When Jaci Spooner told her daughter her miniature pet pony, Trigger, had run away and they needed to go pick him up Tuesday afternoon, the 6-year-old girl didn’t believe her.
“She thought I was pulling her leg,” Spooner recalled.
When they pulled up at a local farm and saw Trigger, her daughter, Andalucia Yandell, excitedly wrapped her arms around the pony that just the day before had led police on a chase near Vancouver Mall.
Spooner said Trigger got out of their backyard when a neighbor accidentally left a gate open. He left the comfy confines of their 3.6-acre property near Club Green Meadows golf course and headed south. Spooner said she’s surprised he headed in that direction.
“Something must’ve scared him,” Spooner said.
At about 11 a.m. Monday, a pony was reported loose along Highway 500 and Thurston Way. Numerous Vancouver police officers and Washington State Patrol troopers converged and found the pony in an area with a lot of traffic. Trigger was contained near the Vancouver Village shopping center, and Bill Burrus, a field officer for Clark County Animal Protection and Control, put a halter on him.
Paul Scarpelli, manager of Clark County Animal Protection and Control, said the agency attempted to locate the owner but struck out and found a foster home for him through the Clark County Executive Horse Council Adopt-A-Horse program. Volunteers with the council’s program helped haul the pony and care for him until Spooner got calls from friends Tuesday morning asking if Trigger had escaped.
Spooner then contacted the agency to recover Trigger and went to pick up Andalucia early from school to get him.
Scarpelli said he and others at animal control are “happy the horse is safe and back home.”
Spooner and her daughter are happy, too.
When they get home after being away for a while, Spooner said Trigger is “usually at the back door.” When he wasn’t late Monday night, she thought it was a bit odd, but it wasn’t until friends called to ask about the pony in the news that she realized he was gone.
“He’s a very social guy,” she said. “There’s not a mean bone in his body.”
