This week we present two stories from people who got called into action to save an animal they didn’t know they’d be called to save.

Part 1: While running an errand, Andrea Azarian happens upon a lost horse that needs her help.

Andrea Azarian has an undergraduate degree in Public Administration and Political Science from UW-LaCrosse. She completed her teacher certification and Master’s degree in Education at Alverno College. Andrea taught English, Math, Reading, and Family and Consumer Education in grades 5-8 in Milwaukee Public Schools before coming to UWM. She has been at UWM as an Academic Advisor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction for twelve years.
Her time outside of work is spent traveling with her friends and family laughing and being present in the moment.

Part 2: Left in charge of the farm for the first time, Gwynne Hogan panics when a goat goes into labor.

Gwynne Hogan is a reporter and producer in the WNYC newsroom who seems to keep ending up covering disease and communities from measles to COVID-19. She's also a proud assistant on Story Collider podcast production team and is excited to make her virtual storytelling debut with the show.

Episode Transcript

Part 1: Andrea Azarian

I left early. I left work early one October afternoon. I usually work until 7:00 or 8:00 at night and so leaving at 3:00 for me was really early. But I had to go to a place to do a thing before the place closed and the place was 45 minutes away from work.

So I jumped on the highway, and even though I had left early, the traffic was still thick and slow. So about halfway to the place that I needed to go to do the thing, I decided to exit and take some back roads, hopefully to get there sooner.

So these roads that I was on, I wouldn't necessarily say it was the country, but it was certainly rural. And the road that I was on was windy and hilly and curvy and it was only two lanes. And on either side of the two lanes was forest, just trees everywhere.

So I'm driving west on this road and this bus comes over a hill from the east. So it's coming towards me. I see it turn on its lights and slow and put out its stop sign, so I stop. I'm pretty far away but I'm like, “Who's getting off here?” Because there are no driveways. 

This road, this rural road, the driveways are dotted down the road a half mile to a mile apart. And the driveways themselves are a half a mile long. And if you can see the house at the end of these driveways, they're accompanied by these big barn-like structures. It's not a dairy farm. I know what those look like, but these things, these homes and these buildings they're some kind of farms but this bus stops not by any driveways.

So I’m like, “Well, children of the forest now go to school.” And they take the bus and I'm fine. That's great. I'm glad that they have that opportunity.

So I'm sitting in my car and I'm waiting. I'm stopped. And I'm looking left and I'm waiting for the forest children to disembark and cross the road. So I'm waiting and I'm waiting and I'm waiting and nobody's coming off the bus. This is the point where I'm like, “This is how people get killed in movies.”

So I'm like maybe I should just go through this stop sign of this bus and break the law no matter what because I'd like to live. And as I'm debating this in my head, this horse, this huge white horse comes bounding over the hill, the same hill that the bus came over and it falls. 

I don't know if you've ever seen a horse fall. I have never seen a horse fall. I mean I've never even really ridden horses. I usually get the donkey. 

So this horse falls and it falls hard on its knees and it kind of somersaults and it kind of rolls and turns over and somehow gets itself back up. And so this horse is standing there and I mean it takes a couple of steps, but I'm sure this horse was like, “What the fuck just happened?” Because I was like, “What the fuck just happened?”

Then the bus’ lights go off and the stop sign folds in and the bus leaves, so I'm guessing that the bus driver saw the horse since they were coming over the same hill and thought that it was a good idea to probably stop so as not to hit the horse and make Jello.

So here I am, just me and the horse now. Nobody else in sight. And I'd like to take a minute here to tell you everything that I know about horses. They are big. They have four legs. They are not dogs. I know lots of things about dogs. I've had a lot of dogs. Horses are not dogs. I know nothing about horses.

So naturally, I pull over to the side of the road and I get out of my car and I cross the street and I go to this horse. So I'm standing behind this horse. I'm about 10 feet behind it, directly behind it and I start talking to it. 

I'm like, “Hey, horsey. You took quite a tumble back there. I don't know if you're all right. I just thought maybe I should stop and see if there's anyone I could call for you.”

