While Donkey Dreams is inspired by Pino Blangiforti the little donkey, it was initially sparked years ago when I began taking my little pug on weekly visits to an elderly woman in a care fac
ility. She had had a pug in her young married days - and that was why she had taken such a shine to us. Her room looked out at the top of a tree, but nothing else. She would hold that pug in her lap on our visits, and she would tell me stories of her little farm she lived on, her three children, her husband who long ago died. We talked about her garden, and her animals. Her family was small and scattered across the country. All three of us got a lot out of those meetings - old woman of 95, woman of 45, and a little pug of 8. On our last visit with her, there was just a quiet sense in that room, not sad, just a knowing sense - and I'm telling you, that little pug felt it. Usually a bit squirmy and wiggly, he sat so still that day, while she held his paw. The next week, as we entered her room, we found an empty bed. She had died the nite before, pictures on her bedstand of her holding my pug. Twenty minutes to get there, 40 or so minutes to chat, twenty minutes to get home. That was how much time it took to make an impact on her life, as well as my own.
So, years later, I move to a farm. Suddenly, I not only have a pug with therapy skills, I am surrounded by healing beings in the form of horse, goats, sheep, lambs, dogs, cats, birds and...donkeys.
And I am an artist. Litebulb moment.
