Little Bo Peep

A couple of days ago, my husband asked me if I could feed the sheep and administer a shot to one of the ewes we have that had recently lambed. Now, what you have to understand, is that although I feel quite comfortable around the sheep, I have yet to give a needle to any of them! He reassured me that his sister (who is a vet tech), would accompany me and show me how to do it properly. The ewe in question had mastitis and therefore needed antibiotics to fix the problem so that she could feed her newly born lamb, who by the way, was bahhing obnoxiously when we entered the barn. We took a look at the ewe, and the very knowledgeable vet tech showed me how to properly inject the medicine. We left the ewe to go to feed and water the rest of the flock and prepare a bottle of milk for her lamb. When we came back the ewe had still not moved from where she had been when we left her. We both clambered up over the gate and stood beside her looking down. Now, I am no vet but I could tell that something was not right, and lo and behold, the vet tech confirmed my suspicions by saying "no, no, she's dead".

 Sadly, the first thing that came to my mind was "how the hell am I going to tell my husband that we killed her!?". Then I looked down and saw a tiny lamb nudging her mothers lifeless body, and my next thought was "oh crap". I called my husband and told him the bad news, to which he replied with a very colourful array of profanity and ended the conversation with, "well you're just going to have to bring the lamb home." Now you can imagine that to most people having a lamb in your living room would seem quite absurd, and 3 or 4 years ago I would have been one of those people. Yet here I am with a lamb, in a large tupperware box, in my living room, by the fire.

For the first 5 minutes, the lamb seemed quite content to stay in the box, straw underneath her, cozy and warm... unfortunately this did not last. She quickly learned that she could escape from the box by simply hopping over the side, and next thing I knew I had a lamb running through my living room and kitchen and trying to drink milk (rather unsuccessfully I might add) from our male puppy... he in fact did not find this amusing in the least. For the rest of the afternoon I found myself scrambling to clean up pee, while simultaneously attempting to keep my dog from killing his new friend. Finally I decided that the lamb would have to be kept in the crate that we had recently bought for our puppy. I put her in the crate with blankets underneath her and the box pushed into one corner so that she could sleep on the straw..... and finally as the dog, the lamb and I settled in to watch a movie, all was quiet....for now.