Finding His Footing

Pop Eye was barely ten days old when he came to us, found struggling and motherless after a mob of sheep had been rounded up. By then, joint ill had already taken a cruel hold, so advanced in his right front leg that it may yet cost him the limb. What remains of his little tail bears the unmistakable signature of a predator attack, while his grubby fleece told of a beginning no little lamb should have known.

And yet, somehow, none of it had reached his sweetness.

Each day Pop Eye is finding his footing, even if for now that means three determined little limbs and a heart growing brave enough to meet the world. And he is finding friends too: the effervescent firecracker who is Marmalade and the quieter, but no less endearing, Pop Adum.

And perhaps that is what we love most about watching these little lives knit themselves together. They do not know the stories we have written around what has happened to them. They simply know the warmth beside them, the friend who comes near and whether today feels safer than yesterday.

We do not yet know what the future holds for Pop Eye or whether four little legs will become three.

But perhaps finding your footing was never really about how many hooves you had.

Perhaps it is simply finding somewhere safe enough to put them.