SLOVENIA'S 5 CORE VALUES

Whoever loves animals also loves people. And can a human mother feel and best understand the anguish of an animal mother?

Opposite Jožič's house is a large fenced lawn. A sheep walks on it, looking for nibbles among the winter-brown grass. Jožica often gives it a treat, so the sheep already knows it well. In the middle of the cold night, the sheep gave birth to a calf. A white ewe with a grey spot. It was much too cold for the puppy. The mother sheep was lying next to it, bleating for help. In the silence of the night, her desperation was felt by Jožica. And she understood immediately. Without thinking much, she quickly jumped out of her warm bed, dressed, climbed over the fence and headed across the meadow to the sheep. She found the mother and her puppy by a pile of stones. The cub was already very malnourished and showed no signs of life. She ran home to get a warm blanket. She wrapped the shivering puppy in it and cuddled it close to her like a baby. The mother sheep fell silent and stared at her with big eyes.

"What should I do?" asked Jožica to herself. "I am not a farmer and I don't know what to do." She took the puppy to her warm home. She tried to massage him, then started anxiously looking for the number of the on-call vet. Fortunately, the vet soon arrived and took the puppy's temperature, which had hardly risen on the thermometer. He gave him an injection. But the sheep needed to be fed. First she tried spoonfuls, then she realised she would need a bottle with a teat. She was advised to feed him powdered milk because the sheep would not let her milk it. But the milk is produced somewhere in Gorenjska and it would be a while before she could get it. So she decided to send her husband to the milk machine to get cow's milk, mix in the egg yolk and feed it to the sheep. When the calf recovered, she carried it to its mother every three hours to the meadow. She was also worried about the mother sheep, because in a meadow in winter, even in the Primorska region, the grass is probably not nutritious enough for a lactating ewe, so she bought some bran for the mother.

The little sheep recovered with Jožica's sacrificial help. A beautiful white puppy with a grey spot on her fur, her name is Pippa.

Now she runs happily and lively around the meadow and if anyone comes too close to her, except for Jožica, the mother sheep immediately bleats with concern. It is worth saying, however, that Pip is the darling of the whole neighbourhood and gets lots of tasty morsels over the fence.

Contributed by Darinka Kozinc, 12 Feb 2025