Text: Sal­la Pät­si

Trans­la­ti­on: Sirk­ka-Lii­sa Lei­no­nen

I am sit­ting in the sheep barn, ad­mi­ring the gra­ce­ful skip­ping and boun­cing of our lit­t­le lambs. They are on­ly a few days old, but they al­re­a­dy fol­low their dams out­si­de and run in and out of the barn as if pla­ying tag. They will have friends to play with, be­cau­se 20 of the lambs born this ye­ar are still ali­ve.

One thing that is im­por­tant to me in my work with do­mes­tic ani­mals is the pos­si­bi­li­ty to share my ex­pe­rien­ces with ot­her pe­op­le. For ins­tan­ce, I have been ab­le to share the mi­rac­le of birth with se­ve­ral pe­op­le! I feel I am sha­ring things that are sig­ni­fi­cant to me.

Sin­ce we need to drop in to the sheep barn more of­ten du­ring the lam­bing se­a­son than nor­mal­ly, there have al­so been more si­tu­a­ti­ons to share. Ma­y­be te­ac­hers or pa­ra­me­dics have got some conc­re­te ex­pe­rien­ces that will be use­ful to them in real life, such as ma­na­ging an am­bu­lan­ce de­li­ve­ry. I al­so en­jo­yed my dis­cus­si­on with my ve­gan god­daugh­ter while wit­nes­sing the birth of trip­let lambs. We tal­ked about the eco­lo­gi­cal clot­hes that we will make of our sheep’s wool. And sheep do not suf­fer when they are she­a­red. They suf­fer if they are not she­a­red!

In ad­di­ti­on to births, we oc­ca­si­o­nal­ly al­so wit­ness de­aths of do­mes­tic ani­mals. And I mean de­aths ot­her than slaugh­te­ring. We have had sheep for eight ye­ars, but I re­cent­ly ex­pe­rien­ced my first stil­l­birth when I hel­ped a ewe give birth to three dead lambs. My hus­band and anot­her sheep far­mer were pre­sent to sup­port me, so I ma­na­ged. But when I went in­to the hou­se to get my phone and call the vet, I thought I would give away all the ani­mals to avoid hards­hips like that!

When I had got the dead lambs out, I cried. Part­ly for the poor dead lambs, part­ly for the pain the dam had gone through, but part­ly al­so be­cau­se I was proud of my­self. I had been ab­le to do what had to be done! I con­so­led my­self with the thought that pe­op­le, and even un­born ba­bies, may al­so die alt­hough there are pro­fes­si­o­nal pe­op­le hel­ping them.

The fol­lo­wing eve­ning I got a mes­sa­ge about the unex­pec­ted de­ath of an ac­qu­ain­tan­ce. It jol­ted my thoughts in­to their pro­per tracks. I for­got about the wars and ot­her wor­ries of this world. Life is here right now.