Posey and Sugar Pie...

From Jim:  Here, at Home At Last, we love longears.  These donkey/horse hybrids are pretty amazing and wonderful critters.  Two of ours are miniatures-Posey, a mini-mule, and Sugar Pie, a mini-hinney.  They're both mollys and both gunmetal duns.  They're each very special in their own way.  Sugar Pie was rescued from a local mountain community where she had been abandoned and survived with her friend, mini-mule Maggie, by going feral.  As you can imagine, this was a tough time of life for this little critter.  She did not exactly find our kind to be trustworthy or even very useful.  Maggie, who got her wings at 45 years of age, was even more suspicious of twoleggeds.  They were a pair for sure.  As the years went by, Sugar Pie slowly came to understand that at least some twoleggeds were "OK", if not great.  She made good friends with Gracie and is part of a small herd of longears and horses.  One member of that herd is Posey.  This little girl suffered more than abandonment.  She was abused, beaten in the face with a coiled rope while a grown man forced her to spin like a reiner.  Like most mules, maybe all mules, abuse is often a one way street.  Mules are about self-preservation, not a bad trait.  It can result in a mistrust of people that can, and often is, impossible to overcome.   At the sanctuary, we never force the issue by putting a frightened and untrusting animal in a pen and "desensitizing" them.  I'm pretty sure with a mule that would be a waste of time anyway.  Nope, we put them with a herd, at liberty, and offer them friendship when opportunities come around.  It can take years and may never happen.  For them, sanctuary means being left alone by our kind.  We respect that.  Posey and Sugar are friends.  Posey has a lot of equine friends and moves from herd to herd.  Fences for her are about like they are for most mules-somewhat of a nuisance, but no big problem.  We love our Posey girl for her willingness to just get on with it and have a good life.  She has come to tolerate us and knows she won't be chased or cornered, but has no use for contact.  We've caught her only for necessary vet care, shots and all.  You see this is her sanctuary which we share with her, not ours.  There is never an expectation that critters here will do anything but be themselves.  We would be happy to see Posey master her "demons", but it sure isn't a requirement.  There's no calender in play and no timeline or fixed set of goals.  There's just the flow of life and what it brings.  So Sugar Pie has learned that getting petted is a fine thing to do and Posey wants no part of it.  Well, alrighty then.  We love them both for who they are and for the certainty that they are the very best critter they know how to be.  How many of us can say that about ourselves?  Posey and Sugar Pie are just fine here at Home At Last.  Just the way they should be.  Oh! and go love on your critters,  they either were or had mothers and need to celebrate!