At 7:20 this morning, Isabel began calling for me, baaing loudly to let me know it was time for breakfast. If I’m not out there by 7:30, the sheep come down the path through the pasture area where they spend the night to the fence right next to the house and raise a chorus that brings me hurrying out to spare sleeping neighbors. This morning, Pegasus neighed to emphasize the point. I don’t mind the insistence. It’s a wonderful sound to start the day with, and even after ten years of morning and evening feedings, I still love the ritual.
I wave to my beloved messengers as I walk up the rise to the fenced area where their feeder (a green metal manger), hay, and shelter is. Pegasus neighs again, this time a good morning. Wonder gives me his throaty baa; his voice changed when he moved from lambhood to ramhood, like an adolescent human boy’s voice deepening. He also has a special baa for me, his second mother who took over with bottle when nursing the natural way failed. I smile and call to him, warmed by his cheerful good morning.
Charlotte limps toward the feeder and I watch her to rate her progress–is the essential oil salve helping her knee yet? She seems a little better, but the half of her udder swollen by the mastitis is not going down, though it doesn’t seem any worse, which is good enough news for me this morning. I have learned to be calmer in the face of the illnesses that used to put me into a state of churning anxiety, worried sick on behalf of the beloved animal in pain or facing a potentially life-threatening illness. That worry energy is not good medicine, and I do my best to be positive, talk to the sick one about how we’re going to heal this together, and send love and healing energy instead.
Chloe and Isabel usually get to the feeder first, while Charlotte takes her time by necessity and Wonder by virtue of his dreamy temperament. Pegasus waits by the gate to see if I’ve brought a piece of apple or carrot to slip her as a special treat. I’ve brought celery this morning, but wait to give it to all of them.
I pull back the tarp over the bales of oat hay–not the best arrangement, but no one I know who has a farm has a perfect setup. I dream of a full barn with room for all the animals and separate storage for hay. I recently switched from orchard grass to oat hay because my veteran veterinarian told me he has never had to do dental work (teeth floating, an often annual procedure to grind down the spikes that form on an equine’s teeth and, if left, compromise digestion and cut the inside of the mouth) on a horse whose diet is oat hay.
Though the animals eat every bit of orchard grass, they pick out the oat grains from the flake (slabs of hay called flakes are bound together in a bale to make for easy separation for feeding) and leave the oat straw. But before I even get the hay into the feeder, they are jockeying for position to make sure they are in place to pull out as many of the tasty grains as they can before everyone else eats them.
I leave them to it and go to the shelter to prepare their mashes, which are a medium for supplements. This is really for Charlotte’s benefit, but to be fair I prepare something for all of them. I dose her soaked beet pulp with all the holistic treatments I’m giving her and add some dry cob (a corn and grain mix) to give her some extra nutrition since she’s elderly. I add maintenance-type supplements to everybody else’s smaller amounts of beet pulp.
Charlotte and Pegasus used to wait in the shelter while I prepared the extra food; Charlotte in the stall where I place her bowl to keep the other sheep from devouring her mix, Pegasus at my back, delighting me by snuffling at me and gazing lovingly at me with her black eyes. But they caught on that it takes some time, and meanwhile Chloe, Isabel, and Wonder were eating all the good stuff out of the hay. So now they stay with the others in the rush for oat kernels and wait until I call them. Then it is a juggling act. Everyone knows where they get their bowl, but they have to be ready in case something changes, so there is lots of pushing and shoving as I put the bowls outside the shelter for the three sheep, hurry to get Pegasus’s down inside before she decides she better eat the sheep’s, and then get Charlotte’s to her in her stall before she becomes agitated.
This morning while they ate I paused before the other tasks, as I usually do, to enjoy the stupendous view from our hilltop—rolling pasture in the foreground and the whole Sonoma range in the distance. Today brought a fall sky with the dramatic cloud formations that seem to arrive with crisp weather. Even as I gave thanks for the beauty, I felt a lurch of dread at thought of the rains of winter. Our area needs the rain, but if we are deluged, the animal area turns into a mucky swamp. Fortunately, they roam free during the day, so have dry ground, and they also have the shelter, which is solid and dry. But one year, I’m told, water came down in a wave over the area where the animals now are.
Well, we’ll deal with it, I tell myself and them, and turn to the next chop-wood, carry-water task: picking out Pegasus’s hooves. I do this daily now since she’s had foot problems, picking up each foot in turn and using a hoof pick to dislodge any pebbles and clear all straw and gunk from the hollows on either side of the sole. She is so helpful with her back feet, lifting each one up in a delicate curl for me. Less enthusiastic about having her front feet done, or maybe just concentrating on eating, she plants her feet at first, but I persuade her by strokes and moving her bowl over to shift her weight.
Charlotte has finished her mash by now and I go to her for our special time. I open the half-door of her stall so she can leave if she wants, sit down in the sun streaming through the shelter door, and clean her swollen knee with a warm cloth, then apply the salve in a gentle massage, all the while rubbing her under the chin with my other hand to soothe her. I kiss her sweet face and get some ear kisses on my cheek. This quiet time together is when I talk about how we’re going to heal her, how it’s all going to be all right, how much I love her, how I need her to be around for a long time because she is a very special sheep and we have a lot to do together still. I don’t just say all of this; I send it to her from my heart too. She loves this time as much as I do because she stays for it instead of going back to the feeder where the others have returned to rooting for oat grains. Charlotte loves food, but she also loves communing.
At last, I walk to the gate with Charlotte behind me to let everybody out for the day. I don’t open the gate earlier because I don’t want Charlotte to get left behind. She has a hard enough time keeping up and can’t always find where the others rushed off to because the flock members don’t always answer each other when one calls. Queenmere, Chloe’s mother and the head of the flock who died a year and a half ago from old age, would never have allowed this dispersed situation. First, she always kept the flock together. When one was injured, they all stayed close. And she would never allow a calling one to go unanswered. Since her death, the flock seems to have become egalitarian, which has its drawbacks. They are most often together, though, and Pegasus is usually nearby.
I give Charlotte a final hug before she follows the others out the gate for their day’s adventures. Pegasus is already at the tarped hay cleaning up the stray oats around the base. Charlotte watches the three sheep head single file over the rise to tasty grazing among the trees. I see her pondering whether to go with them. If it weren’t for her leg, she wouldn’t hesitate, but today she opts for staying with Pegasus, knowing that the others will be back soon anyway to resume their search for gold amidst the straw. All is well on the sanctuary.
© Stephanie Marohn, 2007