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Ken was excited by the horse books, including several by one author that were conveniently next to each other, one of which was about horses who were apparently on a beach island, called Chincoteague. Horses were more interesting than whatever was going on in the real world with weird rude men doing all the things that Barbies normally did. He'd never found any horse books in Barbieland. He asked several people in the real world "Do you know where I can find horses?" and, haltingly, "Which way do I go to get to Chin-co... teeegue?" but no one had answers, and so he gradually decided that he needed to go back to Barbieland and see if he could get more people interested in horses. Whatever was going on with Barbie. She seemed upset, but she was also with the Mattel people now, so she was probably fine.
Once he had made it back to Barbieland (he wasn't sure if they knew he had been gone, actually?), he went to the Barbie Presidential House, and requested an audience with President Barbie. When she showed up in the room where he had been left to wait, he eagerly began speaking (without waiting for her to acknowledge him): "President Barbie, did you know that somewhere there are horses that live on the beach? Did you know that horses are sometimes mistreated and also a bunch of them are descended from one called the Godolphin Arabian? I think Barbieland needs more horses, urgently!"
"I'm actually busy, Ken, and I need you to come back later if you want to actually talk with me, but I think there might be some horses out at the edge of town, with Equestrian Barbie," the president dismissed him.
Of course! Why hadn't he thought of that? He left the presidential house and put on his roller skates, to head to Equestrian Barbie's ranch. Unfortunately Equestrian Barbie was not much more receptive to his idea that they needed wild beach island horses to exist in Barbieland, and she frowned at him and told him to go away when he moved on to trying to discuss the mistreatment of Black Beauty. Maybe she thought he was trying to accuse her of cruelty to animals, which he wasn't. He just found it horrifyingly interesting that people could actually be so cruel to horses.
He did at least find several horses who seemed to be locked inside an abandoned barn, and he decided to bring them to the beach. This proved to be a much more chaotic process than he had expected, and when Stereotypical Barbie finally showed back up (with a couple of people from the real world!), he had gotten one of the horses onto the beach, but a bunch of the Barbies and Kens (and even Allan and Midge!) were in an uproar because the other poorly trained horses were wandering around in the street obstructing their way, and one of them had strayed off to munch on Astronaut Barbie's garden.
Ken wondered whether Stereotypical Barbie was going to be mad at him, and if Lawyer Barbie would try to sue him for creating what everyone else seemed to think was such a problem. Before Stereotypical Barbie could say too much about how disappointed she was with him, he remembered something he had read in a nonfiction book and blurted out a question to her and the real people, "Do you know how I could go to Kentucky, too? They have a famous horse derby there, whatever that is."