And this horse turns its head around to look at me and it growls. Well, I mean it doesn't growl, but it's like the equivalent of a dog's growl. It's pissed. 

So worse than the growl is the blood. I told you there were no doctors in the story but I didn't say anything about no blood. This horse was covered in blood from the forehead down the eye, all down its nose and chest and dripping down its leg. And the contrasting color of this red blood against this stark white horse was horrifying. 

So unlike any sane person you would know, I stay. I don't leave. I mean, I'm the girl who decided to skydive because it looked like fun. And I'm the girl who got lost in a rain forest in Puerto Rico at dusk and barely made it out before the dead of night. And I'm the girl who scaled balconies in Montevideo, hotel balconies in Uruguay just to see a boy. Like I can handle a horse.

So I moved slowly to the side of this horse. Now, I'm perpendicular to this horse. And my job, as Keisha said as an advisor, I listen to people's problems all day and help them solve them, to help them. So I'm like you know what I should do? I should try and gain some rapport with this horse. You know, think of things that we may have in common.

So I kind of look under the horse and I don't I don't see a… and so I'm like, “Hey, horsey, you're a girl. I'm a girl. We're both girls. Look at what we have in common. And look at your beautiful mane. I, too, have a beautiful mane. Mine is black and curly, yours is white and straight, but they're both gorgeous. And look at those big brown eyes and those long lashes, horsey. I, too, have big brown eyes and long lashes. We are both just gorgeous, horse.”

And the horse again turns to me and growls at me and I again, undeterred, do not leave. Instead, I now take more small steps to the left so I'm standing directly in front of this blood-covered horse. I notice that it's got a rope tied around its leg multiple times.

I was like, “Oh, well, now I know how to help you. I'll just unwrap the rope from your leg and then you can go home. Problem solved, right?”

Except I don't really know how to do that. You know how when you're walking your dog and the leash gets caught in its leg and underneath it and so you bend down and you pick up its leg and then you unwrap it and then you keep walking, right? I don't know how to do that with a horse. 

Do you pick up… is that a two-handed job? Do you do you pick up the leg? Tell it to sit? Offer it a treat? I'm not sure how to do that.

So I'm looking at this horse. I'm down on the ground and this horse is making all these noises. Clearly, this horse is warning me, but I'm dumb but determined to help this horse. So I recall some more dog knowledge and I'm like, “You know what? I'm going to put out my hand and let it smell me. And if it smells me and it doesn't eat my hand, totally staying.”

So I'm down on the ground and I put my hand up and I'm like, “Hey, horsey. Remember all the things we're the same, you and me.”

And slowly but surely, this seriously injured horse lowers her head a little bit more, a little bit more, and she takes her nose and nuzzles it into my hand and I am elated. I'm super bloody now but I'm so excited, because this horse likes me. I'm totally staying. I'm saving this horse.

So I'm down on the ground and I'm like, “How am I going to get this rope?” And I'm like, “Oh, you know what? There's got to be another end to the rope, right? Where is it? I'll just pull it towards me and then I can unwrap the rope and then we're good to go.”

So I'm looking but I can't see this rope and so I stand up and I visually follow this rope yard after yard after yard, down the grass. And lying there in the grass attached to the other end of this rope is a huge fucking fencepost. 

So I turned back to this horse not wanting to upset the beast, and I say to myself, “This is a fugitive horse. This horse does not want to be saved. This horse is on the lam.”

Just about then a car pulls over, a car stops. There had been no other cars up until then. And mom and her 12-year-old, 10 or 12-year-old son get out and they come over and she's like, “Hi, can we help you with anything?” I think she sounded like that. 

Anyway, for some reason, I was super protective of this horse at this point. And for some reason I somehow transformed into a southern sheriff and I said to her, “No, ma'am. Everything's fine here. Sweet Pea took a fall and she and I just need some space, so you can just go on get back in your car and proceed with your evening. Y'all have a good night now, you hear.”

