pet connection

Zuzu’s Petals, or Zuzu, is my sister’s new horse. Zuzu arrived a few weeks ago and has been joined the other animals –  two horses, two burros, two sheep, several chickens and ducks and three cats –  at her 35-acre hobby farm. My sister is ecstatic. Laura’s beloved horse Lucy died last summer in a freak accident during a particularly bad summer when she lost three pets withinthree weeks; she also lost a cat and a sheep, but the loss of her horse was the deepest cut. A few months later both of their beloved geriatric dogs were also gone. It’s a sad fact of mathematics that the more pets you have, the more losses you’re going to endure.

Lucy is buried on their land, next to both of their dogs. My pets are buried in a different place on their land. David told me that one day when Roy and Murphy were near Lucy’s grave, which they had not seen prepared, they hovered over it for 20 minutes. The thought of it made me chill on a hot and humid day.

Zuzu is a lovely girl,  sweet as can be. I fed her a couple of carrots, and she nuzzled her head into me, a complete stranger. The boys, Murphy and Roy, can be snotty around girls, so the day I met Zuzu she and Marley the burro were in the big pasture by themselves. That way the girls could just hang out without being bothered by the boys. (The veterinarian who comes out to treat their large animals says Sweet Pea, the male burro, is misnamed and thinks they should change it to Napoleon.) I loved watching Laura love up Zuzu while wearing the Life is Good t-shirt I got her for her birthday. (I love the optimistic message this company promotes; they have lots of dog graphics too, and some cats, and one of these days I’m going to get myself this one).

Laura and David are hard workers –  those are the only kind of people who can live with horses rather than stable them –  and taking care of the barn’s residents keeps them in shape. Farm fresh eggs are incredible and a far cry from what I bring home from the grocery store. Their home was designed around the horses,  and you can see the barn and part of the pasture from their living room windows and porch. At their last place, they had to walk down a path to get to the horses, and you couldn’t see them from the house, so when they moved to a bigger yet less expensive place farther out in the country, they set it up perfectly. It’s like an animal commune.
Zuzu makes my sister happy, and just as importantly, my sister makes Zuzu happy.  Life is good!

(top: Laura with Zuzu, Marley in the background; below, the view from their back porch)