Sadness

Yesterday was one of those days when I sort of resent my husband's occupation. Most of the time I am very proud of him & what he does, but when he is hours away and I am left on my own to deal with a crisis... well, let's just say I start to wish he had a 9-5 job near home.

Mid-morning our oldest son told me that our ewe looks sick. I went out to check on her. I know next to nothing about sheep but even I could see she was not well. Knowing R was nowhere near, I called his brother (who has a lot of sheep of the same breed) for some help figuring out what to do. To make a long story short, the "buck" got passed around quite a bit and no one came to my rescue. Meanwhile I am wringing my hands and too distracted to get any work done.

At last I decided the buck stops here. I simply cannot stand by while our gentle pet suffers. Large animal vets are in short supply in this area, it seems. So it took some time to track down the one & only large animal vet not taking the day off. He graciously offered to swing by his office between calls to take a look if I am able to bring her in. By that time, I am amazed that Woolly is still alive. She was lifting her head and making feeble attempts to get up, giving me hope.

I have 0 expertise at driving a truck & trailer, not to mention unable to lift a sheep that is dead weight, so I was making calls to find a man to help me out. About that time my dh arrives home (at last) and decided she could be loaded onto the pickup. We rushed out to load her, only to find it was now too late. We do not know what went wrong. From the symptoms, the vet tells us it could have been anything from eating a poisonous plant to pneumonia.

For a farmer losing "one of the herd" -probably not a big deal. But this was a family pet we adopted at birth. We bottle fed her and housed her in our basement as a newborn -a bonding experience. LOL She delighted us 3 times with spring lambs - a very good mother. We are all sad to lose her. Even Billy (our ram) wouldn't be so hard to lose since he was grown when we got him and he has an ornery streak that isn't conducive to friendship.

Thank God for small mercies. A was away for the day babysitting and did not have to see any of the unpleasantness. R decided she was too tired & happy last evening to be told, so we postponed till this morning. She took the news as well as could be expected with her tender heart. At times like this I seriously contemplate saying all animals must go; I'm weary of dealing with the fall-out when one dies, or kittens have to be given away. We have considered raising a calf for beef but I now know we could never swallow meat that used to be our pet. Bad idea.
Another small mercy- the vet called us back and expressed his condolences. I accepted them without crying.