I love sheep. They make the countryside so beautiful in England. When my daughter was a little girl, we gave her a little lamb for Easter. She named her Mary. Mary was a very “different” lamb. She thought she was a dog. I’m not kidding. We had 5 dogs, and 2 were outside dogs so the lamb would literally sleep, eat and play with the 2 outside dogs; Dottie the Dalmation and Lucy the Great Pyrenees.

We lived in the country and had to drive down a long driveway to get to our house. The dogs would hear us coming and run to greet us and Mary would run along. For some reason the dogs loved tortillas—And so did Mary. The dogs loved to chew on dog bones—So did Mary. The dogs loved to follow my daughter on her bike—So did Mary. My daughter had a huge custom built playhouse that had a front porch on the front and the dogs loved to lay on the porch of the playhouse—So did Mary… You get the picture. Mary thought she was a dog. To us, she was. She was part of our family.

The day Mary died, she was 9 years old. It was a very sad day. My daughter and I cried and cried. We looked out into the woods behind our house and we both saw a very odd “see-through” vision of Mary walking over the burial ground where we had put her to rest… I”m not kidding on this either. Mary was special. As are all sheep in my book.

Visiting England this time, as always, we saw many sheep. We were in the Lake District and pulled off onto a very small, one lane road and stumbled upon a low area where lots of sheep were close to the road. I got out of the car to take a photo upclose and they, of course, took off running. So I thought, “What would Mary do?” So I began “bahhhhing”… Seriously… I sounded just like a sheep. My husband rolled down his window at me as I was walking down the road and said, “What on earth” (well, he said something else I won’t write) and I said, “I’m talking to them and they will listen.”

Sure enough they came running to me. Right up to the fence. I stood there talking sheep language to them and I think they know just what I was saying. You could say I learned “something about Mary” literally. Mary the lamb… We love you forever!