Life and Death of Livestock and Pets, a Short Conversation with Nina Fuller

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This is Episode 3 of Season 5 and we’re dedicating the next few shows to some horsey intellectualism. I like to look up words, to make sure I’m saying what I mean. Intellectualism roughly means thinking, studying, and/or discussing complicated ideas without getting emotional. I guess what we do on this show is a sort of low-level intellectualism, redneck intellectualism, because we’re not consulting great philosophers or significant texts. But we are bouncing around ideas that are more complicated, less straight forward, say, than which muck rake is best or how hay prices are looking this summer.

I think horse owners and riders inevitably come across these ideas in their time with equines. I know I do, sometimes as I’m riding along, sometimes as I’m lying in bed, pondering a life with or without horses.

Anyway, for episode 3, I invited Nina Fuller of Lily Brook Farm in Hollis Maine to join me. Nina is a heckuva accomplished woman. About 14 years ago, she got in touch with me and wrote a few guest columns for what was then my new website, NickerNews. She is a farmer and raises sheep. She’s an award-winning photographer. But until about 10 years ago, we hadn’t met. That was when I was driving cross country, from Utah to Maine. I stopped, off a state highway, in a desolate section of northern Colorado and was just about to let my dogs out for a break when two lambs came rushing up to me. They were very young, maybe a week old, with shriveled umbilical cords, and in the middle of nowhere. I picked them up and searched in vain for a rancher, a ranch, someone or some ewe who could claim them. To no avail. So, they joined me cross country and – long story short – they ended up at Nina’s farm.

Find Nina on Facebook. 

Order her book, "Where's Hope?" from Cayuse Communications. 

Listen to the cross-country story here.  

So, yes, back then when I called her for help, “What should I do with these lambs? How can I save them?” Nina and I didn’t know each other except through email. I’m indebted to her for her kindness, her expertise, and for taking the lambs. I think she has been happy with the lambs, who she named Emma and Pearl and who have given her many lambs over the years. Pearl died last week.

Our conversation ties into a broader conversation around pets and livestock, animals in our modern world. Next up, Daniel Dauphin, who has been doing some pondering over the recent hullabaloo with suspended Olympian Charlotte Dujardin. This has gotten Daniel and I and I’m sure many of you thinking about what folks consider wellness, if it belongs in the livestock world, and with what different people consider abuse, horse welfare and wellbeing. Let’s just say what Charlotte Dujardin did pales in comparison to what Brett and Alexis Ingraham did at the tragically ironically named Fair Play Farm in Maine – something I reported on years ago. We’ll consider the broad spectrum of standards in horse communities, amidst the many disciplines and cultures.

Horses, of course, are livestock. When it comes to laws and policies, that puts them in the roughly the same category as sheep and cattle, not dogs and cats. Over the last few generations, however, as an increasing percentage of horses are used recreationally, in popular culture and especially women’