Meet Tiptoe, who serves as a psychic donkey for a blind horse in Minnesota.
“He’s not your typical donkey,” says his owner Erin Larson. – He is very calm and very steady.
Larson, 39, adopted the now two-year-old donkey after seeing a story about it on Facebook. Tiptoe served as a guide to a blind donkey at a local rescue facility near her home in Minnetonka, Minnesota. Unfortunately, the blind donkey was euthanized – coincidentally on the same day that Larson’s blind horse had his eye removed.
“We knew right away that we had to go rescue him to be a colt for my blind horse,” says Larson, a fundraiser for the therapeutic riding organization, We Can Ride.
Her 10-year-old Arabian horse Ty and the young colt bonded immediately when Tiptoe arrived in 2022.
“We all cried,” Larson says. “They are good friends. We call them brothers.”
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Tiptoe is a standard donkey; it weighs about 225 lbs. “He was trampled like an orphan,” Larson says of his rough beginnings. “His mom didn’t want to be a mom and stepped on all four of his feet and his neck.”
After his mother stepped on him, he was rescued and taken to the University of Minnesota Veterinary Intensive Care Unit, where he spent four months fighting for his life. The Savior lifted him up with a bottle. “So he kind of thinks he’s a person,” Larson says.
A donkey meets residents of a Minnesota senior community on tiptoe.
Erin Larson
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Tiptoe also likes to hang out with people. Larson takes the cozy, tail-wagging donkey on weekly visits to local senior living and memory care facilities.
“He tends to touch something deep inside and get them talking,” she says of his interactions with the residents. “It’s really cool how the little donkey kind of connects with them on another level.”
When he gets to the senior center, Larson says Tiptoe walks around “and he’ll focus on somebody, come in and ask for hugs, kisses.”
“He’ll come right into your lap, throw his head over your shoulder and just snuggle,” she adds. – He is really special.
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Larson also takes Tiptoe to visit school children and even teach STEM lessons.
“It has quite a following in the Twin Cities,” she adds.
Larson admires the donkey’s resilience — and its gentle kindness.
“He survived — and no one thought he would — and now he’s giving back and giving back to all the people who showered him with love. I think there’s a lot of joy in that,” Larson says.
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Source: HIS Education