Here’s to Donkeys

Autumn has finally made her first wave through Texas, leaving a low-humid, amber tinted landscape that is down right addicting. Everyone everywhere is outside with their tractors, mowers, wagons, and smiles. It’ll warm up here in a day or two, but then autumn will wave through again and again until the leaves turn brown and fall into winter. This is a season of much needed relief in Texas: a long, stale exhale after months of brutal, wet heat.

I sit down in the truck at the end of the drive outside my house, my hands shaking with excitement. It’s here. Like autumn, it’s finally arrived: my special copy of Horsemanship Magazine all the way from the UK. I tear at the package, the amber light bouncing off the glossy cover page while one of my legs hangs outside of the truck’s door. I scan the table of contents and there it is: ‘The Midday Scorcher’ by me on page 38. I thumb through the pages, the smell of fresh paper crisp in the truck, and there, on page 38, is my spread.



My eyes well up with tears as I begin to re-read the story I wrote months ago when summer was at her strongest; when none of us stood a chance to her temporary rule, so we’d succumbed to scrambling around in the shadows like timid mice until she passed. The words on the page blur as tears now drip off my chin and so I close the magazine, pull my leg into the truck, and drive on towards my house.

The editor of Horsemanship Magazine reached out to me sometime ago, her being an equine (and especially mule) advocate and the thrill of receiving a message from her saying she’d enjoyed my blog post, “The Midday Scorcher,” is all rushing back with a fury now as the October/November 2018 edition of her magazine sits in my lap with my story printed inside of it. She told me she’d wanted to include more content about mules and donkeys in her magazine and would I mind if she ran my story? Of course I didn’t mind, in fact I was (and am) honored to be included!

I’m on the cusp of hyperventilating as I shift the truck into park and clutch the magazine to my chest. This just all means so much to me, although I can’t find the right words to attach to the moment.

This comes on the heels of my return back home from a long road trip up to Virginia where I was able to attend and participate in the PVDR East Donkey Symposium and 2018 Donktoberfest at Bold Rock Cidery. I’ve still not caught up on sleep from that whirlwind of a trip, nor have I had the opportunity to wrap my head around how many folks with whom we got to share that good ole’ donkey gospel.



“They’re like big dogs!” everyone says with smiles and beaming hearts when they’re around donkeys for the first time. Person after person came by our booth to talk donkeys, to learn about the challenges they face, to say they had no idea and how can they help? Events like these are recruitment: recruitment for donkey advocates. Not everyone can adopt or volunteer, but everyone can share information. “I had no idea” they say with a gasp when we talk about the 4,000,000 donkeys slaughtered last year alone for their hides. It’s a global problem that’s growing like an aggressive cancer. “But aren’t they stubborn? And mean?” they ask, influenced by the media’s long lived portrayal of the jackass: the butt of every joke, simple minded, derpy, and worthless. Little they must realize, donkeys are what built the American West.

Right now, several folks from the PVDR Team are out in Death Valley saving wild burros that are under the threat of destruction as part of the new Wild Burro Project. This is a project that is not only historic in nature, but is a show of gratitude for the donkeys that were brought there centuries ago and then abandoned. They deserve our respect and our protection.

But see, this is my job. My job is to show the world that donkeys matter. This became my job the moment I moved onto that small ranchette in nowhere, Texas where a donkey named Bunny was left behind by the property’s previous owner. I laid my eyes and my hands on her and was sucked into her inescapable gravity. “How come more folks weren’t talking about donkeys?” I’d wondered as I stood next to the most amazing animal I’d ever met out in the pasture. Then I started reading about it and well, I made it my job. I just had to.

We’re a small but growing army, those of us who get the big deal around donkeys, and it’s up to us to eternally stoke that flame so that we stop finding neglected, abused, and abandoned donkeys on the brink of starvation with curled up and rotted hooves. It’s up to us to stoke that flame until donkeys are no longer stolen from folks or farmed for their skins in the global hide trade crisis. It’s up to us to protect donkeys that are under the threat of destruction and educate the public on how to properly care for them. It’s up to us because they don’t have a voice and they’re certainly not going to run away from harm. You know why people call donkeys stubborn? Because they don’t have that flight reflex and they’re smart. They stand their ground. They self-preserve and who can blame them?

I open the truck door, the magazine still clutched to my chest, and head inside. At the kitchen table, I open back up to page 38 where I finish re-reading my story. As I read, I let the tears stream down my cheeks. I’m so grateful and so proud to see my words and pictures in a magazine which is managed and edited by a like-minded, equine advocate. This is how we save donkeys: by writing stories about them and then sharing those stories to shine light on the issues that otherwise hide in the shadows.

I stare at the beautiful spread on page 38 and 39 in Horsemanship Magazine for a long time with what I’m sure is a giant, goofy grin before I go back to the beginning to read the rest of the October/November issue. My heart pounds as I imagine all the people I spoke to in Virginia and all the eyes that might be scanning my story in this magazine. I hope so much that it makes a difference. 

As I’ve said before and I’ll say again: Here’s to donkeys. Here’s to those for fight for them. Here’s to those who hopefully come to know them. And here’s to each other.

Here’s a short, little video from Donktoberfest. Thank you again to Bold Rock Cidery for hosting us and to PVDR East Manager, Kimberly Clark, for organizing the whole thing!

For more information on how you can help save donkeys or spread that donkey love, please visit PVDR’s website here: https://donkeyrescue.org/