Ready to make a splash with one last lick up her nose, Joy the Cow is ready to head to the pool (that is, if we had one at Happy Trails!).

Happy Trails prez, Sharon Barnard, gets ready to celebrate the 4th ofJuly with Joy be-decked in a red, white and blue Uncle Sam hat!

"Heeeeeere she comes, Misssss Amerrrrrr-i-coooowwwww!"

Cow skiing became quite a popular sport amoung the volunteers at Happy Trails, especially during the challenging and icy Winter months. Usually

Ready to make a splash with one last lick up her nose, Joy the Cow is ready to head to the pool (that is, if we had one at Happy Trails!).

we would flip a coin to see who got to walk the cow out back to the large four acre pasture. Normally, Jow the Cow would walk very politely on a lead-line. This was definitely not the case, however, when the cow came into heat. During those days, Joy the Cow would be especially loud and boisterous and rather lovey. She would happily, quickly and with great gusto barrel down the muddy or icy trails leading to the pasture, dragging by their heels whatever unlucky volunteer was attached to her, plowing along at break-neck speed. Alex Hale, number one fan of Joy the Cow and long-time Happy Trails volunteer, usually won (or lost , depending on whose looking at it) the coin toss. Often we would hear him sailing through the woods yelling “Whoa, Joy! I say whoa dammit! Come on, honey, slow down. Joooyyyyyy!!!!” And his voice would fade off in the distance as Joy the Cow, without a care in the world, hopped, skipped and jumped with Alex in tow, toward her destination, the exercise pasture! We would often wonder if Alex would ever return to the barn, but return he would, muddy, scarred, tired, leaves stuck to his baseball cap, the heels of his boots still smoking, and we would ask how things went with the cow’s walk out back... With a satisfied smile on his face, he would always reply, “She did good today!”

And though I don’t believe in all of history there has ever been a cow loved by a group of people as much as Joy the Cow has been, she doesn’t have any creatures of her kind here at the sanctuary with whom she can share special cow secrets.

"I likes my carrots!" Kind of reminds ya of Humphrey Bogart, huh?

Joy has been waiting patiently for a very long time — five years to be exact —to find a permanent home where she will be loved and cared for and treated with dignity, respect and compassion.

Enter stage right, Dr. Ghast, a large-animal veterinarian from Virginia who is absolutely thrilled at the propect of adding this celebrity-status cow to his current cow family. Joy will now have a sister and several brothers (and maybe even a boyfriend) to hang out with in a spacious 30+ acre pasture. She will now have other like-creatures with whom she  can compare cow concerns, chew cud with, share her cow hopes and dreams with, and moooove along through the fields at her lesiure.

This incredibly special cow has touched the lives of an amazing amount of people — she has been talked about in newspaper articles, featured on our website, and even walked proudly in our festival’s Parade of Horses a few years back (as a black and white paint filly of course!). I believe that Joy the Cow came into our lives for a reason, and it’s taken her the past five years to complete her mission here at Happy Trails.  She has taught us so much about caring, compassion, trust,  and unconditional love. There will always be a special place in everyone’s heart that will be filled with fond and silly memories of Joy the Cow.

So Joy is now preparing to leave Happy Trails to go to her new home. With mixed emotions we prepare to wish her well and say our good-byes. But (yes, there’s a but), there has to be more to her leaving than that...so what does that mean for Joy the Cow’s Fan Club?  A road trip of course!!! How many people do you think we can stuff into the Happy Trails van, as we pull our horse trailer with a happily mooing cow toward someplace in Virginia? We'll be finding out shortly as we prepare Joy for her very special road trip.

A special thank you goes out to Kevin and Debbie Bragg for volunteering their time and their heavy-duty truck to haul the Happy Trails trailer and the happy cow through the hills to get her safely to Virginia. Since Kevin is a professional driver, we're positive that our precious cow cargo will be in the very best hands! It will be a very long day for everyone involved, as the trip will take approximately five hours one way.

I’m sure that with a van-full of Happy Trails board members, volunteers and Joy the Cow fans following  behind her trailer, Miss Joy is sure to get to her destination safely and with a good dose of humor involved. I can sense a story or two in the making....we'll update this article after Joy gets settled in her home, and it will be complete with trip photos of course!