I love this photo, it is timeless, the barns and the old farmhouse flowing one from the other, it was a timeless photo, a place frozen in time and memory, the garage door is the only thing that suggests the photo isn’t a century old. I liked the red colors but I thought this photo wanted to be black and white, more timeless, more emotional. A slice of life in a corner of the world.
The cause of Tess’s death – as close as we all could get to it – was massive internal bleeding caused by a “vascular incident,” which could have been anything from an internal rupture to a heart attack or other internal hemorraghing, impossible to know for sure without an autopsy. Tess’s stomach was swollen, but she did not suffer from bloat or gas, the swelling was blood and fluid pressing against her lungs so that she could barely breathe.
I have written a lot about Tess in the last day or so, many of you are curious about her death, and we are nothing if not transparent here, those of you who are interested are entitled to know what happened.
Red and I were out herding the sheep and we were far from the flock – perhaps 75 yards – when Tess dropped to the ground so sharply I wondered if she had been shot, I actually looked to the road to see if there was anyone out there taking a shot at a deer or something else. She could not stand up and her head was flat on the ground, her eyes were dilated her breathing was labored. We got her up, and over time, walked her to the Pole Barn where she lay down and except for one or two brief efforts to stand, she did not eat or drink or move again.
When I have a sheep down like that, and if I have a calm and well-trained dog – Rose was one, Red another – I position the border collie close to the sheep. The command is “get ’em up, get ’em up,” and Rose was very effective at this, she would get behind the sheep and nip at them until they stood up, and this often gets sheep moving again. That is important when a sheep is down and struggling to breathe. I’ve had many sheep just take off and recover that way. If they are not critically ill, they will scramble to their feet and run for the rest of the flock. If they don’t – Tess didn’t move, Red kept looking at me for instructions – then they are really sick, and after some time, the decision is whether to euthanize them, shoot them or call a vet.
Red was not familiar with the “get ’em up” command but he kept looking at me for direction and I signaled to him to “walk up,” and “get the sheep up,” and he walked up close to pressure Tess. She didn’t move. Her stomach was distended and very hard – possible bloat, but worse than that.
Tess had emotional value but sheep are not worth much in the marketplace – $60, $70 maybe, so it makes little sense to spend hundreds of dollars on vet care. (Of course, we just spent $1,700 on a barn cat leg amputation, no sane farmer would do that.)
My philosophy – this is Maria’s as well – is to first try ourselves, we have medicine, syringes and experience. I tried penicillin and tubes to release the gas in the stomach, in the morning she was worse, so we called a vet to see if there was something we had missed that might help her heal, or barring that, the vet could put her down. I made an emergency call to the Granville Large Animal Vet and they came within the hour. At this point, we could see that Tess was deteriorating, we wanted to resolve it or end it quickly.
Dr. Lauren Marsh inserted a needle in Tess’s side to release any gas – there was little – and then a tube into her stomach to pump out any fluid. There was some, but there was liquid elsewhere in her body, that would suggest blood. Something had ruptured, blood was coming out of her uterine canal.
There were several more things to try, but Maria wisely and humanely decided to end her suffering, and I agreed. Like human doctors, animal vets always have more things to try – Dr. Marsh said she could do an ultra-sound – and it is up to the animal owner or farmer to set the boundaries, not only of cost, but of perspective. Vets are not trained to do that, although Dr. Marsh completely supported our decision to euthanize Tess without further probing or procedures – her breathing was getting heavier, you could hear the fluid building in her lungs.
So there was clearly a massive internal injury, one connected to the vascular system. I have some more photos of Tess’s end I might put up in a bit, but overall, I think it’s time to move on from this chapter in our lives, I did feel the people following the story were entitled to this information. I am grateful for the kinds words and support, I am grateful to have shared this particular experience – we can all learn from any kind of death, an animal or a person. I learned a lot, thank you for coming along with me.
Decisions are an important affirmation of human dignity and identity, this is why I do not seek the advice of strangers far away, decisions define us, they are our voice and strength, and I am committed to making my own, mistakes and all. This is no one’s responsibility but Maria’s and mine, we do not make decisions like this collectively. As usual, most of the unwanted advice was wrong and ill-considered, even if we had listened to it. You just have to be there. In this case, I am proud of our decisions, they were strong and clear and humane. We did not lose perspective, we put the animal’s suffering first and resolved it quickly and lovingly and intelligently.