And she's like, “Are you sure?”

I'm like, “Yup, we're sure. Y'all just get back in your car and drive safely.”

So skeptically, she looks at me and she puts her arm around her son and probably says something like, “We better leave.” So they get in their car and they do.

So here it's just me and the horse again, oh, which, by the way, I had named her… unconsciously, I had named her Sweet Pea. I mean, why wouldn't you give a horse a name? It's my horse now. She needs a name.

So Sweet Pea and I, and I'm still petting her. I've been petting her the whole time and she's just been standing in the same place. And I'm like, “I've got to get this rope.”

So I'm tugging on this rope and this fencepost is heavy and it's far away. And I'm tugging on this rope one-handed and I'm making a little bit of progress, bringing it closer to me when another car stops and a woman who I can only describe as Cindy, I don't know if that was her name. I don't even know if she ever told me her name but she definitely was a Cindy to me.

So Cindy gets out of her car and she comes across the road and she is resolute. She says, “What's the situation?”

I look at her, I'm like, “Well, Cindy, who invited you to the party?” That's not really what I said to her, though. I didn't want to seem… again, like I didn't know what I was doing. This is my horse. I can take care of my horse. 

So I looked at her and I said, “Sweet Pea took a fall. She has sustained multiple contusions and abrasions. She doesn't appear to have any broken bones and she can bear her full weight on all four legs. Internal injuries are unable to be determined at this time. The horse is calm and agreeable.”

It worked, thanks ER and Grey's Anatomy. Because it worked, because Cindy looked at me and said, “I work at a small zoo, private zoo just up the road.”

Why is there a small private zoo up the road? And there's Cindy who's there but now here to help. So, okay. 

So Cindy says, “What's your plan?”

Cindy is a woman of many words.

 And I'm like, “Well, Cindy, I need you to go down to the fencepost to get the rope, untie the rope and then bring it to me.”

So she does. She unties the rope and she comes back and she unwinds the rope from the horse, from Sweet Pea's leg without lifting the leg, by the way. That's how you do it. And then she's holding the rope and I'm like, “That's my rope. My horse, my rope. Give me that rope.”

So now I'm holding the rope and once again she looks at me and she says, “What's the plan?” 

And I'm like, “Fuck, Cindy, like seriously, I was on my way to the place to do the thing before the place closed and then this horse showed up, and I don't know. This is as far as I got.” I was like, “You know, this horse, there's no collar with this little tag that says ‘Call this number if found.’”

So it took Cindy and I about 30 seconds to hatch this plan, which solely consisted of us walking down… and I'm in heels. I look like this. And I'm in heels and we're walking down this long winding road and we decide that we're going to stop at every horse farm along the way to see who is missing a horse and a fence.

So we go to horse farm after horse farm and I'm tired. And there's nobody home and I'm like, “These are horse farms. Don't people who have horse farms work on their horse farms? Why is nobody home?”

So at about the third or fourth horse farm, the animals that lived there were getting real anxious. They didn't like our presence and so they're neighing and braying and barking. Cindy is like looking in the windows to see if anybody was home.

And I'm like, “Yo, Cin, I'm going to go down with Sweet Pea to the end of the driveway because we just got to go. We'll wait for you down there.”

So Sweet Pea and I walk to the end of the driveway, almost to the end of the driveway, and just then this cop car comes by, fast, sees us, slams on its brakes. The cop jumps out of the car and runs up to us. 

Sweet Pea does the thing that you see horses do in movies. She starts marching backwards and she's trying to get up in the air, and she's growling again. She is pissed, right?

I look at this cop and I'm like, “Stop! She doesn't like you. Stop! Look at her. She's huge.” 

We're covered in blood. I'm in heels. I can't control her. “Fucking stop!” 

So he does and he starts asking me questions about me and my horse. I didn't really want to answer them because I thought that he may find out that, in fact, this was not… I didn't really own the horse. 

Thankfully, just then Cindy had come down the driveway and I was like, “Cin, can you talk to him?”

