Daisy:

When we first moved to southern Colorado at 9,800' elevation our land was a jumble of brush, downed trees and limbs.  One day I was out cleaning up the brush and a mule deer doe with twins was a few yards away from me and I started to talk to her telling her how beautiful her twins were and how pretty she was. 

She stayed with me for several hours and that started a human/wild animal relationship that rewarded me over the years. We ended up naming her Daisy and she taught me more about mule deer in the many years we were together than I would have ever expected. 

 

After one of those two fawns grew up he came around and would actually eat out of my hand and allow me to pick ice balls off his head. He adopted me into the deer family and there are many stories I have shared and can continue to share. He was a good companion over the years and in fact would bring other deer around to meet and greet with me. Even more stories there with his friends. 

One of the does in Daisy's family had a fawn who had somehow broken its leg. The fawn's mother would drive it out of the family of deer. I watched Daisy strongly chastise the fawn's mother and Daisy took the little fawn herself to raise. She cared for that fawn and protected it until its leg healed and became its mother. 

Daisy or one of her offspring made friends with one of our dogs - Sarah, a black German Shepherd - and they would sniff each other through the fence and run along the fence together. Sarah died of heart failure and I had established a memorial area where I had cap stones with her name and a photo of her sealed in clear epoxy. It was a memorial garden for our past dogs and there were several headstones in it. 

For a few years after Sarah passed away I would be going down the tractor trail to the memorial area and often find Sarah's friend  standing over her marker looking down at her headstone photo. Not the others but her headstone only. This happened many times to just be a coincidence or happen chance. 

Sarah's friend did that for several years and I would stop on my tractor and talk to Sarah's friend for several minutes and she would look at me and then down at Sarah's marker. I call that true friendship.