Dogs Were Rescued (And So Was I)

by Teresa J. Rhyne

  We visited with the horses next. I bought a bag of carrots and found myself to be very popular with every horse and donkey as a result. My time in Sylmar had at least taught me the proper way to feed a horse without losing any fingers, and I’d also learned how horses, just like dogs, can have very distinct personalities. That was true of these horses as well. Some had been abused, not provided with proper shelter or food or water; some had been beaten, one was rescued from a backyard butcher (yes, butcher…of horses), and two were the babies of an unfortunate mare whose urine was used in the production of Premarin, a drug that women take in menopause and can only be made with the urine of a pregnant mare. The mare is prevented from moving and is hooked up to a catheter during her entire pregnancy. The babies are disposed of. These two, Lazar and his sister Zoe, were the lucky ones—saved and raised by The Gentle Barn. One of the donkeys, now happily taking carrots from all of us and gleefully lowering his head for a scratch behind his ears, had been beaten by his “owner” to near death. Donkeys freeze when frightened or in pain, and rather than understanding that behavior, the man had simply continued to beat Addison, this beautiful donkey now so friendly and full of personality.

  The volunteers soon herded the human crowd up a hill to what was referred to as the “upper barnyard” for a group discussion with Ellie. I was interested in this discussion, but did not feel the need to hurry up the hill and grab a front row seat. This was not a day for rushing; this was a day for learning and contemplating. Besides, wherever I sat I could surely see over the heads of the numerous children in attendance.

  When I got to the gathering area, I saw that the rush had been as much to grab a seat in the shade as it was to be front and center. I was content with a place in the sun.

  Ellie was younger than I had expected, probably in her late thirties, with long brown hair and a smiling, happy demeanor. Being around all of these animals would make me happy too, but as she welcomed us and told the story of founding The Gentle Barn, I realized there was a heartbreaking side to her work too. I imagine that for every story of an animal they save, there were countless stories of the animals they couldn’t save, the ones that didn’t make it out alive. And even the animals she’d saved, the ones we were seeing in their rehabilitated state, had such cruel beginnings. Was she always this happy? Probably not, but the fact that she could rally herself day after day to stay in the fight for these animals was impressive. I surely had something to learn here.

  Ellie told us her story—her lifetime love of animals, which she was not allowed to have as a child. She talked about respect for the animals and encouraged us all to get to know them, to see their personalities, their emotions, and the way they interact with us and each other. And she encouraged us to always respect the animals. I learned that The Gentle Barn works with inter-city kids, at-risk youth, children from group homes and mental health institutes, foster homes and schools, as Ellie said, “to teach them that even though we are all different on the outside, on the inside we are all the same and are deserving of the same rights, respects, and freedom.”

  The groups of these children were brought to The Gentle Barn to interact with the animals and learn from them. The success of the programs—the rehabilitation of the kids in conjunction with the animals—is no doubt part of what had caught the attention of Ellen DeGeneres and resulted in her featuring Ellie and The Gentle Barn on The Ellen Show in an episode that apparently everyone but me had seen. Ellie ended her talk with a gentle, but enthusiastic and persuasive, bid for all to consider a plant-based diet for their health and for the sake of the animals and our environment.

  Our group was then free to roam about the upper barnyard to visit with sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and even llamas. I wanted to do that too, but I also wanted to talk with Ellie. I had so many questions, and I’d precipitously decided she’d have the answers—all of them! Leela hung back with me. I put a donation in the jar for a colt, Worthy, who’d had surgery to fix a deformed leg, and I signed his “Get Well” card. Then, when the crowd cleared, I approached Ellie, and abruptly I was shy, awkward, and inarticulate. I was out of my league. She was so impressive and yet so humble, so…real.

  “Hi. Um, so I have questions,” I muttered, ever so eloquently.

  “Great! Let’s talk!”

