We Are Brave Enough to Love

I received the below article by Bryan Welch entitled "Are We Brave Enough to Love?" the day Emotive Acres suffered its first tragedy. This October had been Missouri's wettest, and two weeks of nearly endless precipitation had made certain patches of our land thick with soupy mud. Our herd hadn't had much problem with the conditions, though the girls seemed especially grossed out by the feeling of nasty wetness on their skin. It just so happened that this night, as John and I were making our six o'clock rounds to check on the horses, that our dog found one of our fillies separated from the herd and swaying gently by the shelter. Following Sampson's alarm, we rushed over to the baby. What we saw horrified us. It was like something out of a ghastly nightmare. Her leg was broken, and a huge chunk of flesh had been ripped away from the bone between her ankle and knee. She had a deep gash on her cheek, and probably more injuries to her side that could not be seen by the dim light of the cloudy evening. A monster must have done this to her, I thought in my panic, imagining wolves the size of Clydesdales descending upon my little girl. What are we going to do? How could we have let this happen?

Our phone had not even been hooked up yet, and my prepaid cellular only picked up spotty service, but I managed to get a call in to the emergency vet and relay enough information for him to know where we were and who needed help. "Something attacked my horse!" I tried shouting into the phone, though all he could hear was my last word. "Is she going to live?" the vet asked, and I was floored. How could I make that call? I couldn't bring myself to commit to an answer. It took the vet an hour and a half to get to us, forcing the residue of my suburban immediacy to dissolve into rural patience. We covered the filly up with a blanket and placed a halter around her head. In the rain, my husband and I waited. We cried, we held each other, we let her lean on us, and we got to work bringing her warm water and comforting her concerned comrades. When the vet arrived, he confirmed our fears. The break was nasty, and there was nothing that could be done for her. With so much flesh missing, there wasn’t a cast in the world that could keep her from contracting a fatal infection. The kindest thing we could do for her was let her go to sleep that night, and to let her stay that way.

This was our first night at Emotive Acres. The responsibility was crushing. Silently, John and I blamed ourselves for the filly’s fate, while the vet expressed outwardly how he wished he could have done more. Three humans surrounded the gentle beast, and three human hearts broke for her. I asked the vet what could have done this, and he replied that she must have gotten caught on something, probably due to the mud, and when she tried to pull herself out, she caused the majority of the damage. But he encouraged us not to blame the land; he knew this property well, and had served its previous owner under much better circumstances. “We’ve never had rain like this,” he explained. “It’s just one of those things…”

The vet gave us the number to Ronnie’s Stump Removal, offering that he’d be willing to bring his truck out to help us bury her on the property. I had to swallow down the lack of decorum of a funeral by stump removal service, and remember that in the country it is the spirit of Ronnie, not his service, that was meant to preside over the burial. Having suffered this tragedy, John and I committed ourselves to rectifying the problem, clearing out the mud, and never allowing it to build up again. But this was our first night on Emotive Acres. There was nothing we could have done.

Had John and I allowed ourselves to react to this situation as victims, we would have drowned in our guilt and self-punishment.  We may even have blamed each other, or any of the other humans who had dedicated so much concern for her wellbeing during her life. Had I not read Bryan Welsh’s article not half a day before saying goodbye to my first farm fatality, I would still be torturing myself over my perceived impotence as a farmer. But as Welsh explains, it is our job as farmers to learn to love “unsentimentally.” We’ve taken on the world’s hardest role; it is a role that defies emotional logic and promises to be heart-wrenching if it is done right. Welsh explains: “We believe that the lifestyle we provide for our livestock is humane. Their well-being is a personal concern for us, day in and day out. We really care. And that’s what hurts.” I believe that the spirits of animals are not unlike the spirits of humans, though their communication is limited and their time on earth is far briefer. They teach us lessons and care for our spirits, as we care for them during their allotted time on earth. Our filly took on a powerful role that first night; she took it upon herself to teach us the most difficult lesson of stewardship – the lesson of loss, and of companionship over self-pity. Having started this way on Emotive Acres, our spiritual learning has been accelerated. My appreciation for our filly’s sacrifice is immeasurable.

In the comfort of our suburban homes, we surround ourselves with predatory animals – cats and dogs – and then deny them their predatory instincts. Similarly, we deny ourselves our predatory instincts by allowing the grocery store to close our hearts and minds to the wellbeing of the creatures who end up on our plates every night. We’ve labeled predators as antagonists, usually rooting for the gazelle over the lion during Discovery Channel documentaries. But God had a reason for making man a predator, and then giving man the responsibility of stewardship over his land and prey. It is not for us to preserve life at all costs. It is our job to learn companionship through loss, and spiritual connectivity through death. Welsh remarks of other neighboring predators, “Coyotes kill one animal at a time and eat them immediately [sic]. Coyotes are all business.” There is no evil in the coyote, just survival and stewardship. We too, must live as predators – not killing unnecessarily, but being present for death, and then making that sacrifice worthwhile. It is a heavy responsibility. Though I still wrestle with the apparent unfairness of having lost a companion rather than a livestock, I understand that her loss is not unlike any other loss we will experience on these acres.  Horses and humans are forever separated as prey and predator, though we've learned to trust, to love, and to live together.  As farmers, we see our animals die, often at our own hand, sometimes through accident and tragedy, so that we can experience the loss of loved ones before having to experience it through our own kind. When we see the mortality of our prey, we have reverence for our power and respect for our own fragility.  When we let our prey lean on us for support, when we offer our strength for her comfort during her final moments of life, we've truly learned the lesson of companionship.