Good Sheep

We lost two good sheep today.  One I loved from the very day I met him and one who took 15 years for a truce friendship to form. 

Woody has been terribly sick.  It took a long time to figure out what was going wrong, but he bravely fought like a warrior for four long weeks.  I just don't have the energy to type out what all was/went wrong.  I will say that if you have a sheep that's just "not right" and you can't figure anything out, ask your vet to test for anaplasmosis.

We had a great team of people helping try to keep him going long enough for the treatment to work.  No one worked any harder than Woody.  And in classic Woody fashion, he stayed cheerful and friendly and patient and let me know he knew we were trying to help him.  

He'd had to move into Easy Breezy because Jared was not being nice to him, but he liked Cheeto and Willard and they had fun sharing some hay together and I thought things might be turning around.  Last night he seemed a little down and when he asked to go back in with his old friends, I decided that might be a good boost after a long, hot day.  

I locked Rocky and Jared into Del Boca Vista so they wouldn't cause him any trouble and when I left at the last check he was out in the barn lot cheerfully eating some hay with everyone.  I looked forward to seeing him out grazing with them the next morning.  

Sometime during the night I think he stumbled over the board at the end of the stall and he landed hard and in a bad position and in his weakened condition could not get himself back up.  I found him early this morning, but the damage had been done.  We worked hard all day in hopes he'd rally, but he let me know he was too tired and that was our deal.  He was one of my all time favorite sheep.

Woody

May 2014 - August 9, 2021

Beanie Baby, on the other hand, was never a favorite sheep.  In fact, there was an incident years ago involving Ewen McTeagle that if it hadn't ended well for Ewen (due entirely to Beanie's irrational stupidity), I'd have...well, let's just leave it at that.  "You are here.  You are part of our family.  I'll take care of you.  I don't have to like you...and, honestly, I really pretty much don't."

Beanie Baby was one of the sheep who looked at me. And while he spent many years trying not to catch my eye at all, the last couple of years, as he's gotten old, I'd catch him making eye contact with me and I think he finally understood things like not getting shorn with the main group in the spring and me shearing him by hand once the weather was good and warm.  

That if he could bring himself to duck through an opened gate that I'd give him some much needed grain. That if he'd let me catch him and pick dried mud from between his too tiny toes that his feet would feel better.

This spring he just laid down on the shearing stand and let me give him his summer haircut.  And I was happy to do it.  I gave him a good scratching when we were finished and told him he was a good sheep.  He still wasn't my most favorite sheep...but after all those years, we'd finally become friends, maybe even good friends.

Over the weekend I noticed some flies buzzing around his bad horn.  He'd cracked it on something and it was infected deep inside and while we were able to clean it up enough to get him through the weekend so our favorite vet could check him, I had a feeling that at 16 years old it was not going to be something we were going to be able to fix.  

Beanie Baby

April 2005 - August 9, 2021