  For all she knew I was a kook, or a stalker-fan, or about to argue with her, spout off how people need animal protein, how animals are put on this earth to serve us, how bacon is soooo delicious, or any of the ridiculous, insulting, and vaguely threatening comments I’d been hearing myself. But still she was completely open to a conversation.

  “I’m a breast cancer survivor, and I turned to a plant-based diet a little over a year ago—”

  “Good for you!”

  “Thank you. And I started reading up on it a lot, and I’m appalled by what we’ve done to animals, by how our food is produced.”

  She was still smiling. “I know.”

  Well, yes, of course she knew. She’d been rescuing the victims of our food production machine for a decade. So where was I going with this? I wanted to say, “How do you handle it all? Aren’t you having nightmares? Does your brain spasm too?” But my brain functioned well enough to decide not to sound immediately crazy. “I’m still learning a lot. That’s why I came here. Besides to visit with the animals. To talk to you.”

  She motioned to a picnic table. “Let’s talk. Have a seat.”

  She sat on one side and Leela and I on the other. Now was my chance—one-on-one with the leader of a tribe I thought I just might want to be a part of. If only I could be more articulate than, “So what’s the answer? What would become of cows and pigs and chickens, and all of them, if we just stopped eating them? Or using them? Don’t get me wrong, I think we should stop it all. Absolutely. I hate what I learned we’re doing to animals. But then I get stuck. We stop eating them, subjugating them, imprisoning them… Then what? Are cows and pigs just roaming freely? And chickens? Yikes! They seem so defenseless, so…bottom of the food chain.”

  To Ellie’s credit, she remained smiling and open. I’m sure all of her experience with schoolchildren asking (far more intelligent and articulate) questions came in handy.

  “Well, first, we wouldn’t have so many cows, pigs, and chickens. There are only millions and billions of them because they are mass-produced for slaughter, so if we stopped eating them, they’d stop force-impregnating them.”

  “And then it would only occur naturally. But still we’d have cows and pigs and chickens.”

  “Wouldn’t that be lovely? They could live like this.” She swept her arm out to encompass the upper barnyard, the mountain view, the Eden she’d created.

  “Like pets?” I actually liked the idea, and I hoped I sounded like that, but it was hard to picture.

  “Probably not like dogs in our houses.” She laughed.

  “No. Probably not quite like that,” I said, though I could recall once visiting a dog rescue that specialized in the giant breeds. The founders ran a rescue on their own ranch with a guesthouse—human-sized, a real house—that functioned as the “doghouse” for about fifteen Great Danes. They came and went, lounged on the couches, ate in the dining room and kitchen, and sunned themselves on the patio. (They did not use the human toilets; I know you are wondering this.) If the Great Danes could live in a house like that, I was sure the chickens and pigs could, if not the cows.

  “There’d be enough farm sanctuaries and caring people to handle the animals. And who’s to say they couldn’t live in the wild? They eat grass.”

  “Huh. It’s a beautiful vision.”

  “It is.”

  I was quiet, trying to recall any of the seemingly million questions I thought I had, but the truth was I liked just sitting in her vision, thinking about a world that worked like that—which is what she’d created on those six acres.

  “What about eggs?”

 
; “Eggs?”

  “Yes. Chickens lay eggs, regardless of human involvement.” Suddenly I was less sure of even this basic fact. “Right?”

  Her mildly amused tolerance and willingness to openly respond to whatever came out of my mouth continued. “Yep. That they do.”

  “So if the chickens are free…if they aren’t being subjected to any cruelty or manipulated in any way…not suffering…what’s wrong with eating eggs? You have chickens here. What happens to those eggs?”

  “Oh, I feed them to the dogs.”

  Ah! Her dogs are not vegan! Yes! Where was the sign-up sheet for this tribe? Is there a secret handshake? How do I join?

  “But you don’t eat them? Just on principle?”

  “I don’t eat them because I’ve seen too many laid and they gross me out!” She was laughing now.

  Oh, how I adore how down-to-earth and logical this woman is! And I felt free—free to eat the eggs laid by my mother’s chickens! My mother and her chickens are in Missouri, and I’m in California, but no matter—the possibility existed! Without guilt! I pressed on.

