Saving Simon

by Jon Katz

  It is never a wise thing to step between two large animals in conflict, but I didn’t really think about it. The sight of Rocky, stunned, lying next to the fence, struggling to get his footing, was too much for me.

  Screaming “Simon, Simon, stop!” I got in front of him before he got to Rocky again. Simon always pays attention to me, and I could not quite believe what I was seeing.

  Simon stopped, looked at me, and backed up. I charged at him, shouting and flailing my arms. He turned and ran back to Lulu and Fanny, both standing about fifty yards back watching. He seemed shocked that I had yelled at him.

  “I’m sorry, Rocky,” I said, leaning down over the pony as he struggled to get up. Rocky got to his feet, and, panicked, turned and ran back down the pasture out to his corner of the field near the outer fence. I looked up and saw that Simon had circled around and was starting to pursue him there. I got in front of Simon and waved my arms again and drove him back.

  Didn’t Simon see that Rocky was old? Helpless? Blind? That he was no threat?

  This was Rocky’s home, after all. Simon was the interloper. Didn’t Simon understand? My whole notion of him collapsed right there in the pasture. He was no longer the gentle Platero, walking with me on the path, musing about life. He was something very different.

  Maria heard the shouting and came running into the pasture. I told her what had happened.

  “Why?” she asked. “Why did Simon do that?”

  I had no idea, I said. His aggression seemed to come out of the blue. We were completely unprepared for it.

  It took us an hour to get the shocked and rattled pony out of the pasture. First I got the donkeys into the sheep pasture on the other side of the farmhouse and locked them in. Then we sent Red out to sit in front of Rocky and guide him back in. Red’s presence seemed to settle Rocky. He grew calm enough that we could get close to him. We saw some bite marks on his back and hindquarters, but no blood. He seemed to be walking steadily enough.

  I kept hearing the sound of him crashing into the fence—it was now bent back several feet—and the popping sound of his body hitting the wire. The fence on the farm hadn’t been charged for years during Florence’s time, so this was probably the first time Rocky felt a shock. Between Simon crashing into him and biting him, and him falling into the wire, I could only imagine how traumatized he was.

  We got Rocky back into his stall and let the donkeys back into the main pasture. Simon and the girls came right up to the stall and stood there, only this time I saw a different look on Simon’s face. His ears were up, his eyes were wide, and he was snorting.

  Ever since I adopted Simon, a rosy glow had surrounded my notions of animals. Rebirth and resurrection are powerful ideas, and I think animals make it possible to experience both time after time. And, of course, I was a hero. Everywhere I went, people thanked me for saving Simon, for taking him in, for giving the story of his rescue such a happy ending. And among animal people, happy endings are precious, much loved, valued, and shared.

  But one thing more powerful than our love of animals is our love of self, and there is no story more gripping or enduring than the ones we like to tell about ourselves.

  Simon had, in some ways, and from the first, stopped being a donkey and became a material manifestation of what I needed him to be: Platero, walking gently with me through life, a sweet, grateful, devoted creature, a lover of children, of work, of me.

  It’s amazing how the mind works, how you see and hear what you want to see and hear until something shocks you into seeing what you need to see. I called some friends, went online, and pulled some books on horses and donkeys off of the shelf.

  This time, everything I saw pointed in a different direction and suggested a different outcome—a different ending that was not happy. Yes, sometimes it works out to introduce a new equine to a herd, but sometimes there is a tough period of acclimation. It is common for donkeys and horses to bite and kick newcomers. It is also quite common for a herd to reject an outsider, especially if he or she is injured or aged. In the wild, these newcomers would draw predators in and endanger the herd. The flock leaders would commonly attack and drive off a weak intruder to protect the herd. In addition, a male is much more likely to drive off a male intruder, even if he is healthy, as it threatens his dominance of the herd.

