last owner, and she has been searching for the little guy without luck.
"I've walked about 15 miles for two days," Buvoltz said. "I tracked them so far and found my mare with some of the neighbor's horses. But the pony has not been seen since."
No one has responded to her ad, she said.
"I guess he decided to go walk about with his donkey friend," Buvoltz said. "But horses usually stay pretty close to home. I expect he'll surface somewhere, but when he does we're going to have a rodeo on our hands.
"His last owner said he hadn't been able to catch him in a year," she said.
Freddie is wearing a halter with a broken lead rope still attached. He is a golden color with a white mane and tail.
"If I don't get any calls, I'll go out hiking and looking for him again," Buvoltz said.
Contact writer Cheryl Caswell at cher...@dailymail.com or 304-348-4832.
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