DEE Ivey, a lifelong campaigner for pony welfare who lived at Peter Tavy, died on February 8. She was aged 86.

Mrs Ivey was a founder member of the Dartmoor Livestock Protection Society and later became its chairman.

She rescued and gave homes to many ponies at Hillbridge Farm, above the River Tavy, near Peter Tavy, throughout the 41 years she lived there.

Her lifelong love of horses began as a small child, and during the war she lived on Exmoor, where she broke and rode Exmoor ponies. She established her own riding school in Buckinghamshire, before moving down to Dartmoor at the start of a wet winter in 1960.

Mrs Ivey soon began running riding holidays, with any spare money from the venture going to her growing family of ponies.

During the spring and summers for more than twenty years many children came to Hillbridge to take moorland pony rides. On Saturday mornings, the station master at Tavistock station would regularly hold the train until Mrs Ivey's green van appeared carrying a party of excitable children who had enjoyed a week riding her good-tempered ponies.

Two years ago, Mrs Ivey suffered a stroke which confined her to a wheelchair.

The funeral took place yesterday (Wednesday, February 13), at St Eustachius Church, Tavistock.