  I was shocked reading this. It was precisely the opposite of what we had been hearing. Why hadn’t I found it before? But it also made perfect sense. I called back all of the people whose advice I had sought, the ones who had said my donkeys and Rocky would work it out.

  “Oh,” said one when I described Simon’s assault on Rocky. “It will never work out. Simon is protecting his herd, his women. He’ll never accept a blind old pony.”

  Another said sadly over the phone. “Can you find another home for Simon? That’s the only way it can work. You can’t move a blind old pony, and the donkeys will never accept him.”

  I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. The same people who had been so confident about things working out were now telling me it would never work out.

  I called a large-animal vet I knew and trusted, one who was experienced treating equines. “I’ll be honest with you,” she said. “Simon is doing his job. He is protecting his herd. He will not submit to a weak old male horse being around the females he is protecting. Rocky is old, tired. This is too much stress for him. He should not be subjected to another winter.”

  I asked the vet if she was saying I ought to euthanize Rocky.

  “If he were mine, I would,” she said. “I wouldn’t subject him to another winter.” Her words hit me like a bomb. My first thought, honestly, was of Maria. She had come to love Rocky dearly, he was her little pony.

  So, I was confronted with compassion again, that word, that idea. Compassion for Rocky, who had endured so much on his own, who had found so much again—Red, Maria, me, fresh grain, good hay, shelter from the rain, company, and purpose.

  Compassion for Simon, who was protecting his herd, doing his job, driving off the danger.

  Compassion for Maria, who loved her pony dearly, who had waited a long time to open herself up to the love of animals, and who was transformed every morning when she stood in the pasture brushing this pony, handing him slices of apples, who saw that Rocky was only too happy to accept the love of a human being again.

  But what was compassion here, really? Was it keeping Rocky in this suddenly dangerous and difficult life? Or was it letting go? In the animal rescue world in our time, compassion is almost uniformly defined as keeping animals alive, at all costs, by any means.

  Compassion on a farm, with real animals, is often very different. There is no such thing as a no-kill farm. I had learned the hard way that compassion sometimes means letting go, not hanging on. And there are no real guidelines to follow but your heart.

  While we tried to figure out what to do, we followed a course of watchful waiting, again keeping an eye on Rocky and the donkeys as they grazed. One afternoon, when the donkeys were grazing in one corner of the pasture and Rocky in another, I went into the house to get something to drink.

  As I was coming out, Ben, our handyman who was working to repair the barn, called out that he had just seen Simon charge Rocky and drive him into the fence. Rocky was standing in a muddy part of the pasture that was filled with spring rain, a place he had run to get away from Simon. From some yards away I could see the bite marks on his back and saw Rocky trembling.

  It is difficult, still, to describe what I felt for that poor old pony, living on his own, finding his own paths, his own secret garden, his life suddenly invaded by new people bringing new animals, and his peaceful gambol shattered by being attacked, bitten, and driven into fence posts and electrical wires. If any creature was entitled to some peace and quiet, some stability and security, it was Rocky.

  I was furious. I felt nothing but rage for Simon, and I rushed out into the pasture and saw him charging toward Rocky again. I ran as quickly as I could and interce
pted him, swinging my hand out and slapping him hard on the side of his face.

  I yelled at him, “Simon, what’s the matter with you? After what you’ve been through, you would do this to him? How could you?”

  I’m not sure who was more astonished at this, Simon or me. He screeched to a halt, his ears straight up, and he looked at me as if I had just fallen out of the sky, as if he did not know who I was, as if he could not believe it was me.

  I felt just awful. My face flushed with shame, anger, and regret.

  I had slapped him to stop him from slamming into Rocky again, but I had also struck him out of rage. It came from deep inside of me, from my darkest places.

  Simon froze and just stood staring at me. I was horrified. I rushed over to him and hugged him and kissed him on the nose. I rubbed the spot where I had struck him. How quickly my own convictions about mercy and compassion had collapsed in a fury because Simon had behaved like a donkey instead of a human being, instead of me.