So she started answering questions. So they went over there because Sweet Pea doesn't like him. So Sweet Pea and I are over here canoodling. Just then, another cop comes and then this jolly old man. He wasn't that old. In a red pickup truck comes. 

He walks up to us and he's got on overalls and a cowboy hat. I was like, “Maybe we really are in the south.”

He comes up to us and he says, “Well, howdy, folks. My name is Red. No, it's not because I drive a red pickup. It's because when I had hair,” and he lifts up his hat and we see his bald head, “it was fiery red and wild.” And he puts it back on his head.

And he goes, “Sorry for the inconvenience. I just had some ladies and their horses over to our house today to have some fun, and while we were loading up one of the other horses, Jazz here got spooked and took off.”

“Jazz? This horse, my horse’s name is Sweet Pea. I don't know no Jazz. You have the wrong horse, sir.”

When yet another person, this bedraggled, Wicked Witch of the West-looking twin sister joins the conversation, joins the group in the conversation and she goes, “Oh, Jazzy, what d’you get yourself into again?”

And I'm devastated. I'm like this horse, my horse, I know this horse was tied up in a situation that she didn't want to be in, and the only thing she knew to do was to break free. And if that meant taking the fence with her, so be it.

I too know what it's like to be in a situation that I don't want to be in or I don't feel safe in, and know that the only choice is to break free and take that old fucking fence with you. 

And I love this brave horse and all I want to do is jump on her back like I'm Xena and she's Argo, and we're going to ride off into the October sunset together.

As we both stand there blood-soaked and tears, I know she was crying too, I realized that I don't have horse-pet kind of money and I don't have horse-pet kind of space, and I'm not a southern sheriff nor am I a large animal veterinarian. I'm just a girl who left work early to get to a place to do a thing before the place closed.

So defeated, I nuzzled my face into her neck and gave Sweet Pea one last kiss, and silently walked over to Cindy in the group and handed Cindy the rope and I started to walk back to my car by myself. As I walked to that long road back, to my still running car, I hadn't turned off my car, I was kind of wondering if it was still there. 

As I walked that long road back to my car, tears stained my blood-speckled yet smiling face. Thank you.

Part 2: Gwynne Hogan

I ended up at the New Village Farm the summer that was a bit of an interlude in my life. I'd been living in South America for a couple of years, working a bunch of different jobs and mostly spending a lot of time in the mountains. But I was moving to New York City to go to grad school and I was going to study to become a reporter, which is what I wanted more than anything. But I was a little anxious about saying goodbye to the outdoor life that I had gotten accustomed to. 

So before I started school, I found a job at a little family farm in Vermont. It was sort of a little tiny farm and it doubled as a summer camp for kids, elementary and middle schoolers, and it was my job essentially to wrangle these children to take care of the farm animals.

The woman in charge of this establishment was a bad broad. Her name was Michaela. She had this long, white hair. She'd always walk around in big, baggy, slop-covered jeans. But she wore these little tiny t-shirts so you could see how brawny she was. She was a championship arm wrestler and she handled everything. When the cows got loose, when the pigs got loose, when a camper had a panic attack or broken arm or we needed to slaughter an animal, Michaela always knew what to do.

This particular weekend, she was gone. She was going camping with her family and she put me in charge. What could possibly go wrong? She’s, “Gwynne’s got this.”

So the next morning Michaela has left. I'm up at one end of the farm and I'm taking care of the baby goats. All of a sudden, a golf cart comes tearing up from the other side of the farm. And in it there's this city kid and his babysitter who are at the farm for the weekend. And the city kid is looking… he's got this wild look in his eyes. He looks traumatized and he's screaming over and over again, “There are legs coming out of Curly's butt. There are legs coming out of Curly's butt.”

I don't know what he's talking about but I start running to the other end of the farm and I'm thinking, “Curly?” 

Curly, she's this 13-year-old, wonderful, sweet goat. She's got these long, scraggly white beard hairs. She's every camper's best friend. She's so mild-mannered, we just let her wander around the farm and do what she wants. But, come to think of it, she had started to look a little bit rounder than usual, maybe too round. But how could it possibly have happened? She's so old.

