I apologize to anyone who might be disturbed by this somewhat graphic portrait of Ma, just a few seconds after her death. I decided to put it up on my blog for several reasons, even though I mostly put up photos that I believe will touch and inspire.

First off, it is, to me, a beautiful portrait. The color of the blood was startlingly red – I did not enhance it in any way, and so, in her own way, was Ma, more beautiful in death, perhaps, than she was in life.

Secondly, because there is a great schism in America between people who have pets and people who own animals. As I have both, I often write and photograph on the boundaries between the two worlds. I take endearing and hopefully beautiful photographs of dogs and cats, but also grittier photographs, those that show the real lives of real animals.

People often write me and say I have a perfect live, they want to live on a farm, and a farm is a wonderful thing to have, but it is, of course, not a perfect life, there is no such thing and I would not want one if there were. A farm is life itself, and that means death itself as well. Mortality is not a remote and surprising thing here, we learn about it all the time.

If more people understood the real lives of horses, for example, the New York Carriage Horses would not be in peril, threatened with removal from their safe and secure lives because so many people do not understand what their lives are really like, or that work for them is a salvation, not a torture.

And finally, because I am a writer and an artist, and I feel compelled to share what touches me. I am not casual about killing things, especially the animals in my care, but I have come to see and believe that killing is sometimes the most humane and compassionate thing an animal lover can do. I think of all those dogs kept alive for months and years in pain because of the selfishness of their humans and I think of those dogs who spend years confined in crates because people use them to feel good about themselves. So this photo touched me, especially since I was the one who did the killing here.

There is this troubling idea in the animal world that one shows their love of animals by keeping them alive at all costs and by any means, and this morning, we showed our love for Ma by releasing her from days and weeks of pain simply because it would have made us – perhaps others – feel good. For me, that is not compassion, it is more the narcissistic arrogance of human beings dealing with animals.

I showed this photograph to Maria and others, and they all suggested it might make people uncomfortable, did I really need to put it up.? Yes, I did need to put it up, it turns out. Something inside of me told me so.

We need a wiser and more mystical understanding of animals and this morning, once again, Maria and I talked with an animal on the edge of life, and knew what we needed to do.