  Rocky had vanished. Sensing Simon’s approach, he must have turned around and trotted back for the safety of his watery marsh. The fence post was bent from his collision with it. He seemed to think he would be safe standing in the water, about five or six inches high. He seemed to know that the donkeys would not pursue him there.

  I stood rubbing Simon’s ears, talking to him. I have rarely felt so bad about my life with animals as I did at that moment, having struck Simon and seen Rocky nearly attacked.

  A farmer I knew who lived near Bedlam Farm came by one day to ask me for a copy of a book I had written—Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die—because he had just lost his border collie. I knew how much he had loved that dog. He lived to be fourteen years old and was with the farmer every minute of every day, riding in the tractor, in his pickup, chasing his cows all over the field.

  “How did he die?” I asked him.

  “Oh,” he said, “I shot him.”

  I blinked, and then asked why.

  “Well, he was getting sicker by the day, and he couldn’t get around much anymore and I could see he was in a lot of pain.”

  But, I said, curious, why shoot him? Why not take him to the vet?

  “I wanted to be humane,” he said. “It was better for me to kill him with one shot than for him to die on the floor of some vet’s office.”

  Knowing how much this man loved his dog, I saw mercy in a completely different way. I remember thinking, this is pure compassion, direct and unfiltered. He was thinking of nothing but his dog.

  The real world of real animals was not what many people wanted to see, perhaps myself included. This was another lesson that Simon had taught me. Real compassion is not easy—not as simple as loving a cute animal in need of a home. Real compassion, I came to see, involved empathy—the ability to set aside my own definition of goodness and put myself in the head of another living thing, in this case a donkey. Mercy often takes the form of self-righteousness in our world—you are bad because you didn’t do what I would do; you are evil because you chose to end a life rather than preserve it at all costs.

  Mercy and compassion involve self-respect. Both ask us to look in the mirror and be comfortable with our decisions, not ask others what they think of our decisions. It is this idea, I think, that so often gets lost in the swirl of judgment and anger that shroud the very ideals of humanity.

  That awful day when Rocky was attacked again, I walked over to Simon and handed him a cookie. I kissed him on the nose again and apologized, once again, for slugging him. “Thanks,” I said, “for being a donkey. I’m slow to understand, but I’m getting there.”

  I called our vet about Simon’s latest attack on Rocky, and I told her that I didn’t think it was going to change, it wasn’t going to end, they weren’t going to work it out. Simon’s protective instincts were very powerful and they weren’t going to go away just because I demanded it or wanted it. I could see it in Simon’s eyes, in the way he looked at Rocky, in his body language; I could sense it in him, just as he sensed things in me.

  I described the attacks in detail. I also talked about my concerns for Rocky. He was clearly affected by the presence of the donkeys and the attacks. He was tense, sticking to the far corners of the pasture, staying out as long as he could. Winter was approaching. He was losing weight, getting frail.

  “I have the feeling,” I told the vet, “that the most merciful thing to do would be to put Rocky down. This all seems to be unraveling him. I have the feeling that this is his time. Florence is gone; other animals are here. Rocky seems spent to me.”

  She was quiet for a minute or two, and then said: “Jon, Simon will not accept this pony. He is a clear danger to the herd in his eyes. Simon is just doing his job. You have to do yours. It’s your decision.”

  The next morning, we got up earlier than usual, went out to the barn, put the donkeys out in the sheep pasture. We brought Rocky out to the pole barn. I stood silently while Maria brushed him, talked to him, sang to him. He leaned into her, almost gratefully.

  Red came and lay down in front of him, waiting to guide him out into the pasture. Maria and I talked of the day when Rocky had taken us out for a walk in his secret garden, seemingly happy for the company, proud to show us around.

