A Farmer and His Pets
Farming is not for the faint of heart. You don't just get physically tough farming, you get emotionally tough. You have to. There is no other choice except to quit, and, goodness knows, farmers aren't quitters. Life and especially death matters are part of farming. Injuries, breakdowns, uncooperative weather, setbacks of all sorts, and the always looming spectre of Death are part and parcel of it.
If you're on a farm with pigs, chickens, or beef cattle, death is your running mate. There's no getting away from it. Even dairy farming has loss of life attached to it, but thankfully just not as regular a visitor.
Pets on a farm live in a perpetual state of fatal risk. Machines that would appear positively gigantically monstrous to them are part of their daily lives. They have to learn to avoid being run over by tractors and implements, delivery trucks, pickup trucks, cars, and ATV's. They have to also be exceedingly careful of feeding and processing equipment, and other animals far larger than them. Very few farmers don't have a story - where the hurt definitely still shows years later - of running over the farm dog or a favorite barn cat. We have almost all been there. We know we have to butcher chickens and pigs and steers. That doesn't mean we like it. But the sudden, tragic death of a beloved farm pet, even though we know is always a risk, will still take us by surprise and tear our hearts right to pieces.
There is an old saying, 'You know you're a farmer when you buried a dog and cried your eyes out'. It is so true. All old sayings have solid basis in fact, and that one is for sure near the top of the heap for country people. If you do a Google image search for the words, 'pet grave', you will be amazed by the return. The sense of loss conveyed by all those images will immediately tell you you're not alone in the sentiment of missing a former pet. If you type in, 'dog at owners grave', or 'cat at owners grave', you will see heartbreaking images of dogs and cats resolutely holding vigil at their dearly departed owner's gravesite. It is a sobering thing to see how important their owner really was to them and how aware they really are of what is going on around them. They know. They have feelings and understanding as well. They may not have our intelligence, but they for certain can share our sense of love. And loss.
We had a little black female cat that we picked up on the shoulder of a road that had no houses on it. Dad and I had hearts for cats. I should say, Dad had a heart for cats and I inherited it from him. We couldn't drive past a kitten tossed out and abandoned on the side of the road when we had plenty of food at home and all the space she could ever want.
We loved dogs too, and had our share, but we just seemed to be naturally cat people. And cats fared better with us than dogs. We never had a dog die of old age or even approach it. A local lad shot our beautiful Golden Retriever, Chum, for sport, and even gloated about it. When one of our resident local drug dealers ran down his dog on purpose, he cried for years. What goes around comes around, I guess. He never learned his lesson, though. A heart hard enough to purposefully do something like that rarely softens. Sharon lost a cat on Rice Line to someone intentionally running it down, too. I don't know how they can be like that, but I guess some people are just completely rotten to the core.
Farmers, more than anyone else, because they have to deal with death so much, value Life, and do all they can to preserve it. God, our Father, puts the Breath of Life into all things, and we are to esteem it and value it and protect it. He also gave us dominion over all living things, and that provides us permission to preserve one life or lives, by ending others. We do it at our discretion, but with reserve and caution and brevity and respect, always knowing that the Breath of Life that is in us is in them as well. A Life is not for taking for the fun of it. Bloodlust is a grave sin, and no true farmer will allow that to creep into their mentality because we are to be Stewards of what God provided and distributed among us.
That cat, which we simply named 'The Little Guy', became a third wheel with us. I mean that term in a good way, like 'The Three Musketeers'. Her first memory with us was riding home in the truck in one of our laps. We found she was an excellent little traveler, so she went with us in the truck wherever we went. She relished the road, and would happily sit on the back of the bench seat between our shoulders where she could see both of us and out the windshield and back window at all times. She remained very small even as an adult, so her name, while not very original, turned out to be quite appropriate. She followed us around while we were doing chores, went with us almost everywhere, and just was an amicable, inseparable little fixture in our daily lives.
All that came to an end with the front left tire of our loader tractor one late fall afternoon during chore time. I was carrying a pail of grain from the granary diagonally across the yard to the feed bunk. Dad was on our 434 carrying a round bale into the barnyard. The Little Guy was used to tractors and trucks and always respectfully maintained her safe distance. And we always kept a careful eye on her regardless because she wanted to be with us so much. She must have seen a mouse across the driveway in the fenceline beside the barnyard. She must have. Uncharacteristically, she just darted across in front of the tractor as Dad was going by with the bale. He didn't even have a chance to hit the clutch and brakes and it was all over. Our little companion's precious Life was instantly crushed out of her, and our hearts were crushed out of us. Dad tried to blame himself but I wouldn't let him because I saw it happen. He had no chance to stop. She ran right under the tire herself. A beautiful, perfectly routine day with the three of us happily and contentedly doing chores together changed in an instant, and the memory of it still crushes my spirit to this day when I recall it. We gave her the best life we could, but a cruel twist of fate tore her away from us in a horrifying instant, burned into both of our minds, each from our individual perspectives. We both saw her die, but from two different vantage points. Fully alive one second. Completely dead the next. And there wasn't a darn thing we could do about it.
Jeepers I'm all choked up and misty-eyed again and it's 35 friggin' years later. Crap...
