I am as powerfully connected to Simon as I am to any animal I’ve ever lived with, except perhaps for Red. I often wonder about this connection, this attachment that a battered old farm donkey has to a human being from another world. Was it our healing each other?

Do we connect on the level so many people connect with animals on – this idea of rescue? In the ancient literature about donkeys, in the paintings and writings about donkeys, there is always this idea of a partnership, donkeys and humans linked together in what the ancients called the Theater of Chance. Donkeys and humans always seem to be traveling together, on the road together, sorting out life together.

I do not compare myself to animals, especially donkeys, yet Simon and I both met when each of us was opened up in the most intense way. I remember the beginning of this connection, when I started reading “Platero And I,” a wonderful book about donkeys and men traveling together in the Andalusia region of Spain. I was broken emotionally, he was broken physically, but not otherwise broken.

Simon was in the most horrific condition I have ever seen an animal be in and survive, yet it only seemed to affect his body, never his spirit, never his drive to live, his trust and willingness to connect. I was also struggling to survive in a different way, yet like Simon, I never stopped wanting to live, to find love, to trust and connect. So perhaps we began this process of healing together, each of us offering a need part to the shattered parts of the other.

Simon and I live in the Theater of Chance, we do not see ourselves as rescued creatures, as abused or piteous. We have danced in the dance together, and are still dancing. Maybe that’s it.