Less than 12 hours after my 39-year-old miniature donkey, Puzzle, died Friday night, Sunny, the beautiful and shy little jenny who adored him even more than we humans did, died of a broken heart.
After Puzzle’s body was picked up, Sunny spent the rest of the day standing or lying where he had died. I spent as much time as I could with her, and when it was feeding time, I fed the llama and goats and took her feed out to her. She didn’t want to come back to her stall. She ate a couple of pieces of apple, nibbled on her bit of grain, and checked out a handful of hay.
About 5 p.m., I went back into the house. Less than 20 minutes later, when I was in the kitchen, I looked out a window to check on her.
She was flat on her side.
I raced back outside, but she was gone. Still warm, but not breathing, not blinking, not moving again.
Sunny was about 3 years old when the previous owner had found her for Puzzle. He’d lost his best friend (an ancient horse) and brayed for three days while that owner scrambled to find a donkey for him. Two years later, that owner died, and Puzzle and Sunny came to live with me. So she was not quite 10 years old when she died, May 9. She had spent most of her life with Puzzle.
The old jack always waited for her when it was time to go out to the pasture. And she watched him to know what to do next. When they first arrived on my farm, he plodded along the whole fence line to check out their new digs. She followed. When we put up a 12’x12′ portable stall in a small lower pasture, she stood outside it while he went inside and examined our work. Then it became one of their favorite hangouts, away from the knucklehead goats.
When she had to stay in their regular stall overnight during the fall/winter of 2019, he stood outside the stall door all night until it was opened in the morning and she came out. Where one was, the other was.
Knowing Puzzle was nearing his end, I’d been calling around, looking for a new donkey/friend for her. I had leads, but nothing definite by Friday night. (I’d made more inquiries earlier on Saturday, as it happened.)
In the end, I don’t think she knew what to do without Puzzle. And in the end, I don’t think she wanted to be in a world without him.
PawPrints Productions 