When we first heard about Jenny and her mother, Josie,
what quickly got our attention was how long and curled their hooves were.
- And just the filth they were living in.
- Another local rescue reached out to us to see if we could help.
That was it. We spent the afternoon getting them loaded on the trailer
to bring them back home here.
I was pretty surprised
at how open to us.
It was almost as if they knew we were there to save them.
- The look in their eyes,
they seem like prisoners in their own bodies.
- I think they just looked hopeless.
For Josie, probably more than 20 years like this.
For Jenny, it was her whole life.
Ten or eleven years.
And she was fearful.
Timid, she was pretty timid.
I knew they had a long road ahead of them.
We rescue neglected, abused, and unwanted donkeys.
- Hi Joe.
- We have approximately 60 donkeys, mules, horses, and ponies.
Donkeys are just loving,
they’re playful, they’re introspective,
and then next thing you know they’re out playing, and wrestling, and braying.
Just being silly.
They have a lot of personality.
- Jenny and Josie had a very deeply bedded stall
that we let them spend the night in to rest and recover,
And our farrier was out the very next morning,
along with our vets.
Because we wanted to relieve them of the discomfort of these hooves
as quickly as possible.
The farrier,
the very first thing he did was take off the excess pieces of hoof.
- There we go.
- After the farrier cuts that first cut,
we x-rayed them to give a little closer look of what’s really going on inside.
We could tell from the x-rays that Jenny had damage
to the bones inside her hoof.
And her body adjusted in a very awkward way.
So every muscle, tendon, ligament is now sore.
And the recovery is a painful process to go through.
- We felt that Jenny would rebound and become pain-free.
- Josie, we were definitely concerned.
Our goal was to make her as comfortable as possible.
After a few days we moved them closer to the house
so that we could check on them constantly.
- Here, she’s moving.
- While her feet definitely were tender,
I think Jenny was enjoying being able to move around.
It was like this newfound freedom for her that I think she was trying to explore
how to use her body again.
- It feels good in the grass, doesn’t it?
Oh my gosh, are you going to eat while you’re laying down?
- Jenny wanted to be out and about more than Josie.
She was just more able.
We had this little gate open, and she could come in the yard
and get some grass if she wanted.
But that meant she had to leave her mom.
She wouldn’t be out here grazing probably more than a couple minutes,
and then run back.
So it was a constant, “Let me check in with my mom,
but I really want some of this grass because I haven’t had it before.”
Yet Jenny was starting to come out of the protective wing of Josie.
- Oh my gosh. I wonder when the last time was she trotted.
- Hi Jenny. How ya feeling?
- Once we were able to take Jenny out into a bigger part of our yard,
you could just see the lightbulb went off.
And she’s just wanting to play, and run, and use her feet,
and use her body the way it was meant to be used.
- And she wouldn’t stop.
[Laughing]
She was just loving life.
She had been introduced to other donkeys.
She had never been introduced to anyone else in her life.
So she was starting to form some friendships.
And it was just awesome to see.
- Angie was rescued from an auction.
Once she recovered,
we just kind of noticed them spending more and more time together.
And now they’ve just become best friends.
- Jenny’s calm nature was a very good influence on Angie.
- Jenny is just more rock solid,
so she helped Angie develop a little more confidence and trust.
- Daisy Mae was also rescued from an auction.
And it did not take long at all
before she just wormed her way right into that little duo.
She just said, “I’m going to be your third friend,”
and they just accepted her.
Then they’ve become inseparable.
We jokingly refer to those girls as the
They don’t want to share their hay with anybody else,
they can be kind of bossy.
They’re very possessive of each other.
And they’ve claimed Jenny.
I mean, Jenny is their friend whether she wants it or not.
But she loves them.
- Hey Josie, coming to say hi to everybody?
- I think Josie was relieved that she knew
her daughter was going to be okay.
We had a couple of really good years here with Josie.
I think she loved being here.
And the friendships she made.
Seeing her daughter, Jenny, thrive.
But unfortunately, we just recently lost her.
Jenny knew what was happening with her mom.
She had her girlfriends and
it seemed okay.
Jenny was at peace with it.
[Laughing]
- I think Jenny has really moved on from her past.
- Woo!
- And has just blossomed into
a donkey that sees the world as a playground,
and a fabulous place to live in.
- Good girl. All right.
- Since Jenny’s rescue,
she’s come from a donkey that physically coud hardly walk.
She was a little bit of a lost soul I think.
And now she’s, quite frankly, one of the most perfect donkeys we have.
She’s friendly, she’s easy.
She’s as nice of a donkey as you could hope for.
She’s just as good as they come.