Laminitis on a Sunday afternoon

Our Belle. Sunday morning she wasn't much better. I'd checked on her at 3:30 when I went on my baby donkey rounds, and she was still laying in the same spot. Our adopted vet had walked us through the aspirin dosage the night before, and now he was insisting on coming out to treat her. I say "insisting", because I always object, I hate asking him to come, especially since it seems like we've had a crisis on a monthly basis. Saturdays. Sundays. Day or night.He drives an hour and a half just to help us with our animals. But it's more than that, he's not just doing this to help us, and our farm. He does it because he cares about the kids that drink our milk. The kids he's helping every time he gives up a Sunday afternoon to doctor a donkey. Without him and his vet buddies, we never would have made it through this year. Snow White and her antibiotic resistant injury. Belle and her near crippling, recurring laminitis. An epidemic scare that he solved with a necropsy (donkey autopsy) on our farm, with teenage wanna-be vet onlookers in tow. (I skipped that one.) Two babies born windswept, a rare condition that we somehow got hit with twice in one spring. A broken rib. Warts on donkey noses. Stinking abscessed hooves. I can't even remember the half of it. 

And now a Sunday afternoon saving Belle. I could tell you about the battle to wrap her hooves, the protocol, the DMSO, the aspirin, the molasses. And how we won't be milking Belle again until this is all out of her system (a month), but in her case, she'll be finished until she has another baby.

But that's not really what matters. What matters is that there are people out there who care enough about our kids that they'll give up a Sunday afternoon nap to come and save a donkey.

I'll keep telling these stories, because they're true. And they need to be told. There are still people out there like our vet. And our anonymous matching donor who donated "because it's the right thing to do, not because you'll get something out of it."

These aren't the stories that make the headlines and sell the papers and get the ratings. But they're the ones that matter. 

If there are headlines in heaven, I'm pretty sure they aren't featuring mass shootings and politicians and rich and famous movie stars. They're the stories of the vets and donors and neighbors and givers and exhausted mothers up with sick babies and volunteers who drive all the way from Tulsa to brush donkeys even though they're allergic to horse dander, and raffle ticket buyers who already had their moisturizer, but bought a ticket anyway.