  The vet came early, as she promised. Maria said her good-byes to Rocky, told him she knew he was ready to go. I patted the old pony and said, “Thank you, Rocky, I know you are going to a better place, perhaps to meet Florence there.” Rocky was given one injection in the neck. He fell instantly to the ground and was dead by the time the vet kneeled to put a stethoscope over his heart. Red came over and sniffed the body, then lay down next to it, looking out at the pasture.

  The donkeys, normally so curious, were not curious about this. Out of sight, out of mind.

  As the vet gathered her things to leave, she turned to me and said, “Thank you for being merciful to him.” And it was over. Maria and I stood and held hands for a while. She said she didn’t want to be there when the haulers came to take the body away.

  Red and I waited for them. They came quickly.

  Rocky was gone; my triad was dissolved. I had learned a few more things about Simon, and about mercy and compassion.

  I walked over to the sheep pasture and let Simon and the donkeys out. To the best of my knowledge, Simon did not see what had happened. Yet he didn’t even look at Rocky’s stall or the pole barn where he had been glaring at the pony for days.

  He seemed smaller, gentler. His ears were up; he moved more slowly and seemed at ease. He came right over to me and put his nose in my stomach, which is what he did when he wanted some attention.

  “I’m sorry, Simon,” I said. “You were just doing your job. You were just being your own kind of hero.”

  NINETEEN

  Afterward

  Rocky’s death hit us hard, but a farm does not pause much for grieving and reflection. The animals have to be fed and watered, fences fixed, dogs walked. We have lost dogs, chickens, sheep, cows, and donkeys in our time on farms. You do get used to it.

  On a farm, death and life are not separate things, but each a continuation of the same thing. Still, Rocky had become important to us. He had, in his short time with us, played a huge role in our lives, and we had come to love caring for him. He was such a gracious and enduring creature.

  Just as suddenly as Simon had changed into an aggressive and violent animal that we barely knew, he reverted to form and became my Platero again. Animals, I was reminded once more, are never good or bad; they just are what they are. We emotionalize them so much that it is easy to forget this elemental truth.

  We missed Rocky—Maria went to his stall every morning and teared up—but to the other animals, the dogs and cats and chickens and donkeys, it was as if he had never been there. Simon didn’t so much as glance at Rocky’s stall.

  Once again, he came up to Maria and me whenever we entered the pasture. He waited to be brushed, scratched, kissed on the nose. His posture changed—he was not as stiff and
vigilant, he did not grab his carrots so aggressively, his ears were not always straight up. Whatever threat or danger he perceived from the old pony was gone. It took me longer to recover, I have to say.

  It was difficult, for a while, to look at the old worn paths Rocky had made out to the pasture and back to his secret garden. We still expected to hear him whinny when we came into the barn each morning. We closed it off and didn’t let the donkeys or the sheep in there.

  One consequence of our time with Rocky was that Maria started taking horseback riding lessons. We have acres of woods and trails behind the farmhouse, and I like to think someday she’ll have her little pony back, in one way or another.

  On some subconscious level, I knew I had felt betrayed. Simon had not only challenged my own notions of him, but he had led us into killing an animal we loved very much. For a few weeks, it was difficult to look at Simon without thinking of that. He didn’t mind. He was patient with us.

  Time is a great healer, and the rhythms of the farm took over and smoothed things over. The ripples quieted, the tension melted away, our peaceable kingdom returned. We had a lot of animals to take care of, a lot of things to maintain and repair, lots of hay to haul around the barn. In my time owning farms I have learned to respect death. It will come to all of us, no matter how much we fear it and hide from it.

  I started reading Platero and I to Simon again, and we even took a short walk in the woods behind the farmhouse pasture. Simon seemed to light up when he saw me with the bridle. He needed no prodding to resume our adventures; he held no grudges or bad memories.

  Reading the book to him, I saw that I had come to the end, the poignant chapters on Platero’s death, and I was struck by how similar the images and feelings were to Simon’s first days with me at Bedlam Farm, when he was so near death himself.