Searchers credit pet psychic for Redmond pony rescue

REDMOND, Wash. — A pony that had been missing for more than a day was rescued Monday, and searchers credit an animal communicator for saving her.

The Fjord pony, named Gemma, was grazing Monday when it went too close to the edge of a ravine and fell in near Northeast 115th Street.

"She fell over a big downed tree," Gemma's owner, Nikki Elin, said. "I have no idea how she survived, let alone didn't break a couple legs."

Searchers had looked for hours down a logging road and alerting neighbors. Monday night, someone with the search party contacted Joan Ranquet, an animal communicator from Carnation.

"I just got some pictures and words and feelings – I got a sense of where she was," Ranquet said. "It's the process of telepathy, which is something that we all do. But I got good at it."

Ranquet said she had a sense the pony was in a small enclosed place – somewhere with the strong sound of rushing water and traffic noise.

"I didn't hear a lot of words," Ranquet said. "It was more just a sense of those pictures and the sounds."

With those parameters, Barbara Linstedt, who owns Saddle Rock Stables and the neighboring pasture where the pony went missing from, thought of an area where they hadn't looked.

"I immediately said, 'Oh my gosh, follow me,'" Linstedt said. The search party drove into the property and looked over the ledge onto Gemma. They thought she had fallen into a ravine, but was only partway over the ledge.

Rescue workers determined the best way to bring the horse to safety was to tie it in a harness and pull her 70 feet up the steep embankment. Workers with the State Animal Response Team reached the horse Tuesday morning.

Without the horse communicator, Linstedt said, "I don't know that we would have ever found the horse."

KIRO