Doris is suffering.
Doris does not know she is suffering. The suffering has been inferred from a photograph posted on social media by someone who visited the fell in August, stood at the gate for four minutes, and looked at Doris looking back at them.
"She looked so sad," the caption read. "Standing there alone in the rain. No shelter. Just staring."
Let's assess the evidence.
The rain: Doris has grazed through eleven consecutive days of horizontal Lake District rain without reducing her hours. The rain does not constitute suffering for an animal wrapped in eight centimetres of lanolin-coated fleece that actively repels moisture. The fleece is not a fashion choice. The fleece is a biological weather system.
The aloneness: Doris is in a fell with other sheep. She grazes at distance from them because fell sheep are not herding animals in the lowland sense. They distribute across the landscape. Doris is not isolated. Doris is optimally positioned.
The stare: Doris can recognise up to fifty individual sheep faces and ten human faces and remembers them for two years. She was not staring sadly. She was filing you.
The shelter: the spot behind the east wall where Doris sleeps on cold nights is four degrees warmer than the exposed fell and has been her chosen location on every comparable night since her first winter. She did not look sad in August. She looked at the gate visitor in the specific way a prey animal looks at an unknown presence: assessing, not emoting.
This is the anthropomorphism problem.
We look at an animal experiencing its natural environment in the way it evolved to experience it, doing the things it is built to do, in conditions it is designed for, and we project onto it the emotional state we would have if we were standing in that field in those conditions.
We would be cold.
We would be lonely.
We would look sad.
Doris is not us.
Doris is a fell sheep on a fell. The fell is what she is. The rain is her element. The aloneness is her preference. The stare is cognition, not grief.
Doris's cortisol: normal, per the vet's annual check.
Doris's welfare domains: no concerns across all five, per the farmer's records.
Doris's opinion of the caption: she has filed the photographer's face.
Doris will remember that face for two years.
Doris is grazing.
Doris has always been fine.
We are the ones who needed the shelter.
Really sorry you've been having so many sickness issues. I truly pray you feel better soon.
