{"id":252268,"date":"2025-09-24T23:53:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T23:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/252268\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T23:53:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T23:53:10","slug":"family-shares-heartfelt-moment-with-stolen-n-houston-pony-after-safe-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/252268\/","title":{"rendered":"Family shares heartfelt moment with stolen N Houston pony after safe return"},"content":{"rendered":"

HOUSTON<\/strong> \u2013 A beloved pony named Funky Monkey was stolen from his home early Tuesday morning but was found safe just a day later.<\/p>\n

Cameras captured the pony being taken from his north Houston home. Fortunately, his family, with help from the community, tracked him down just a few miles away.<\/p>\n

Vanessa Riley, who runs Peace, Love and Ponies, said Funky is part of a special program that provides free rides to children with autism and other disabilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is Funky Monkey. He is 15 years old. He has a terminal medical condition called Founder. You can tell he\u2019s breathing kind of hard; that\u2019s an indication of some pain,\u201d Riley said.<\/p>\n

When asked what founder is, she explained, \u201cIt\u2019s like basically he has diabetes for ponies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite his condition, Funky\u2019s easygoing nature made him a target.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou think they took him because he\u2019s so easygoing? They grabbed him because it would have been impossible to grab the other ones. You saw them earlier; did you get some footage of them running? So Funky Monkey was the lowest hanging fruit,\u201d Riley said.<\/p>\n

The theft happened around 3:45 a.m. The thieves used a back gate to get in, broke a lock on the fence, lifted it out of the concrete and dragged Funky about 100 feet behind a shopping center. He was caught on video being dragged past a restaurant and other businesses.<\/p>\n

When Riley went out to check on him and the other ponies the next morning, Funky was missing. She quickly filed a police report and then took matters into her own hands.<\/p>\n

She drove around the neighborhood, talking to anyone willing to listen. She also visited nearby businesses to ask them to check their security cameras.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked every homeless person, every person sitting on the street. I knew something, knew something,\u201d Riley said. \u201cI had several people in the neighborhood saying, \u2018We will find him, and we will get him back.\u2019 For some reason, it struck the heartstrings of not just regular people, but the homeless community too.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 1 a.m., Riley got the tip she had been waiting for. Funky has been spotted near Airline and 610.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe drove straight down to Airline from here, came over the bridge, and there was a tall African American man looking like a homeless man standing in the middle of the road doing this. So, somebody knew. I stopped in the middle of the street. I couldn\u2019t believe it. I fell out of the truck actually, and my son and I just were looking around, and we saw Funky Monkey tied to the chain-link fence,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The touching reunion was captured in a photo showing Funky and Riley\u2019s son sharing a beautiful moment after being apart for what felt like forever.<\/p>\n

Now settling back in at home, Funky is safe.<\/p>\n

When asked what she wanted to happen to those who took him, Riley said she wishes them no harm.<\/p>\n

Instead, she hopes they get educated on what they did and what could have happened if she hadn\u2019t found Funky so quickly,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 A beloved pony named Funky Monkey was stolen from his home early Tuesday morning but was…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":252269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[16788,4219,4345,133404,133403,133406,133405,47438,358,3187],"class_list":{"0":"post-252268","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-community-support","9":"tag-crime","10":"tag-houston","11":"tag-north-houston","12":"tag-pony","13":"tag-pony-reunion","14":"tag-pony-safe-return","15":"tag-stolen","16":"tag-texas","17":"tag-tx"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115261971087082739","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}