Sooo . . . Sunny would be better off dead rather than living with me? That's the alternative; she was somewhat overweight and persistently lame when the people that owned her decided to stop hemorrhaging money and shut down their business. Lame horses are basically unsellable; she was headed for a charity auction if I hadn't taken her. Even in the name of charity, how many people are going to spend money for an obviously lame horse? It's pretty much a given that she'd have taken a long, horrible, one-way trip to a Mexican slaughterhouse if I hadn't taken her. And I have to admit, during the months immediately following my decision, watching her limping across the pasture, I wondered if she wouldn't have been better off dead rather than living in pain. But gradually, the extra weight came off, and her metabolism stabilized; the morning I saw her come tearing across the pasture, bucking and striking out playfully is something I will treasure until the day that I die. That isn't the end of the story, of course; while she spends most of her time usefully sound, her stupidly small feet and thin soles mean she sometimes gets sore again, sometimes for weeks at a time. But since horses live in the moment, I think that, by and large, she is content with her life.
And I guess I shouldn't have stepped forward when Betsy the mini-mule's owner decided she was too much trouble and was giving her away? At 9, she had a reputation for being difficult if not impossible to deal with, an absolute and total BRAT. Betsy hadn't been here for two weeks before I figured out that, rather than being stubborn and defiant, she was simply ignorant and fearful. I don't know how many of the far more experienced horse people around here would have had the patience and perspective to hear what the animal was trying to say, rather than fight with her and try to dominate her. She's been with me for 10 years now, and while we have our moments, nobody who sees us together can miss the bond we have. She's 19 now, and I'm looking hard at 60. Mules are often surprisingly long-lived; she could last another 20 years - how likely is it that an 80 year old woman will still be able to trim her feet? And though it would break my heart to load her onto someone else's trailer and walk away, the idea of having her killed simply because I could no longer afford to feed her is unbearable.
I can't be sure that I will draw my next breath. I live in a community with one of the worst traffic accident rates in the state, and daily drive on a road that has some of the worst traffic in town. It's an act of faith to get behind the wheel and assume that I will get where I was intending to go; people around here don't on a daily basis. Even if I didn't get killed, I could be put in a position where I couldn't care for myself, let alone my animals, for a long time (or even forever). Should I not have any animals, simply because life can happen?
