Animal Messenger Sanctuary Blog

I experienced a remarkable healing this week.

Charlotte’s condition worsened this past weekend, her udder swollen from the untreatable staph mastitis (teat blocked by scar tissue, so no way to clear the udder except surgically and she is too old for that) to the point that walking was painful for her. She stopped trying to follow the other sheep and stopped moving around much at all, mostly lying on the slope by the shelter where there is no grass left to eat.

On Saturday, a wonderful friend of mine came to help me soak Charlotte’s udder. I had had the idea of submerging it in a plastic bucket filled with warm water, Epsom salts, and echinacea tincture. Charlotte let us do it, with me holding my hand under her chin to keep her in one place and my friend gently slipping the bucket beneath her and up onto the udder. I don’t know if it helped or not, but I felt better doing something to try to relieve her discomfort. If nothing else, I think the warm water must have eased her.

The next morning Charlotte would not eat and hardly moved from one spot. I tried coaxing her with apples and grain, which she would normally go crazy for, but she refused to take anything. I went to the grocery store and got everything I could think of to tempt her: dandelion greens, Swiss chard, organic grains (rye and oats), watermelon, pears. She would eat none of it, and I thought it might be the beginning of the end.

My ministering angel friend came over again in the event we should try another soaking, but both of us felt we should leave Charlotte be. My friend said, “It’s up to her now. She has to choose,” meaning to live or die.

I talked to Charlotte into the evening after my friend left. It was a continuation of the conversation that has been running between us for years. I realized there was nothing I had to tell her before she went because I stay in such close communication with her that it’s all been said. I tell her every day what a gift she is, that she is the flower of my heart, that I’m so glad she is here, and aren’t we so blessed to be together. I thought she might die in the next few days, so I said it all again, adding how much she has taught me, thanking her for being with us, and telling her we’d love her to stay, but if she has to go, we understand.

I was out there with her long after dark. The three cats (even 18-year-old Honus who had never set foot in a barn and was alarmed at first by the thick layer of straw covering its floor) came to hold vigil with us, Sparrow and Lorca dashing around in the dark in play, and then the three of them sitting in a triangle near Charlotte.

I think it was about 10 pm when the picture came into my mind of Charlotte down in the blackberry brambles when I had come out in the morning the day before to feed everybody. Even though she was having trouble walking, she had made her painful way down the slope to eat blackberry leaves.

Anything is worth trying, I thought. So in the dark, I went to the blackberry vines growing on the chicken wire enclosure next to the barn and cut some leaves by the dim light filtering from the barn door. Charlotte was lying on the slope on the other side of the barn and I took the leaves to her. To my astonishment, she gobbled them voraciously. The first thing she had eaten all day. I tried some grain then, but she still refused it, so I cut blackberry leaves for half an hour, an hour, I don’t know how long it was. I just cut and fed—she ate them as fast as I cut them. By the time I decided it was enough for the time being, she had consumed mounds of blackberry leaves.

The next morning, I did not find her dead in the pasture, as part of me had feared. She was standing, and looked at me expectantly when I appeared. “Charlotte!” I called in excitement and went to give her a joyous welcome-back-to-life hug. I fed her more mounds of blackberry leaves throughout the day and she continued to eat them with relish, still refusing anything else, except apple and grape leaves, though her real focus was reserved for the blackberry leaves.

I looked up the medicinal properties of blackberry leaf and lo and behold: two of its main actions are to “dry and shrink” (depurative) and “cleanse the blood” (vulnerary). Charlotte was eating to heal her udder and keep the infection from becoming septic. Blackberry is also a diuretic. I had noticed with all the blackberry that Charlotte was urinating much more than usual. She was eating what would help flush her body of the toxins of the infection. How good that I gotten the message about the blackberry leaves so I could give them to her when she was too weak to go get them herself!

After that, I had to tell her over and over how smart she is, what a wise and remarkable sheep. The next morning (yesterday), she began to eat grain again and I thanked her for deciding to stay, telling her how glad I am that she did.

This morning she was again standing when I arrived, ate the sliced apple I gave her, and was plowing through the grain when I left her to cut blackberry leaves. I check her udder every day and this morning it looked smaller. I think she actually is shrinking it. It is still keeping her from venturing out to better eating grounds, or maybe she doesn’t feel safe doing that. It’s probably quite wise to stay in the enclosure by the shelter, given her compromised state. Though there is nothing up here on the hill to threaten her, as a sheep, who has no defense but to run, it’s best to follow the way of caution.

In any case, she is enjoying our sessions over blackberry leaves and grain, as am I. She likes it best when I feed her by hand. I can get her to eat more grain that way too. I put my face down to hers, with our noses nearly touching, and she chews while I gaze at her in appreciation and offer her a steady supply of leaves and handfuls of grain. I feel so lucky to get to look at a sheep every day!

Charlotte is not healed completely yet, but she sure is working on it. It is true she has a tremendous will to live, having survived multiple very serious afflictions. I’m waiting for the day when I see her go off with the others down the hill to the apple trees. Then I’ll know she is back to full health.

I am so moved by her knowing to eat the one food in the area that would help her. I remember Gabriel also eating the blackberry leaves when he was so ill, and I couldn’t believe he was because he had mouth sores and I thought the prickers must have hurt. But one of the other properties of blackberry leaves is, I discovered when I looked it up, helping to heal sores in the mouth. What a remarkable donkey! What a remarkable sheep! And yet not so remarkable, because all animals know what they need to do to heal. The tragedy is that most of them probably don’t have access to it, as they used to when all was wild.

I thought as I looked into Charlotte’s white woolly face, chewing the blackberry leaves with a focus that signals her will to live, despite the limp she has had for the past year that makes walking harder, we humans have that healing knowledge in us too, but it is so buried from disuse and denial that it is harder to find. More’s the pity, because if we knew what we needed, we could, unlike the confined animals, probably get it.

I laid my cheek against Charlotte’s, she fluttered her ear against it in her version of the eyelash kiss, and I gave thanks for this remarkable sheep. And then I thought, “We could all be this remarkable.” So I’m wishing for you all today: May you find your remarkable healing self!

© Stephanie Marohn, 2007

Note: Thank you to Shelly Horten, holistic vet in training, for her inspired suggestions to give Charlotte grapefruit seed extract and go to a health food store and get organic grains to feed her (most feedstores with supplies for “livestock” don’t carry organic grains). I think both have helped her. I’m soaking spelt and rye overnight to soften it, and giving her oat, barley, and kamut flakes. Today (October 15), Charlotte returned to roaming with the flock, even up and down hills!