Back home - stolen foal is reunited with owner

WHEN Lucy the foal was stolen from Jean Curd’s farm, her owner was not sure she would ever see her again. Yet after weeks of anguish and stress, and not knowing whether the two-month-old mini Shetland pony was still alive, Jean ansered a phone call she never imagined she would receive.

- OLIVIER VERGNAULT

“I had a call from the rural affairs unit at Devon and Cornwall Police to say Lucy had been found,” Jean told us as we visited her small holding in Allet, near Truro, a week to the day after Lucy returned to Cornwall from her place of captivity in Hertfordshire.

“They told me she had been found but I couldn't believe it. When she was returned I can’t describe the feeling.”

Jean said she didn’t expect Lucy, a chestnut, skewbald Shetland pony foal, to be found that far away and certainly not alive as she had been so small and was still drinking her mother's milk.

Now retired, Jean and her husband Pete had cattle and sheep over the years.

But never had they had any animal or machinery stolen from their farm.