The Farrier

If you have followed my blog, then you know “Rosie” my beloved donkey. She is actually my brother’s friend Sarah’s donkey and she lives on his farm in Western Pennsylvania. My mother took good care of her by giving her treats including lettuce, banana peels, and other vegetables. Donkeys have jobs and her job is to protect the sheep, the lambs and the goats. How does she do that? With a swift kick to the approaching enemy or a stomp which means ” get far away.” She is a beauty at 22 years old and could live to be 40 years old.

Recently she was visited by a farrier. Like other ungulates, including horses, donkeys frequently suffer from hoof disease and hoof-related lameness. In many cases these hoof disorders are preventable, but they necessitate veterinarian, farrier, and owner cooperation. Sometimes it has to do with working on wet surfaces. Donkeys and other equine animals sleep, stand and work on their feet 24 hours a day. They do not sleep on the ground as we might imagine. Rosie was given a careful trimming of her hooves and she is now feeling strong and ready to protect.

I think of all the first responders during the pandemic in medicine, food and other industries on their feet all day and night. Work and stress seems to end up being carried by our feet and we need to care for them. Mary Oliver captures this idea that we are all together–“the farthest star and the mud at our feet”–in this destiny. Rosie and all animals stand alongside the nurse and the doctor and all workers in food and industry. Rosie protects the sheep that give us wool and the goats that give us joy. We have been protected by all laborers who have continued to work tirelessly.

from (Mary Oliver, Upstream, book of essays)

“I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves – we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other’s destiny.”

“How beautiful on the mountain are the feet of them that bring glad tidings.” (Isaiah 52:7)