I’ve just been asked how do I cope when faced with animal cruelty cases …. My answer, I don’t. I am not any different to any other animal rescuer, I don’t put on a special cloke but I do put on a brave face and try to stay calm for the sake of the animals. Once home or away from the situation is when I break and the tears flow plus the wine comes out to dull the pain inside.  Crying is a natural way to release emotions so in essence a coping mechanism just like the wine but the pain stays and with each case a little bit more of my heart and soul are chipped away.

Calmness hasn’t always been the case though and I have to work hard to stay calm nowadays too but it does allow me to step back and think for a few seconds without rushing in mouth first and jeopardising things for the animals. I do get concerned about the effect of all the worry and stress on my overall mental and physical health but you only live once, as they say, and when you’ve opened your eyes to animal abuse you can’t close them. That’s why if I don’t take your call or answer your message I’m not being rude but I’m having a bit of down time.

I also tell people that you can’t save them all and that Sheep Ahoy focus on helping the poorly, neglected sheep and lambs because they have no chance of any happiness. The lambs with their Mums at least have Mum for a few months but the orphans won’t have that comfort. The poorly sheep will struggle along with no treatment so by helping them eases their suffering. Sheep Ahoy can’t physically, logistically or financial help them all …. but maybe one day eh?

I, Julia, have decided to start a Sheep Ahoy blog.

Things happen behind the scenes that you never get to hear about but I thought that you might like too ….. so here goes the first blog entry.  I don’t know how regular the posts will be and the grammar may not be 100% but they will allow you to get a feel for life at Sheep Ahoy from the humans point of view.

Days are made up of routine planned tasks with lots of unplanned things packed in too. These can be funny, messy, emotional, tiring, tearful but most of all always needing to be done for the benefit of the sheep and goats boys.

So today I ran a stall on behalf of Sheep Ahoy at the Kent Vegan Festival.  Luckily I had a helper on the stall and I’d kept things simple by only taking key stock so set up was pretty straightforward. A great day had by all but it didn’t stop there for me.

En route to the festival I’d stopped off to feed the lambs and to take them out to their day pen plus feed our horses.  The lambs chose today to ignore my requests to follow me quickly and made the most of the fresh grass that lined their path to the pen.  The result being I’m later getting to the festival than I’d planned!

Obviously their are more animals to tend to each day than just the lambs and so attending any event takes planning. This is when volunteers and friends come into play otherwise I’d be getting up at the crack of dawn to do all the animals before attending an event and then getting home late afterwards because of the evening checks too.  So today others checked the fields for me plus gave the lambs their mid-day feed and, fortunately for the lambs, timed it right to put them back in the stable before the heaven’s opened. Although they have an outside shelter apparently it didn’t take much to convince them that they needed to go inside as my friend was nearly mowed down in the charge to the stable!

I still checked the lambs on my way home and once home walked Beau our pup before enjoying the food I’d bought at the festival so as not to cook tonight ….. before taking nice warm bottles of milk back up to the lambs for their night time bottles and routine. Unfortunately feeding the lambs and then all the little jobs I do once they’ve had their bottles had to be done in the dark as my phone torch was out of action and I couldn’t find a torch in my car ….. for those that have seen my car you’ll know why. This leads me onto the unlucky part of the day ….. dropping my mobile down the loo at the event! Well actually it did the classic falling out the back pocket trick and now doesn’t work. So that’s another phone I’ve broken and yes, I’ve tried drying it out in various ways to no avail – it’s never as simple as that for me and phones …. hubby says I should be a phone tester as I can break them so easily ….. I’m not impressed but there is one bonus, it’s very quiet!

On that note it’s late and time to sleep so nighty night from Elle, Princess, Peter, Bertie and Roo aka the lambs 🐑🐑