“The animals we love frame our lives. Their arrival into the family as pups, kittens, or foals signals a joyous new beginning and their death marks the end of one period and the beginning of another.”
(Alston Chase, We Give Our Hearts to Dogs to Tear, p. 104)

I like that imagery–the animals we love framing our lives. It’s certainly true in my own case. Events take on dates of reference as “before Willie” or “after Nati died” and memorable experiences of laughter and excitement shared with pets become ever after benchmarks for happy times. Pets do frame our lives.

Our lives at Las Golondrinas took on a ‘joyous new beginning’ Saturday morning (February 21, 2009) when our female miniature donkey, Dora, gave birth to a healthy little foal. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I went to the corral for breakfast feeding; there Dora stood, looking at me, with a tiny clone of herself beside her, up on wobbly legs, looking at me too. A Joyous new chapter in our lives, indeed!

We’ve named the little guy, Wendell, after one of my favorite authors, Wendell Berry. If there is anything in a name, then little Wendell will be a source of inspiration in my life just like his namesake.

Our lives took on painful endings Sunday, February 22nd, when I came home to find another of our goats killed by dog-attack. That’s four of our pet pygmy goats I’ve buried, four times I’ve closed chapters on little friends who met violent deaths. I’m terribly discouraged tonight as I write this, most of all because I feel responsible, guilty somehow for not being omnipresent and omnipotent so as to save my little ones from harm. A neighbor recently lost a full-grown, large llama to a pack of stray dogs. Tonight, I, the lover of dogs, find myself in the untenable position of needing to kill dogs in order to save the animals I love. A good deal of the problem I and my neighbors face in Valencia County, NM., is dog owner irresponsibility that allows large dogs to roam and form destructive packs. Frankly, these are the brain-dead culprits who need to be shot.

But a hidden cost of the current loss of jobs and income in an already poor county such as mine is the abandonment of pets that owners can no longer afford to keep. Dogs were always dumped in our relatively secluded area around Tome Hill, even when times were ‘good.’ Now the situation is worse. Our county is huge in size, terribly underfunded, and animal control is hopeless. Horses are routinely found starving and more than usual numbers of ‘macho’ dogs roam loose endangering livestock.

Beginnings and endings, joyous new beginning in the new little donkey, Wendell, juxtaposed in the same weekend against a sad ending for Frieda, the mother goat to our twins, Gizzi and Spuds, who was a devoted mother and did not deserve this savage death.

I’m conflicted … but I’m determined to do whatever it takes to be a good steward worthy of my animals’ trust. I wasn’t here to see it, but I believe from the location of Frieda’s remains she died protecting her two babies, attempting to fend off the attackers enabling Gizzi and Spuds and Spanky and Tevi to escape. She fought for their lives. I cannot do less.

Joseph Harvill, publisher of Great Scots Magazine