Then I'm thinking back a few weeks earlier. The male goat, the buck, came to inseminate the other goats and may or may not have gotten loose. There's no way he could have impregnated Curly, this old, old, old goat. 

But now I arrive and she's looking very pregnant and she's in labor and I am in charge. So we call Michaela. 

“Michaela. Hi, Michaela. I don't want to stress you out. Everything's fine. Everyone's totally cool. Except Curly is having a baby right now.”

Very calmly, Michaela says, “Gwynne, get it out.”

Okay. Get it out. Okay. 

So I'm like, “Okay, I'm going to get it out.” 

So I start tugging on it. I just grab these little legs and I'm like, okay, tugging and I'm pulling but nothing's happening. There's no movement. 

So the babysitter and the kid, they get on the front of Curly and they're grabbing Curly by her shoulders and her arms. They're pulling from that side and I'm pulling from the back. I'm tugging and I'm pulling and I'm tugging and I'm pulling, but nothing's happening. It's stuck.

Then I get on my butt and I put my boots up against Curly's backside and I'm pushing with my legs and I'm pulling with my arms. I'm tugging and I'm pulling and I’m tugging but this thing is stuck.

So I get back on the phone with Michaela. “Michaela, Michaela, it's stuck.”

She says very calmly again, “Gwynne, did you put your hand up?”

“Well, no. I didn't put my… why would I have put my hand…” and I start to feel very lightheaded. 

The city kid is looking at me and I'm looking at the city kid and stupid babysitter. I'm looking at him and he's looking at me and Curly is looking at me. Then I think about this baby that might exist if I could just help it get out of that world and enter this one.

So I know what I have to do. I wash my hands, roll up my sleeves and I'm going in. First my fingertips, and my knuckles, then my palms and I can slide around Curly’s warm, dark insides and I'm trying to feel around this little baby goat's body. I'm grabbing for anything. It’s little arm, it’s little leg, whatever I can I'm grabbing and I'm pulling and I'm tugging and I'm pulling and I'm tugging, but it's still stuck. I can't do it.

After a few minutes, I come out, wash my hands. “Michaela, I can't. It's stuck.”

She says, “Okay, call the vet.”

I was like, “What? Was there not a vet like three minutes ago, Michaela, before the whole…?”

Well, the vet rushes over and I watch as he transforms the barnyard into this open-air operating room. He puts fresh straw on the ground and he covers Curly's face with a rag full of anesthesia and she conks out.

He's wiping her down with alcohol and then he slices her open and then he's going inside. He's moving organs this way and that, and all of a sudden he's got something in his hand. I see he's got it. 

He raises it up above his head and it's this floppy, gummy version of what a baby goat should be like. He drops it on the straw beside her. It's dead. It's lifeless. And he's tying her tubes so this never happens again and then he's stitching her up and it's over.

It turns out, he says, “Curly is so old that her bones calcified in place. A younger goat would have been able to bend and contract so that the baby goat could slide through. But Curly, since she was so old, the baby had just been met by a wall of bone. As soon as she went into labor, the baby would have suffocated. It could have happened hours earlier.”

There was nothing we could have done. 

Curly miraculously recovered, which was very good news because in the summertime sometimes flies will lay eggs inside the lesions of farm animals and they can be eaten from the inside out by maggots. So Curly recovered and it was great news. And she went on to live a very productive life delighting generations more of camp kids and also counselors.

Then she got sick and Michaela was going to have to put her down. But before they did, they had a death ceremony for her. They surrounded her by floral crowns that the kids had made and they wished her into the afterlife. Then she passed and Michaela buried her. Six months later, they dug up her bones. And they used those bones at the camp to teach kids about anatomy. 

In life and in death, Curly taught many people many things. That day, she taught me something too. I may never be a championship arm wrestler like Michaela but I'm a bit of a bad broad too. Thank you.