Trusting Refuge

"When they're both blind, they rely on other senses. They rely on touch, they rely on breathing, they rely on their hearing. They really, really need companionship."

"It was a really good thing for both of them because they're really happy. It gave Sweety a whole new life. It's amazing because we were laughed at in the beginning, with people saying, 'Who is going to save a blind cow?'"

In this image Feb. 5, 2014 provided by Farm Sanctuary shelter, blind cows Tricia, left, and Sweety get acquainted at the shelter in Watkins Glen, N.Y. After the shelter tried to find ways to help Tricia, 12, and blind since birth, a Canadian animal welfare group sent Sweety, 8, via special transport. She arrived on Feb. 4, and they have become best female friends, playing in the grass, eating in the barn and grooming one another. (AP Photo/Farm Sanctuary)

"We said, 'Well, we can help her. They kind of all laughed. She was a very skinny cow, a very old cow, a cow with an abscess in her foot. They couldn't imagine why we would even want to help her."
Rose Gergely, RR Horse Refuge, Alexandria, Ontario

RR Horse Refuge, owned and operated by Rose Gergely, is located about 100 kilometres from Ottawa, in Alexandria, Ontario. The charitable organization gives shelter to abandoned, homeless animals, and tries to find permanent homes for them. The facility houses at present about three hundred animals. But as far as Rose Gergely was concerned, they had room for a few more.

She had come across a dairy farm that was preparing to send one of its cows for slaughter. She rescued that cow, toward the end of 2013. Then she discovered at the very same farm, another cow, this one blind, the mother actually of the one she had already rescued. And this old, blind cow, that had never left the confines of the barn, was to be slaughtered the following week.

Ms. Gergely negotiated with the farmer, and tried to find a home for the blind cow, whose name is Sweety. But there did not appear to be any sanctuary in Canada that she could find, with room for a blind cow. Her dilemma and the plight of the elderly blind cow somehow came to the attention of the Farm Sanctuary, located 560 kilometres away in New York State.

At the New York Farm Sanctuary charity there was a ready and needy companion for Sweety, a cow named Tricia who had herself been blind from birth. Tricia is 12 years old, compared to Sweety's eight years, and Tricia had lost her companion, it died of cancer a year earlier. A match made in cow heaven, surely.

"It was exciting to think that by giving Sweety a new life we might also give Tricia another chance to enjoy her own", Susie Coston, national shelter director for the sanctuary explained. And then the practical problem to complete the solution to two lonely old blind cows' companionship; how to move Sweety from a small town in Ontario to her new home in New York state?

Sweety was given a veterinarian check-up for her dismal physical condition; skinny, boney, looking anything but healthy. A veterinarian in Lachute, Quebec was  helpful, and then arrangements were made with customs to enable Sweetie's entry into the United States. On February 4, Sweety was delivered to her new home, and to a new life of companionship with Tricia.

For the time being Sweety was clothed with a coat to compensate for her lack of thick fur, inadequate to shield her from the cold, since she had always been kept indoors throughout her life in Ontario. The first night they were each held in separate corrals, but it seemed they were aware of one another, and made sounds indicating that they were.

In this image Feb. 5, 2014 provided by Farm Sanctuary shelter, blind cows Tricia, left, and Sweety get acquainted at the shelter in Watkins Glen, N.Y. After the shelter tried to find ways to help Tricia, 12, and blind since birth, a Canadian animal welfare group sent Sweety, 8, via special transport. She arrived on Feb. 4, and they have become best female friends, playing in the grass, eating in the barn and grooming one another. (AP Photo/Farm Sanctuary)

 

The following day they met nose to nose. Sweety is tall and bony, a white triangular patch on her forehead. She bumped into Tricia, shorter, thicker, with black-and-white swirls on her pelt. They sniffed, and they nuzzled each the other. Tricia is helping Sweety to negotiate her way around her new physical environment, to avoid obstacles.

At last report they eat together, amble side by side, and sleep beside one another. Home at last.