![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/cow_adeer_8.jpg\")
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By Campakalata Devi Dasi<\/strong><\/p>\n On September 12th, the day before the anniversary of Srila Prabhupada’s arrival in America, my husband and I celebrated our shared lunar calendar birthday with a trip to Vrndavan. (Yes, we were born on the same lunar day. ;o)<\/p>\n I had three birthday desires. And by Giriraja’s sweet kindness, my husband’s pampering and an invitation from dear friends, all three came to pass in ways that I couldn’t have imagined. <\/p>\n We stopped first at Care for Cows. Please friends, make it a priority during your Vrndavan visit to pay your respects to these cows and the devotees who care for them. Just being in the company of those gentle animals and seeing the devotees attentively providing them such loving care is enough to soften the heart and soothe the mind. Truly it is a spiritually rewarding experience to appreciate Krsna’s dearest animal, the cow. Goloka, Gokula, Govinda, Gopal\u2026 First and foremost, Krsna is a lover of cows. <\/p>\n Care for Cows is all about giving. They give and give and give taking in return only the licks of appreciation from their wards and the internal satisfaction derived from the giving itself. The majority of the resident cows are robust and healthy thanks to a daily dose of plentiful, healthy wholesome food, attention to medical needs, full body rub-downs, and kind words. Then there are the newcomers \u2013 the ones recently rescued from the harsh brutality and callous neglect of so-called Braj Basis. These ones generally require hours of attention each day as infected wounds are cleaned, broken bones set, medicine administered etc. <\/p>\n One such newcomer is Radhe Shyama. We brought the little girl calf from Govardhana to Care for Cows in the beginning of this month. Her owner was the lady who beat her cow in the face for upsetting a bucket of water (as mentioned in a previous blog). The calf is severely malnourished. She was never allowed to drink a sufficient quantity of milk. To prompt her mother’s let-down, she would be allowed to suck for approximately 20 seconds. Then after the udder had been squeezed dry, she was permitted to nurse for another minute. A couple times I watched horrified as her owners dragged her on her knees away from her mother when her legs had buckled under her. She was so weak that once she had fallen or sat down, she was unable to get up on her own. Her owners would yell and beat her to force her to rise. And if that didn’t work, they would just drag her. The lacerations, scrapes and scars all over her legs indicate that this was common procedure.<\/p>\n The calf’s own mother never showed her any affection. It’s as if the mother had also experienced similarly callous treatment to the point that she simply didn’t know how to give affection. Or maybe she was shielding herself from the pain of watching her baby being so horribly mistreated. If she just looked away and pretended that the decrepit, scrawny little thing didn’t exist she could spare herself the torment of her calf’s sorry plight.<\/p>\n One morning, I was horrified to find Radhe Shyama lying sprawled across the ground as if dead. Her mother was no longer giving milk, so the owners had untied the calf. (Oh, did I mention that they previously had her tied to such a short leash that she was unable to lift her head when standing?) But where would she go? She was too weak to even stand on her own. <\/p>\n The owner lady fed me a sob story about how the calf had always been sick and how she had stayed up night after night trying to nurse her back to health. (Um\u2026) She told me that now the calf had broken her leg which is why she lay on the ground looking half dead. When I asked her if she would call a doctor, she suddenly changed her story minimizing the calf’s needs dismissively. It was obvious that she intended to do nothing except yell some more which prompted the little calf to jerk in terror until she finally managed to get herself to an upright sitting position.<\/p>\n As soon as I arrived back home, we called Kurma Rupa Prabhu at Care for Cows and after a relatively eventless journey, brought our sorry little load to a sanctuary of peace, love and care. Her leg was not broken. And as soon as she arrived, she spent about an hour just eating. So she didn’t seem terribly sick either. But then, that first night, she came down with a fever and has been struggling with one ailment after another since. As her body strengthens, her immune system is kicking into gear. Her body finally has the strength to clean itself out.<\/p>\n Thank you so much Kurma Rupa Prabhu, Pavan Prabhu and Shyama Gauri Mataji for your enduring service to Gopal’s cows. Thank you also to the medical staff and the many sponsors and supporters around the world. Due to your kindness, Radhe Shyama now has a chance at a peaceful, healthy life. <\/p>\n And thank you, Giriraja Govardhana, for fulfilling my desire to be able to spend the day at Care for Cows.<\/p>\n Besides checking up on Radhe Shyama, we got to meet Radhika, a two-week-old baby blue cow (a cross between a deer and a cow) who had been abandoned by her mother. She was absolutely adorable! As long as we rubbed her bottom (and got peed on :P) she was perfectly at ease with us. She even spent a good five to ten minutes licking my husband’s arm all over. For now, she’s being bottle fed cows’ milk. Radhika is actually the second blue cow at Care for Cows. The other, Van Krsna, an older male blue cow, seems quite content with his recently healed leg stub and Shyama Gauri told us that he gets around very well on his three remaining legs.<\/p>\n We also paid a visit to Krsna, the retired Padayatra ox with gargantuan (!!!) horns. Padma even got up the nerve to hug his hump. :o) Suddenly, while we were admiring Krsna’s majestic presence, the famous lover boy, Prem Sagar came between us and nuzzled up against me. Pavan laughingly predicted that licks were soon coming. I scratched Prem Sagar’s neck cooing admiringly into his ear. And then, as predicted, it came\u2026 the “ocean of love” as he is so aptly named. (See the posted picture) Cows are so gentle and loving! If people would only show some small kindness, they give so much back.<\/p>\n Please visit www.careforcows.org<\/p>\n And kindly pray for us, friends, that we can similarly do some small service for Gopal’s cows here in Govardhana. For now we are caring for two little boys, Krsna and Balarama. And these days, a dashing young couple we’ve named Shyama and Gauri visit every morning for a hearty breakfast, salt licks and a rub-down. Neighbors laughingly tell us that we’ve opened a goshalla. Krsna willing we actually will\u2026<\/p>\n I had mentioned three birthday wishes. But really the second two deserve their own blog. So bear with me\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Please friends, make it a priority during your Vrndavan visit to pay your respects to these cows and the devotees who care for them. Just being in the company of those gentle animals and seeing the devotees attentively providing them such loving care is enough to soften the heart and soothe the mind. Truly it is a spiritually rewarding experience to appreciate Krsna’s dearest animal, the cow. Goloka, Gokula, Govinda, Gopal\u2026 First and foremost, Krsna is a lover of cows. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Hare](\"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/cow_dezaer3.jpg\")
By Campakalata Devi Dasi<\/strong><\/p>\n