Last week we lost two beloved old friends, Gracie and Maureen. At the impressive age of 14, Gracie was the longest-lived sheep I’ve ever had (tied with 14-year-old Celeste the Romney, who now holds that title alone). Gracie was special from nearly the beginning. She was born when my dairy flock was at its largest in 2012, about 80-100 ewes, and nearly 200 lambs. Gracie was not a bottle lamb–her mother raised her and her twin sister without any assistance. But despite not having any special human attention when she was young, as a young ewe, Gracie distinguished herself because she clearly loved people. When I took guests out to see the flock of lambs, Gracie always came out of the flock and approached us, happy for some attention and maybe a chin-scratch. She was one of those beautiful East Friesian ewes with a silky, glossy face, and lovely amber eyes. She became my pet from the beginning, and I’m not sure she ever worked in the milking parlor. I didn’t breed her as a lamb, and when I bred her the following year, she had a single, blue-eyed Frankie, and I let Frankie stay with her mother and transferred them both to the pet flock in my back yard where Gracie spent the rest of her 14 years with the other 3 or 4 ewes I keep as pets.
When I decided to put sheep bells on the pets, Gracie was our test-case. Lisa and I fastened the collar with the bell on Gracie, and she took off bucking like a bronco, while Lisa and I could not stop laughing.
In her later years, Gracie was plagued by squamous-cell carcinoma, common in fair-skinned dairy sheep. First she had a tumor on her udder, which Dr Dotti removed for us, and then one on the tip of her ear, so Dr Dotti trimmed that ear. The final one was on her eyelid, and Dr Dotti froze it several times but it kept growing back. At first it didn’t seem to bother Gracie, but in the past few months the lid started to grow in, obscuring that eye. Gracie was also getting stiff and arthritic, and sometimes couldn’t get up easily and might be stuck, or cast, for a period of time before we found her.
I remembered the words I told a good friend years ago when he was torn up about putting down his elderly cat: When we make pets of animals, we choose to extend their lives beyond their natural lifespan. And in doing that, we must accept the responsibility to decide when that animal is no longer enjoying that life and it is time to mercifully end it.
I’ve put down a lot of sheep on this ranch over the years; it is a part of being a rancher. And it is not so hard to get out the gun when it is an acute situation and the sheep is suffering acutely and needs something done NOW. The chronic cases are harder, and a sheep I love as much as Gracie makes it darn near impossible. I had Dr Kennicutt from Cotati Large Animal Hospital come out to euthanize Gracie, and we were all there with her when she went to sleep.
Gracie was preceded by a few days by Maureen, another special pet, not only to me, but to Carol Pasheilich, from Tawanda Farms. Maureen, (named by Maggie and Carol for the actress Maureen O’Hara), was one of the original Romneys I bought from Tawanda in 2019, to start my Romney flock. Carol confessed to me that Maureen had been her pet, and I honored that by always giving Maureen a little extra love, as I would want from anyone taking care of one of my special friends. Maureen gave us many beautiful Romney lambs, as well as one of my most popular lots of yarn (a beautiful luminescent pearly gray 2–ply: made from fleeces from Scout and Maureen). When I decided it was time for her to retire from breeding, I welcomed her into the pet flock and she got her bell. Those original Romneys had a wariness about them and it took a while for Maureen to warm up to being a pet, but eventually she was even eating corn out of my hand. Maureen was an old gal also, at 12. Her decline was sudden–I went out to the pet’s shelter intending to give Gracie a little love on one of her last days, and found Maureen, down and in a very bad way. It was an acute situation, she was suffering and I thought she might actually die, so I did the most humane and expedient thing and got the gun. Haven’t had to do that for a while, but I know Maureen would thank me. Keeping our favorite ewes into their teens means these things happen, and I’m glad I was there to relieve her misery, rather than just finding her dead. We will miss you, Maureen.