Photographers sometimes hide behind their cameras – I always loved the detachment of the journalist – but yesterday, when Maria’s sheep Tess fell gravely ill and death seemed to loom – I made a conscious decision to separate myself from it, Maria and the vet, Dr. Lauren Marsh were working closely and comfortably with Tess, there was no room for me, no real role to pay except supporting Maria in her decisions, which I did. Beyond that, I decide to accept the challenge of photographing death and along with that, of trying to learn about the spirituality of animals, and there is nothing more spiritual than death, as I have learned in my hospice work.
Death is usually hidden from the world, it is a taboo in our culture, our heresy, our political and medical worlds promote the idea of eternal life and the miracles of technology, a farm shatters those conceits quickly. Animals do not live in a no-kill world, that is a human need and ideal. But I have seen much of their spirituality, and I saw more of it yesterday. From the minute we began working on Tess, Red never took his eyes off of her. Neither did the three donkeys, who stayed in the barn just a few feet from us and watched and listened to everything we did. The sheep watched from a distance, they stayed away.
I saw that we are a spiritual community here at Bedlam Farm, the animals with their keen senses and instincts, have embraced this sense of the place, they clearly wanted to observe the process, to see and hear all of it, they never stopped watching. Maria and I felt their presence, we took comfort from them, I can’t say if they were offering support of comfort, but we felt comfort, they stood by to be touched, leaned against, I felt something almost tangible coming from them. We do so much emotionalizing of animals that it is becoming difficult to separate what they do from what we need them to do and want them to do.
When Tess died yesterday, there was a release in the room, an almost tangible feeling of a spirit leaving. I saw it in Red’s eyes, I saw it in the donkey’s rigid and rapt stance. When Tess was gone, Red sniffed her and abandoned her to purse the other sheep, the donkeys came and sniffed her and also went away, the other sheep paid no attention to her. I saw no grieving, only deep acceptance and an almost mystical sense of a community. I felt the animals saw Tess’s spirit leave her body, and they were done. Red’s eyes were different than I had ever seen them – I got a photo of his face.
The animals stood close by us all day, Red was exceptionally calm and the donkey’s walked with us to the outer pasture, stood close to us.
It seemed to me the animals were seeing Tess off, acknowledging her spirit’s departure, they did not grieve in the human sense but they did pay a kind of tribute to her I felt, engage in their own kind of prayers. It also seemed as if the animals were supporting us, standing by us, participating in this kind of circle, this kind of community.
I saw that we were not just animals and their owners, but a community of spirit beings, some human, some animal, we came together for the sickness and death of one of us, and then moved forward with our lives. I felt the spirituality of these animals, their connection to us, their intuitiveness, their healing power.
I am glad I focused on this yesterday, I felt as if I walked through a portal to another world, and then came to see that was not another world, but my world, and it touched me deeply and moved me profoundly. We are a spiritual community at Bedlam Farm, all of us, and that was something to cry about.
Sometimes I think Simon is considering taking up sheepherding and has approached Red for lessons. I understand this is a completely projection, but lately, it seems Simon and Red have become a bit of team. I wouldn’t call it a friendship – Red has absolutely no interest in Simon, pays no attention to him and ignores him resolutely. Nothing distracts Red from his work.
Still, something is going on – your guess is as good as mine, and I love the sight of these two iconic animals and the chance to photograph them together.
Our farm is evolving in small but significant ways. I don’t have the money I had in the glory days of Bedlam Farm 1.0, we are evolving in smaller, more thoughtful steps. We have cleared out all of the dirt, junk piles, tires from behind the barn. We brought in truckloads of gravel and put in gutters to keep water away from the barn, keep mud bogs from forming, improve the draining.
We fenced and opened up the Lulu’s Crossing pasture in the rear of the farm, a significant step and yesterday our friend Jack MacMilllan rode his tractor over clear away some of the rocks to make a path to the water in the pond we opened up earlier this year for the animals. This means we don’t have to haul water out every morning in the bitter cold (when it’s storming, we will put out a heated water bucket to keep the animals warm.)
Simon was checking out the new path to the water – before the rocks got slippery and difficult in the snow and ice – and the animals will need to pack it down. Bit by bit, we are getting there, we love our new home and we relish the challenge of thinking about it and getting it in shape.
