The team at My Lovely Horse Animal Rescue are "devastated" after three dogs and two ponies were stolen from their facility.
My Lovely Horse's co-founder, Martina Kenny, spoke to Andrea Gilligan on Lunchtime Live on Tuesday November 10 to call out for help in finding the animals, and the impact the incident will have on the charity.
The robbery took place on November 8 at around 10:10pm, and CCTV shows three men wearing balaclavas breaking into the facility's farm.
It was initially thought that only one pony was taken, but after doing a thorough count, it was discovered that another had been stolen as well.
"We're all just devastated," Ms Kenny shared. "We had to do a second count and we saw then that Buddy was also gone because some of the horses had gone into a farmer's fields either side because they got out.
"We were frantically trying to make sure we had every single animal. We just don't know what to do.
"It's just going to make a huge impact with the fact that we now have to up security. We already had loads of CCTV, so we have them on CCTV.
"But we now need actual security because we're being targeted and, you know, this is going to be ongoing.
"We had security start last night and that's going to be it now; lights left on, security doing the perimeter and on the yard constantly. It's a lawless Ireland."
The two ponies, Lola and Buddy, were actually waiting to go to their forever home in just two weeks, with the charity minding them while their owner got their land ready.
Lola also has Cushing's disease, which is excess cortisol in the body triggered by a pituitary tumor, and hence needs medication.
Buddy apparently looks very like her, and is a blonde little guy.
View this post on Instagram
One of the dogs, Indie, is also an elder dog, aged eight years old, who has been through hell already in her life and is terrified of men.
Sarah is more of a puppy-type dog and Mo just had puppies of her own very recently.
"So it's just, it's just devastating. It's like a death in the family, the feeling we all have," Martina added.
The team has photos of the animals up online and people are being asked to keep an eye out for them if they can. All the animals are chipped.
It's not the first time the charity has had an animal stolen, with Eleanor stolen over the summer and was held for 28 days.
As she was taken from over the fence, My Lovely Horse had already invested in securing that and adding more CCTV to the facility.
Andrea added that the Lunchtime Live team had been in touch with the Gardaí in Kildare who said that they are investigating the theft of animals that happened at the My Lovely Horse Rescue and are appealing for anybody with information to come forward.
They can contact Leixlip Garda Station on 01-6667800.
Main image: Indie the dog from My Lovely Horse Pic: Instagram
