This is a copy of the article I submitted yesterday for the column I write for the local newspaper. There’s an update after the article. (Photo by David Lewinski for Hour Magazine.)
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Mabel doesn’t get around as well as she used to. Her pace has slowed. She’s unsteady on her feet. She has fallen more in the past month than she probably has in her entire life. She spends quiet days sleeping, but when visitors come, she feels obligated to accompany them around the sanctuary, and by the end of those days, she is often too exhausted to make it up the hill to her bedroom, and she has to be carried. Luckily, Mabel isn’t one of the sanctuary’s resident cows or pigs. She’s a 45-pound Labrador mix, and like so many others before her, she is aging right before our eyes.
Mabel was dropped off in front of the farm one night back before SASHA Farm was even officially a non-profit sanctuary. Already an adult at the time, she was hit by a car and was lucky to live through the traumatic injuries she sustained to her hips. It should probably come as no surprise that now, eight years later, her hind quarters are where she feels her age the most. Arthritis medications help the pain, but no pill can do what we’d most like it to, to turn back time, even only as far last summer, and give her just a few more good months to run with the other dogs, to keep the younger ones in line, to cheerfully announce every car load of visitors that pull into the driveway, to give her noisy opinion to anyone who will listen about all goes on around the sanctuary. I remember once, a journalist came out to record some turkey calls for part of a piece Michigan Radio’s Senior Political Analyst, Jack Lessenberry, was doing about the sanctuary. The journalist asked who the scrappy old black dog was who was standing at fence barking authoritatively, thoroughly convinced of the importance of whatever she was saying. Dorothy Davies, our director, answered affectionately, “That’s Mabel. She’s our Senior Political Analyst.” I’ve always thought that job description captured her personality perfectly.
Like most sanctuaries, we always have a large population of aged animals. The saddest, in my opinion, are the huge pigs and broiler-type chickens who’ve endured genetic tinkering from the food industry, and begin to display age-related disease almost immediately upon reaching adulthood. Skeletal and cardiac problems nearly always cut their lives short. We lost a broiler-type hen this past weekend to congestive heart failure at the ripe old age of four months. Her siblings will be lucky to see six months, and this is not an unusually short life span for these poor birds. Some were displaying the age-related skeletal problems at three months old that Mabel is showing at around fourteen years old.
Mabel will visit her vet again tomorrow, where will we once again hope that her latest symptoms are caused by something we can cure with a pill or a new diet, and not just the inevitable effects of aging. She’s had good long life here, but she’s not ready for it to end, and neither are we.
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Mabel’s vet visit today didn’t give us the hope we were looking for. Her vet has given her less than two weeks with us.
Published by Amanda on June 3rd, 2008 | Filed under Around the Farm
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:54 pm
give mabel a big hug for me.
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:09 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
When I said goodbye to her last Saturday I had the awful feeling it might be for the last time. I hope the end is as comfortable as it can be for her. I’m really going to miss her… Please give her a hug and a kiss for me.
June 4th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I heard Mabel was growing more unsteady on her feet, so yesterday I spent extra time petting her and looking into her beautiful brown eyes. She is such a good girl.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
When I met her last fall, I wished I could take her home. But I realized she was home.
June 5th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
That is one of the best photographs I’ve ever seen. It’s absolutely stunning.
I’ll see you on Sunday, Mabel. Don’t you even *think* about going anywhere until I (& the rest of the folks coming for the walk-a-thon) get to visit and give you hugs. =( We’ll all miss you terribly…
June 5th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
She’s just so beautiful…
I can’t stop staring at that photo.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Mabel had a really great night tonight. Abigail (her favorite little 7-year old Thursday night volunteer) gave her so many hugs and hand-fed her homemade treats in the kitchen. She followed us around the farm all night. She cuddled in her pile of blankets at bedtime with some treats and I knew she was going to sleep soundly tonight.