  “And milk? Some say a cow gives plenty of milk and can feed her baby and give us plenty of ‘excess’ milk for cheese and dairy products.” Okay, I still miss cheese a little…so I was hoping, against all that I knew. And Ellie knew too.

  “Well, first, they don’t do it that way. The mama cows are not allowed to give their milk to the babies, so that should tell you something. If there is enough milk for all, why strip the baby from its mama? And second, the cow is producing extreme amounts of milk because she’s been injected with hormones and chemicals and things that are in no way natural. And speaking of unnatural…”

  We discussed how the cows are impregnated, and now it would be Leela’s turn to have nightmares about bestiality and the “rape rack.”

  “Horrifying!” Leela said.

  “Isn’t it?” Ellie said.

  “From everything I’ve read, and had nightmares over, the dairy industry is among the most horrific.” I, like many vegetarians I know, was hoping this was not true, hoping she had something better to tell me.

  “Absolutely,” Ellie said. And now she lost her smile. “If someone held a gun to my head and said I had to eat either meat or dairy, I’d choose meat. We’d be a lot further along as a more compassionate society if we all gave up dairy. The dairy cows have it much, much worse than the meat cows.”

  Ellie walked Leela and me over to the upper barnyard gate. Most of our group, including my other friends, had spent the last half hour petting and visiting with the animals, and another group would soon be arriving. She asked the volunteer to let us in and allow us to stay however long we needed.

  “Thank you so much,” I said. And I hugged her. Voluntarily. I am normally not a hugger—not at all. But this woman deserved hugs. This woman radiated “huggable.” This woman might be the leader of my new tribe!

  I petted a pig. And then another. And another. And one very, very large black-and-white pig. I rested my head on a sleeping pig, and Leela took my photo. I’d frame it and have it on my desk at work if I thought that would be remotely acceptable (and I just might, anyway). The goats and sheep were friendly, moving their faces toward you for a pet or a treat, and the volunteers taught us how to pet a turkey (scratch up under their wings). The llamas were beautiful but distant. My dad had a llama at one time, many years ago when he had acreage up in the mountains, and I remember that llama, like these, was beautiful and regal…until she spit. So I kept my distance. A smaller pen was filled with hay and little “dog” houses, with smaller pigs sleeping in them. These pigs had been rescued from petting zoos, breeders, and, in one case, a well-meaning but ignorant woman who had raised a piglet with such an iron-deficient diet that the poor piggy went blind. Sidney was now healthy and happy, and though still blind, he managed to get around well enough to get his share of pets and scratches and return to his piggy-house shelter when he’d had enough or needed his beauty rest.

  If we had not made plans to visit Farm Sanctuary down the road, and if Michelle, her sister, and her sister’s kids, had not been waiting for us in the lower barnyard and picnic area for lunch, I’d probably still be there petting pigs and soaking up the serenity. This was peace of mind.

  We made our way back down the hill to enjoy our vegan pizzas amid the peacocks and shade trees before heading over to Farm Sanctuary.

  • • •

  Animal Acres is the name given to the Farm Sanctuary just outside of Los Angeles. The original Farm Sanctuary is in Watkins Glen, New York, and there’s another in Northern California, so I suppose to distinguish them, this one has been dubbed “Animal Acres.” And it’s fitting because there are, as you’d expect, acres of animals. The facility is more manicured and orderly looking than The Gentle Barn. I think “ranch” instead of “farm”…but maybe that’s because there are buildings that look like homes…homes for ranch hands or something of the sort. And there’s a long one-story building with a breezeway all along the front that looks very much like the ranch-style homes I’d seen so much of in Sylmar.

  The system for visiting the animals is slightly different here than it was at The Gentle Barn. At Animal Acres, visitors can roam about on their own or take a guided tour. I’d noticed on the website that while all ages were welcome, the guided tours were limited to persons over the age of twelve, which I’d found interesting and of some concern because Michelle’s niece and nephew were exceedingly smart and well-behaved, but not yet twelve.

