If you had asked me even just one year ago, when I was hugely pregnant, I would have said that having a baby would in no way change how I felt about my animals. Or all animals for that matter. I was SO wrong.
I have always loved animals of all kinds. Wild ones, farm ones, pet ones. It sounds hokey, but I also feel that on some level, I can communicate with animals. Not all animals. Not wild ones. Not even all pet ones. When I was a kid we just had cats and rabbits. My grandmother had a horse that I helped take care of and her cousin, Kenny, kept a cow in the same pasture. I rode the horse bareback in the Berkshire Hills where I grew up. I chipped the ice out of their water tub and carried buckets of fresh water to refill the tub twice a day in the winter. In the fall I walked the bare corn fields bordering our house collecting the dried out ears to feed them for treats over the winter. In the spring and summer I brushed the horse and bathed her. I also brushed the cow. They both had chestnut colored hair, quite the same as the color of my own hair. I didn't know back then that those reddish cows, Herefords, are a beef breed.
I have a vivid memory of the cow, Annie was her name, birthing her twin calves. She was having trouble. One was stuck. Kenny came to help her. He removed his shirt and reached his arm up in her to untangle the long calf legs. He slowly helped ease the babies out. They were dead. He barried them on top of the hill in her pasture where they were born. For weeks afterword he had to bring her hay to her at that spot. She would not leave it. I would walk out to her, pet her, tell her I was sorry. She was sad. You can never convince me that cows don't know sadness. I grew up across the way from a cow farm and every spring when the calves were taken from their mothers, the desperate calls of the cows could be heard all night long for over a week. It was a sound I fell asleep to each year. Sometimes, as a child, it made me cry. I'm fairly certain if I had to listen to those sorrowful moos again, I would cry now too.
Most of the veterinary work I have done has been on small animals - cats and dogs. I have had the opportunity however to assist on a number of farm calls for cows and once got to assist on an abdominal surgery on a calf with a very large hernia. When he woke up from anesthesia I fed him.
Today Oliver met his first cow at the Tuesday Market. His reaction was exactly as I suspected it would be. He sat motionless in my arms and stared at the baby cow with a furrowed brow. He studied that calf. He loved that calf. I helped him pet it. He liked the feeling of it's fur. He smiled, though only briefly, and then stared some more, making a few quiet whines as he does when he is trying to understand something.
It was a pleasure to share this moment with Oliver. The past 10 months have been far more challenging than I ever imagined possible and caring for Oliver, let alone myself and my husband, has left little time for the animals that once owned my heart. I still love my animals, and I take good care of them, but it's not the same. I miss the bond I had with them and I hope, that over time, I will regain that special connection as I show and teach Oliver about the wonderful creatures who share our world.
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