That kind of thing just doesn't leave you. Sharon calls me a man's man, but I have one heck of a soft heart that I wear on my sleeve.
You never get used to death. You never do. Even as a farmer, born into it as a way of life. God put a value and love of life in our hearts, and that's what makes death so foreign a concept. We weren't originally destined to die, but Adam and Eve messed that all up for all of us and we have been living under death's curse ever since. But before we go holding them so accountable for our mortal state, we would have messed it up just as badly as they did so we can't get all high and mighty ourselves about it.
Dad accidentally killed three cats in his lifetime and just hated himself and held himself guilty for every one of them. The first one was years before I was born. He had two really nice orange tabby male kittens. In those days there was no running water at the Bowes Farm log house. All the water had to be brought in from the pumphouse at the back of the woodshed. Dad went out to get a pail of water, and, as he was stepping back down out of the high pumphouse floor onto the big flat rock that was the doorstep, the one kitten ran under his foot. In the dark, he stepped right on its head and killed it instantly.
Because it was so long before my time I never would have known about it but for the guilty state Dad held himself in even though the event was so long past. I believe it helped him hold himself more guilty by telling me. We don't tend to forgive ourselves for such things even if they were beyond our control. I know exactly how it can happen, so I wouldn't hold it against him even if it happened in my time and before my own eyes. He'd never intentionally kill anything without reason, least of all a pet.
The second time in his life was when I was 4 or maybe 5. We had two really handsome black and white adolescent tomcats. One cold winter night after chores and supper, Dad was going to Ferguson's General Store to get something we were out of or low on. He got into our 1956 Meteor, and was pulling the door closed just when one of the big kittens tried to jump in with him. Those kittens never rode in the car so that was a completely unexpected thing for it to do. He was crushed between the heavy door and the door jamb and died within minutes. And, of course, Dad blamed himself. Even at that age, I was old enough and had seen enough to know if it happened, it was an accident, but it sure was hard to watch him breathe his last on the newspaper soaked with his blood on our kitchen floor.
The other one died in the spring killing a muskrat in the ditch in front of our house. He dutifully dragged it in up beside the house, and, severely torn up himself from the fight, collapsed and died beside it. That's where I found him when I went out in the morning. His black fur was warm from the morning sun, but his white fur was ice cold. He gave it his all, but it was all too much for him.
Life is fragile and because of that fragility it is precious. Priceless. Irreplaceable. No one knows more than the farmer how it can end so suddenly; even instantly, and death can so unwelcomely and irreversibly take its place. And leave us so devastated in its wake.
I remember other good Queens Line folk losing their pets in terrible accidents. Our road was a speedway. There was no margin for error. We all tried our best to train our pets to respect it.
Cory and Bill lost their lovely brown collie, Belle, at the end of our driveway. They were going home on their bikes and Belle ran out in front of a car. Those were big cars with steel bumpers in those days and it was over in a horrifying flash and a sickening thud. Beautiful Belle likely never knew what hit her. But we did. It was a terrible day.
Tabbert's had a boisterous little Scottish terrier simply and aptly named Scotty. He was totally a Tabbert dog; guts and energy and enthusiasm and fearlessness. He was everywhere with them and did everything with them. He wouldn't allow himself to be left out of anything. His huge little life came to an terrible end on our beloved but pet-deadly Queens Line one perfect summer hay day afternoon. Danny was coming home from their other farm with their David Brown and a hay wagon. Scotty was riding on the wagon, likely covering every square foot in his non-stop surveying for everything and anything. They had to stop to wait for a car to pass before turning left into their driveway. Scotty, being all on, all the time, didn't want to wait, and jumped off the wagon, right into the path of the passing car. We all had to say an extremely reluctant goodbye to an absolutely unforgettable little character that tragic day.
Life on the farm can be difficult at the best of times. It can be downright soul-rending at others. Farm kids are valued in the workforce because they have work ethic, strength, and stamina, and are naturally already tempered to the realities of life. Just because we are physically and mentally tough doesn't mean our hearts are as well. It just means we have seen much more of the finite form that life takes than the average person. And we have learned to go on, because Life must go on.
I do not believe in the 'Rainbow Bridge' as my chosen depiction because it is not Biblical. I put it there because it is a beautiful sentiment. I do fervently believe in a Heavenly Father and His realm where all is bountiful and for His glory and His Children's eternal happiness. Because of that, I believe that we will see our beloved pets again in Heaven. God knows the desires of our hearts. Psalm 38:9 says, Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee.
He knows. He knows. 1 Corinthians 2:9 provides one of the most revealing views of the absolute and incredible glory of Heaven I believe there is in the entire Bible: But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
Wow. Just wow. Has it entered your heart that you want to your beloved pet restored to you in Heaven, Child of God? I think that verse makes it very plain that God knows you and loves you and wants the absolute Very Best for you, and I believe that means the pure desires of your heart. I consider wanting one of God's Creations; His creatures, crafted by Him, with the Breath of Life provided by Him and Him alone, returned to you, is a pure desire. Quite possibly someone you love is caring for your beloved pet or pets right this very moment, and they are likely all very eagerly awaiting your arrival to be reunited, forevermore. Take heart in that.
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