It has been cold again the last couple of days, and Fate’s ice pond in the woods has frozen solid again, she tested it a bit on the edges and then went sailing jubilantly across the middle of the pond, skating along on her paws and sometimes, her butt. She loves to skate. She didn’t do it, I noticed, when the pond was melting, she seems to have a strong instinct for solid ground.
Yesterday she broke up the ice and pulled chunks of it out of the pond. Today, a different story, I think of her skating in the rink in New York’s Central Park, I think she’d love it. Maybe if I put Red’s therapy dog tag on her, she’d get in.
I have never had a dog quite like Fate, her joy for life is relentless and inexhaustible. She never passes up an opportunity to practice joy.
We checked on Chloe through the night and into this morning, she is fine, whatever was bothering her last night is not bothering her anymore. The vet says she is good. Just horse stuff. We will probably never know. We both remembered Simon’s death, and tried to prepare ourselves for Chloe to die.
We have learned to face life and death, not run from it. This time, we were all spared.
What struck me about last night, when we were concerned and thought Chloe was seriously ill, was the trust that exists now between this headstrong pony and this headstrong human. As often happens with people and animal, these two kindred spirits have somehow found one another.
I have been living on farms with animals for nearly two decades, and I know what happens when animals trust people and when animals don’t. Trust is critical when trouble comes, and I could see that last night. Chloe was in distress, rolling on the ground, distressed, nearly out of control. She and Maria took care of one another.
Animals like horses and donkeys are strong and powerful, frightening when they are panicked and out of control or in great pain. Carol the donkey kicked me, bit me, dragged me up a hill many times, she trusted no one and nothing in her hard and difficult life, I nearly got killed trying to keep her from dying. Trust is important. Orson, who came to me when he was three or four, never trusted other people, or allowed people to treat him, it cost him his life.
The trust between Maria and her pony was so clear yesterday.
When I got outside, Chloe was wild-eyed and frantic, she had caught her legs in a gate while thrashing around. As she saw Maria, she calmed. When the vet said we had to keep her moving, Maria kept her moving for nearly 40 minutes in the very cold wind until he could come. When I walked Chloe to give Maria a rest, it was not the same. She got frantic again.
When Chloe got panicky, Maria talked her down, reassured her. ]Chloe looked to her for directions and understanding, Maria was her fixed point. She was calm when Maria was there, excited and restless when she wasn’t. The relation was literally healing, Maria kept telling Chloe it was all right, and the pony took her cues from Maria, and seem to accept her word.
When the vet came and the pony found herself in a wooden stall, getting poked and prodded and examined, Chloe looked at Maria, who held her head, talked to her, soothed her. I saw the power of trust very clearly last night, I saw what loving care means to animals. Things could have been so much worse last night – I have seen it much worse many times – if not for the trust these two have established with one another.
I have the same trust with my dogs, with Red, and increasingly, with Fate.
I’ve had it with other animals, I know it when I see it. It is a beautiful thing to see, domesticated animals belong with people, it is i their genes and their nature.
“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves,” wrote Thomas Merton, “the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves.”
This applies very much to animals I believe. Trust does not come from love, or rescue, or pure emotionalizing, it comes from acceptance and understanding. In our seeing that they are different from us, and must be known and understood for what they are, not for what we are or might need them to be. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only reflections of ourselves, then we do not love them. We are just using them to love ourselves.
Maria and I both understood the importance of acceptance, of knowing animals for the magnificent spirits they are, rather four-legged versions of us. I do not need to rescue animals to love them, I do not need for them to be abused in order to care for them. I love them as they are, not dependents or siblings or children but partners in the joys and travails of life.
Maria has had her pains and troubles, but her soul was never damaged, her emotions are close to the surface, and the animals see them and sense them and smell them. Trust is a powerful medicine, I saw that very clearly yesterday afternoon.
It was disturbing, but not a drama. It is, quite simply, the real life with real animals. This morning, Chloe had moved on, and so did we.
