Mark Christianson  gives a kiss to Darcy Annie, a 4-month-old buckskin filly, during an adoption event outside the Bureau of Land Management’s Southern Nevada District Office Saturday, Dec. 19, 2015, in Las Vegas. Orphan wild horse foals that were rescued from drought-stricken public lands in Cold Creek near Las Vegas in September were available for purchase in a silent auction. (Ronda Churchill/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

I may be 35 years old, but on Dec. 19, 2015, all I wanted for Christmas was a pony.

After what seemed like the hardest workweek of 2015, which included a very dramatic change-of-ownership with the newspaper I work with looming in the news and minds of myself and my colleagues, I was happy to see that my Saturday assignment was “HORSE_ADOPTION.”

I left my house headed to a silent auction for wild horse foals, 4 fillies to be exact, which were rescued from the Cold Creek area outside of Las Vegas this past summer. The foals had suffered severe malnutrition and had survived by the help of a local husband and wife team along with their fellow equestrian friends and community.

The fact that I know nothing about horses, as my first sentence reveals (ponies are a specific type of small horse and are not the word for a baby horse) or the fact that I live in the suburbs with a pool in my backyard didn’t matter the moment I saw light-haired Darcy Annie.

Darcy Annie, who was named after the woman who found her, was so malnourished that when the veterinarian came to evaluate her there was concern whether she would have to be euthanized. Luckily, she was spared and had to be fed horse formula while other rescues ate hay and supplements.

This morning, Darcy was a bundle of love and energy. She constantly moved about her corral often nudging her stall mate and her water bucket equally. She eagerly wandered over to outstretched hands and offered actual kisses to anyone who put their face near her muzzle.

Clearly, Darcy won the race. She was the only one to earn the coveted ride to her “forever home.”

Soon after the auction ended, the other horses were loaded into a trailer returning to their foster home. Darcy was left standing solo in a once-bustling corral waiting for her new owner. I felt sad and as silly, as my logical/journalist-remain-impartial brain denies it, I felt love towards this horse I had met only 90 minutes prior.

“What is wrong with me?” I thought.

After I sat here typing this; looked through 350 odd images; selected the best; cropped, toned, captioned and sent them on their way, I felt that nothing is wrong with me.

Who wouldn’t want a special animal that made them feel happiness by merely watching it interact with others- and let’s face it, caving to interact with it once there was no one else in line?

Animals have that specialness about them. Anyone who has ever owned one can tell you that. Darcy definitely is a prized one.

* I dedicate this blog post to my friend Veronica Travez, who lost her sweet dog Bella to cancer this summer around the time Darcy Annie almost lost her battle to survive.