Charlene Cannell has just found her long-lost childhood pony, alive and well and living in the Isle of Man, writes Julie Blackburn.

Jill Moore, manager of the Isle of Man Home of Rest for Old Horses, had what she describes as ’quite a surprise’ when she received a call from Charlene last week.

Bonnie, the New Forest pony Charlene has been searching for, has been living happily at the Home of Rest for the last four years.

The heartwarming story begins in 1998. Charlene was 10 and living in Leicestershire when she bought Bonnie, then four years old, with money she had saved up. Her mum had chosen her, as Charlene explained.

’My horsey mummy rode her round the field, loaded her up and brought her home,’ she said. ’We turned her out in the field then couldn’t catch her for the next three months.’

Apparently, Bonnie hasn’t changed. As Jill said: ’She’s been lovely since she’s been here but she can be hard to catch.’

Charlene says Bonnie was always ’a pony with attitude’

She said: ’I was in tears several times. It took a year to back her properly.’

But she persevered and in the end she succeeded. ’She’d let me do anything to her but the moment you got complacent she put you back where she wanted you. And she hated men. She was just a no-frills pony.’

Charlene did all the things that pony-mad youngsters do with their ponies, taking Bonnie to competitions and on holidays to Thetford Forest with other people from the yard where she kept her.

’She was just my best friend,’ said Charlene.

But sadly her happy childhood was about to come to an abrupt end.

When she was 15 her mother was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. Looking back, she realised that her mum knew Bonnie would help her get through what was to come.

She said: ’She tried to make it a lot less scary for me by Bonny being my main focus. Bonnie was literally my only form of escape.’

In 2004, Charlene’s mum travelled to Wirral, Merseyside, where she had family to support her, to undergo treatment and Bonnie went with her. She was put out on loan at a local livery yard. Charlene understood that having Bonnie nearby was to take her mum’s mind off her treatment and that would get her back in due course.

Her mum died shortly afterwards, the day before Charlene’s 17th birthday and from then on things went from bad to worse.

Her stepfather, to whom she had always been close and who she called ’dad’, became involved with a woman who didn’t want Charlene around.

She recalled: ’I got kicked out of the house and I was homeless. I begged dad to let me have Bonnie back but he finally told me: "I told them [the people she was on loan with] to keep her".’

The rift between Charlene and her stepfather healed somewhat after she visited him when he had two heart attacks and was on life support but when he died she had effectively lost the last person who might have been able to help her track Bonnie down.

’No one seemed to know what had happened to her,’ she said.

Charlene now lives happily in Buckinghamshire with her partner Ben, a farmer, and their young son. When she said she wanted to try and find Bonnie, Ben tried to discourage her, pointing out that it would probably lead to heartbreak as the pony could easily be dead by now.

But Charlene persisted. After contacting the New Forest Pony Society and making enquiries with them she found a Facebook page, Trace My Horse, and posted details of Bonnie on there and recounted how she had lost contact with her.

’I’ve got a lot of demons from that part of my life but my main one I would like to know what happened to my Bonnie. I’m not expecting her to still be around but I just want to know she ended up safe and happy,’ the post read.

Charlene says: ’I kept bumping the post every week and soon 500 people had shared it.

’All of a sudden a lovely lady posted a photo saying: "I used to own her. I know where she is - on the Isle of Man".’

In a further twist, as you might expect from her surname, Charlene’s family originated from the island. ’I last went there 10 years ago when we scattered my grandad’s ashes,’ she said.

Jill Moore has been able to reassure Charlene that Bonnie is fit and well, living with her equine friends at the home, and Charlene is happy for the pony to stay there.

Jill said: ’Once horses are here, they’re here for life because they become our property but Charlene has offered to help financially with her care.’

Charlene said: ’I can’t really believe I’ve found her. Hopefully I will see her, if I can manage to get over to the Isle of Man, and be reunited with her.’