Dogs were killing Greg and Janice Schlosser’s sheep 25 years ago, so they bought a donkey to keep guard.
“That’s how I got started with them,” said Greg Schlosser, 75, who, with his wife, Janice, owns seven miniature donkeys, five miniature mules and five miniature horses. He joked: “Then it just became a disease.”
Owners will tell you donkeys are misunderstood. They are not stubborn; they are intelligent. And caring. And loyal. But Schlosser, of Smithville, Texas, lives in a place where you can measure how bad a drought is by how many donkeys roam the roads. Donkeys can be the first to go when tough times hit.
Donkey rescue agencies pick up the slack. In Granby, Dan and Marianne Lemelin operate a satellite adoption center for Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue, billed as the nation’s leading donkey rescue agency.
Their work has become vital as the West squares off with an under-the-radar donkey abandonment problem, where overwhelmed owners resort to donkey dumping.
“A couple years ago, people were just turning them loose,” Schlosser, the president of the Southwestern Donkey and Mule Society, said of the region’s most recent drought. “People were hitting them with cars and everything else.”
Another issue for land managers is herds of wild burros roaming federal land over a certain area’s carrying capacity.
But sometimes, individual owners are simply in over their heads.
“They’ll get a male and a couple females,” Schlosser said, “and the next thing you know, they’ve got a dozen donkeys.”
When federal land management agencies, donkey owners, or sheriffs need help, they call the donkey rescue agencies.
“Donkeys have always had a special place in my heart,” Marianne Lemelin said Monday as her five donkeys milled around her Granby farm.
Twice now, a crew from Peaceful Valley in Texas has loaded up trailers of donkeys to ferry them to Massachusetts for adoption. Last year they brought 15. This June, they brought another 10.
“I had a waiting list, actually, this year for them,” Marianne Lemelin said. “Within a week, I had them all placed.”
They act as companion animals in their new homes. Lemelin said they are like dogs.
In the ’90s, Mark and Amy Meyers, the founders of Peaceful Valley, bought their first donkey, Izzy.
“She was like a big dog,” Mark Meyers said from San Angelo, Texas. “Once we had one, we started noticing others. They were always there; we just never paid them any mind.”
They started scooping up donkeys to take to their property. Previous owners abused many of the donkeys.
“If you reached out to touch them, they’d shake so bad until they fell down,” Meyers said.
These days, their nonprofit Peaceful Valley has 16 full-time staffers. The staff take donkeys to the 172-acre Peaceful Valley headquarters where they are treated for any medical issues and are fed. There are satellite adoption locations in 27 states, according to the group.
In Granby, the Lemelins have five donkeys of their own: Patrick, Caitlyn, Duke, Jacob and Elle.
Patrick is outgoing. He comes right up to visitors. Jacob is shy. He comes from a wild herd out West, never handled before by humans. The others are friendly.
Steven Pomerantz, 52, and his wife, Elizabeth Rose, 58, live in Granby not too far from the Lemelins. Last year, they adopted from Peaceful Valley two normal-sized (or “standard”) donkeys — 1-year-old Ellie Mae and 3-year-old Otis.
“They’re fantastic,” Steven Pomerantz said.
The couple, along with their daugher Hannah Pomerantz, were looking for an animal to keep their horse company. Marianne suggested a donkey, something the family had not considered.
“People just don’t think about them,” Steven Pomerantz said. “It’s almost like they don’t think they’re real — like they’re in a movie on a farm in Iowa or something.”
They are very real. Recently, a brush fire tore through the property of one of the Schlossers’ neighbors, who owns 10 or 11 mini donkeys, Greg said.
Greg said the fire did not hurt their neighbor or her donkeys.
But after it was extinguished, “For the next two days, everytime she went to the barn, the donkeys would circle around her,” Greg said. “They were licking her arms and her legs, just like they were happy she was there.
“They’re a lot smarter than a whole lot of people I know,” Greg said. “They’re a very loyal animal, too.”