Donkeys are like potato chips. You can’t have just one … or two … or three …
About three months after we added Horton to our donkey family, we received a message from his previous owner. She had seen all our pictures of Horton and how much time we spent with the donkeys and wanted to know if we would be interested in taking in one more. It wasn’t a hard decision this time. Donkeys bond extremely closely with each other, and since Jackie and Puddy were already very closely bonded, we were worrying about Horton not having his own donkey friend.
That was how me met Mama Donkey, who we renamed Mrs. Henrietta Donkey. Henrietta (or Henny the Jenny as we like to call her) was rescued from a neglect situation where she had been a brood jennet but had not been handled much. She had one foot that was extremely long, making it difficult to walk, and she was very shy. When her new owner saw how much time we spent with the donkeys, she thought it would be the perfect place for Henny where she could receive more attention and learn to trust people.
We picked Henny up in early February 2013 and brought her home where she was immediately accepted by the boy donkeys. They followed her everywhere, annoying her. But, just as we had hoped, she and Horton bonded quickly. The two are never far apart now.
We began to slowly work on getting close to Henny and showing her that we weren’t going to hurt her. This was before I started trimming hooves, so we called on our farrier at the time to come and help with her foot. What he discovered was that she had severe white line disease in that foot. White line disease is a fungal infection that eats away the connection between the hoof wall and the inner structures. To solve the problem, he did a “hoof resection.” Basically, he cut away all the infected hoof wall to expose it to the air and kill the fungus. Following the resection, we were supposed to soak her foot regularly to help make sure the fungus was killed.
That was good in theory. In reality, once Henny’s foot wasn’t extra-long any more, we couldn’t catch her! She ran and played and wouldn’t let us near her. Thankfully, her foot was fine without the soaking, and when the wall grew back, it was healthy.
Henny has been a real challenge when it comes to gaining her trust. We don’t know how old she is, but we are assuming late twenties or early thirties. That is a lot of years of mistrust to overcome. Slowly, Henny has come to love bum scratches and now lets us halter her without much trouble. She likes to stand near us, but doesn’t necessarily like to be touched much. We continue to give her lots of attention and hope that she will eventually overcome her fears.
Henny is a sweet girl and is very healthy for her age. Her favourite thing in the world is her buddy, Horton. Henny has the loudest bray on the farm, even louder than Jackie, who is twice her size. She loves to greet my dad as soon as he comes home from work with a loud bray in hopes he will bring her some more hay. She also loves carrots and apples! Stay tuned for more updates on Henny as we continue to work with her and help her gain trust.