that holds us accountable. it has nothing to do with external rules or regulations, or common accepted practice....morality comes from a shared or a uniquely held belief.
so..i have a strongly held personal belief here that is not standard in rescue...
rescue is about taking the homeless and alone and finding them a place to forever belong as part of a loyal and loving family....and that is what all rescuers try to do..this is the common thread thru out all rescue....bring them in, care for them well until you can reach the final goal....the perfect for them, home of their own....and then bring in another and start all over again.
i have done dogs and cats for many years and i am pretty good at seeing inside to find the key to their needs.
the farm guys are new to me...5 years only to see them, to feel them, to try to understand each of their unique needs. i have figured out a couple of important things, like...while dogs crave to bond to a human family...farm animals crave to bond to the herd.
for dogs, humans are the all important...for horses and cows and sheep....humans are on the periphery of their worlds..the flock, the herd is the center of their universe and that is how evolution, nature, natural selection has made it to be.
i believe this to be absolutely true..i believe for the farm animals this to be absolutely right in a healthy happy life...i believe that some things are the way they are meant to be despite what i want or wish or think or would find most convenient.
czar and lahanie have been offered a very good home...ten acres to roam on, a safe and warm barn, no expectations for performing anything to fulfill human needs. one of the staff from our farm vets clinic, just lost their 35 yr old horse and are offerring these two a very good forever retirement home of their own. they will still be fed their grain mash every morning and every night, they will still be blanketed and cared for in foul weather, they will still have a close friend to pass thru the days with..they will have everything that they had here with a much larger home to roam around in.
it is a pretty sweet deal..they get a great life together somewhere...we get a bit of a break in the space, cost and work out in the barn areas..and we have room to help maybe one more old, broken down, used up and tossed away, loyal horse on his or her way to slaughter.
except..when i first recognised the true value that these animals placed in the integrity of their herd...i said i would never disrespect this and mess with their herd again.
i have sent off other herd animals...the 3 stooges, merridith, amos..but i did not let them bond with the herd before i sent them off either..i kept them separate because i only took them in to get them out of where they were..we didn`t have room here but i found a way to get them in, keep them separate until their final home came.
i have not done that to lahanie and czar..i have let them build their herd, their family here...i have watched them accept and become accepted as full members of the saints odd and mixed barn yard family.
so now i am conflicted...i feel splitting them off is wrong...i feel it is another betrayal in a life long line of betrayals...i feel i will break the one promise i gave...to respect the ties within the herd that they made....and i feel that this is wrong.
but...with all of the staffing issues and the rising costs..with the brutal workload that weighs us all down...with the worry over grass and the worry over money and space...i also feel like this is the perfect solution to make life easier for us...for me...at saints.
and it is not that i am considering sending them somewhere that is less than saints..i am considering somewhere that is probably better than here....but better in what wayÉ (question mark).....if they go..the rest of the herd stays here.
it is not just lahanie and czar who will feel the loss of their family and the fear of the new unknown in another new world...but gideon and the others, especially percy the cow will know that i broke my word and severed the herd....it is what humans do every day.
it sucks to believe in something, to think something true and then face an opposite choice that makes life easier when you personally need easier more than anything now.
and so i am struggling...who do i do best for...saints..the herd...the staff and volunteers...me...how right is my belief in the holy integrity of the herd anyhowÉ (question mark)...is 5 years enough to see the right in thisÉÉÉ (3 big question marks)
it so sucks to be inside my head thinking about right and wrong.
I just went back and started to read some of these comments. I didn't get past Carol saying that humans aren't arbitarilly picked up and moved to Toronto
Hey my mom was arbitarilly picked up and moved from India to Canada because her husband (who she had just married and didn't know because it was arranged)wanted to be in Canada and she had to move and leave her pack behind. My dad arbitarilly picked my mom up and made those decisions for her. She had to come down by herself at the age of 21 and landed in Vancouver where there was snow. If she had free will she would not have wanted have come because she was very bonded to her pack in India, her parents and siblings. And she was saying "why I am perfectly happy here with my friends". But if she hadn't come she would never have had me and that wou have been very sad... so ripples in the pond... a breaking up of a pack ultimately produced my birth in Canada and I have to say I think Canada is one of the greatest places in the world to live.
PS when my grandfather came out to visit my mom he was horrified to discover she was living in a very small house with no bathroom or running water.
I think that these kinds of situations still happen to humans - just not in this country.