Some Days

Some days ask very little of us. Others ask everything.

And recently we had one of those days.

Some Days came to us as a three-day-old Jersey calf. A sweet, doe-eyed beauty born into the dairy industry with a partially formed front leg that could neither serve her nor safely remain. Too small for a prosthetic yet large enough to hinder her, it was surgically removed.

Though she may have been born missing a limb, there was enough of Some Days to spark the human kindness that would save her. And we determined that Some Days would miss out on none of the good things in life.

People asked how a three-legged calf would cope, how she would get around and how long she might live. Our answer was as simple as the promise sanctuary should make to every animal:

And goodness, Some Days did, more often than not with an exuberance hardly thought possible for a large-boned tripod such as she.

For more than three years she answered not with words but with a life gloriously lived.

There was merriment in those enormous eyes and a sweetness that could undo you. She would rest her great head upon the shoulders of favourite humans before raking that big raspy tongue across a cheek, leaving a slobbery mark that somehow made it all the way down to our hearts.

And she wrapped those humans firmly around her one sturdy front leg. Water, chaff and pellets, green grass or simply our presence were dutifully delivered at her behest. Honestly, had Some Days wanted the moon, we would have started looking for a rocket.

When bovine buddies Happy Days and Good Friday grew too large to safely share her world, Some Days made new friends among the goats, claimed their shelter as her own and carried on.

Some Days never seemed to measure her life by what was missing. Instead, she measured it by everything that remained.

Until recently, when she began telling us something different.

The joys of living were no longer outweighing the challenges of doing so. And suddenly the promise we had made years before revealed its hardest side.

For years she had let her tell us she could.

Now we had to let her tell us she couldn’t.

And we listened.

Because perhaps the greater part of loving is listening, especially when the answer breaks your heart.

There is a bittersweet irony that the limb Some Days arrived without may well have helped her step beyond the life the dairy industry had mapped out for her. What others may have seen as a limitation became part of the extraordinary accident that delivered her to sanctuary.

And what a life she made of it. Some days were happy, some were hard. And one was the hardest of them all.

But Some Days taught us never to measure a life by what was missing.

Instead, measure it by all that was there.

And for more than three wonderful years, Some Days was here.

What very good days they were.

Godspeed, beautiful girl. Godspeed.