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Nettie and Stormy

I used to joke with my students that all dogs go to heaven, meaning that the Lord saves all his creatures—even and especially, the animal kingdom. They abide by the measure of their creation and will be saved. It is a truth then and now that the Lord works with the creatures around us. 

This story is about LaMar Ashby as told by his son Jared Ashby. 

“Dad grew up during the Great Depression and World War II. He was always farming with horses in his childhood and so it was always a dream of his to have a good team of horses. 

In about 1993, he set out to make this dream come true and he was able to purchase his first team of draft horses, Nettie and Stormy. Nettie was a very good horse. In fact, you probably don’t get much better than her. Stormy on the other hand, well her name didn’t even do justice to her. 

One day, Dad had them hooked up to the wagon and was trying to do some work out in the Southfield with them. Stormy decided she didn’t want to pull the wagon up a little hill, so she reared over backwards and then stood up backwards in the harness. Dad handed the reins over to mom and got off to try and untangle things. 

At that point in time, Stormy decided to rear over backwards again, this time, landing on top of dad, pinning his legs and hips to the ground and pushing his head and shoulders underneath Nettie. Nettie had one front hoof under dad‘s arm and the other front hoof next to his ear. This time Stormy couldn’t get up though, and every time she tried to get up, she would roll towards dad‘s chest, making it impossible for him to breathe, but she would come up against Nettie‘s legs and that would stop her from crushing dad’s chest. 

She tried this multiple times, but each time Nettie just stood there like a rock and would not move. Mom had to leave and go into the house to fetch a knife, and then she came back and proceeded to cut the harness loose off of Stormy allowing her to roll the other way and get up and get free. The whole time Nettie stood there like dad’s guardian angel standing over him protecting him.”

Sometime in the future, in another world perhaps, we may be astounded, how much of a blessing the animals in our lives proved to us. 

Source: Jared Ashby