WILD PONIES

Refuge Inn founder Don Leonard had a passion for ponies. He bought his first horse when he was 12, and they were a constant presence in his life from that point forward. He often said that the ponies were the reason for his success in life. His sons maintain his herd now, and they keep a few of their authentic Chincoteague Island ponies here at Refuge Inn for our guests to enjoy. The ponies are friendly, but wild-they love attention, but they really love to be fed corn and sweet feed. They'll come right over to the feed boxes to greet you. Just be sure to put the treats in the boxes provided.

The Chincoteague ponies’ largest claim to fame is Marguerite Henry’s children’s book Misty of Chincoteague. The book is about Paul and his sister Maureen who lived on Chincoteague Island with their grandparents. Paul and Maureen helped their grandfather raise and train ponies, and they dreamed of owning a pony of their own. They named her Misty.

While the events in the book are fictitious, Paul and Maureen were real children, and their Grandpa Beebe had a horse farm on Chincoteague, where a pony named Misty lived. The founder of Refuge Inn, Donald Leonard, was very close with Grandpa Beebe and spent a lot of time at his farm. He even retrieved the real Misty from her home with Marguerite Henry to bring her back to Chincoteague to have foals. There is even a photo of Don with his oldest son Carlton, sitting on Misty’s back.

Every July, the Virginia herds, which are owned by the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company, are rounded up and herded to a narrow point between their home island of Assateague and neighboring island Chincoteague.

Saltwater Cowboys swim the ponies across the channel and parade them down Main Street to the carnival grounds, where the foals who are old enough to be separated from their mothers are auctioned off. The Fire Company says the swim and auction serves two purposes: It controls the herd size, as the island can only support about 150 adult ponies, and also ensures that our local firemen and paramedics are well-funded and appropriately equipped to serve our island’s needs.

The Pony Swim is a big event that draws tens of thousands of visitors to our little island. If you’re lucky enough to be planning to attend the swim, be aware that there’s a whole week’s worth of activities to enjoy. Most hotels on the island have a minimum-stay requirement.

Each year, the Fire Company selects a few foals to return to the island and replenish the herd. They tend to pick the cream of the crop to send back over to Assateague- for example, famed stallion Surfer Dude sired a colt in 2009 that looked a lot like him, a liver chestnut with blue eyes and a white blaze. He was marked as a "buyback" and now he's grown up and has the largest band of mares on Assateague. You can easily identify the "buybacks" by the freeze branded of the year they were born on their left hip. The buybacks each year are auctioned off, with the winning bid amount given to the Fire Company as a donation. The winner names and takes a picture with their buyback, and sends it back to Assateague to live out its life.