For me, it is often more merciful and compassionate to kill my stricken animals rather than to have a stranger come in and stick an IV drip into them.

I can’t do that with donkeys and horses or dogs, but I can do it with chickens and sheep or sick animals wandering in the pasture.

It is no fun to shoot one of your own animals, especially one you have helped birth and photographed, but it is my responsibility to see that if they have to leave the world, that they do so quickly and as painlessly as possible.

I have learned a skill I never imagined I would have, to shoot animals knowingly and kill them instantly. I know just where to shoot them and my aim is very good.

They never see, hear, or feel a thing. I used my .22 rifle and fired two shots into Deb’s forehead and three into her heart in rapid succession. She trembled and shook for five or ten seconds, then was still.

For me, a sad act of mercy and compassion.

Ma’s legacy is over, she and her twins, Debbie and Jake are now all gone, and that is the story of the real life of real animals. Life. death. life. We still have a fistful of syringes filled with medicines, we will throw them out.

I will be candid and say that this one was hard.

All night and through the morning, Deb’s condition worsened, she couldn’t stand, eat, drink or react to movement in front of her. I brought Red into the stall several times to see if he could provoke her into standing, but she didn’t even seem to see him, an unmistakable sign that she is gravely ill and suffering. She couldn’t stop panting, a sign of pain or fear.

Fate stared at her in shock, for once, she was her own equivalent of speechless – she didn’t move.

Sick sheep either get well quickly, or not at all. I am glad she is out of her suffering,  she was a sweet animal with much personality and beautiful wool.

Hopefully in one way or another, she has gone to join her mother, who fought to hard to give birth to her, and her brother Jake, who never left her side.

I suppose this is the hard place of living with animals, but it is not a tragedy for me, it is life, and if I can’t handle this, I have no business being here. Maria and I have been through this a number of times now, we are in accord, we know what has to be done, we know when it is time to try and save an animal, and time to let them go. If  I cannot let them go when they are suffering, then I am not loving them, I am loving me.

The reality of animals is tricky, sheep are worth about $60 at market, how could I look any farmer in the face if I spent $500 to pump medicines into them that are unlikely to work. Sheep are mysterious beings, they get sick suddenly and very often. Veterinary care is expensive and uncertain.

Here on the farm, I do not wallow in death. I said goodbye to Deb and thanked her for her great service to us – the dogs, Maria’s yarn, my photography, my writing.  I told her I am grateful for the joy of looking out any window and seeing the timeless beauty of grazing sheep. And for the boundless joy of working with sheep and my dogs. Deb never gave Red a hard time. I Hope there is a green pasture somewhere, I told her,  where she can rejoin her brother, who she loved, and graze peacefully with no dogs to bother her.

Now, time to look forward, not back. That is the lesson of the farm.