  We arrived fifteen minutes before the next guided tour would start, so we roamed about, petting the chickens, ducks, and turkeys that greeted us in the front lawn area. The birds had small kiddie swimming pools, fountains, and plenty of space. They seemed not in the least bit disturbed to have humans wandering about, and many of them came right up to us. Since we’d already been taught how to pet a turkey and a chicken, we obliged their requests. One turkey, Minerva, was particularly friendly and began to follow Michelle about. And in case you are wondering, a turkey waddling after a suddenly beloved human is endlessly amusing.

  Once the guided tour started, it became obvious why small children were not encouraged. The volunteers at the Farm Sanctuary were more graphic in their descriptions of what had happened to these animals, or animals like them, and more direct in their advocating for a vegan lifestyle. It was not inappropriate—not in the least. It was reality. But it was also PG-13. Heck, I had nightmares over this stuff. How would a kid handle knowing that the sheep who produce Merino wool were bred to have wrinkly skin and are therefore vulnerable to fly larva infestations? And (graphic alert here) that to prevent this, farmers use a technique called “mulesing,” where swatches of skin are sliced from the lamb’s backside, without benefit of anesthesia or painkillers? (Yes, I’d stopped buying wool by then as well.)

  If the tour guide didn’t point it out, you might not notice that many of the turkeys and chickens had deformed feet from the living conditions they’d been subjected to, or that before their rescue their beaks had been hacked off so they would not, in tightly packed, stress-inducing cages, peck each other. And you perhaps wouldn’t know that the pig in the pen tossing a ball about or the two lying on a mound of straw sunning themselves, although happy and safe now, still battled the deformities and health problems from their previous lives. The volunteers shared the information that is also provided on the website. But, as I’d begun to spare myself the gruesome details, I’ll spare you too. But here’s the deal—if you ever tell me or another vegan how wonderful bacon is, I reserve the right to describe to you in very graphic detail the life of the factory-farmed breeding sows and piglets who become that bacon. Because it’s far more heinous than bacon is good. Deal?

  But to watch these rescued pigs was a joy. If there was any doubt that pigs have personalities, watching the pigs at Animal Acres clears it up. A six-hundred-pound pig playing with a beach ball is a s
ight to behold. “Girls” that large cuddling with each other in the hay, safe inside their barns, is equally heartwarming.

  Cows taller than me—a lot taller—were definitely not something I’d ever seen before. Yet they were friendly and calm, allowing us to pet and photograph them. And the fact that the Farm Sanctuary had rescued cows they’d named William and Harry is amusing in its own right. Goats roaming the hills seemed a bit suspicious of the humans, but who could blame them? I was by then pretty leery of the human race myself.

  At the end of the tour we chose to roam about a bit more (inspired by the goats, perhaps?). Michelle loved on Minerva a bit, and Minerva continued to follow her around, asking for still more. (Minerva made her point; Michelle said she could never eat turkey again.) Finally, we made our way over to the gift shop. I perused the books, of course, and bought a few more, along with a T-shirt and a wineglass with the Farm Sanctuary logo (if ever there was a “must-have” souvenir of my day, this was it). Then I looked through the free educational materials they had available—brochures, flyers, and information sheets. I looked through it all, as I had at The Gentle Barn (where I also bought a T-shirt, and a book, and…oh never mind, Chris might be reading this). I considered what to take:

  Sanctuary, Farm Sanctuary’s compassionate quarterly magazine? Why yes, please.

  Something Better: Why Millions of People Are Changing What They Eat? Absolutely, I need to know this!

  The Truth Behind “Humane” Meat, Milk, and Eggs? May I have a thousand of these so I can hand them to everyone who tells me they eat this way? It’d be so much easier than explaining that these are meaningless terms and not in the least what any decent human thinks of as “compassionate” or “humane.”