Lehmä nuoren aikuisen silmin ja sen tutkitusti terapeuttinen vaikutus meihin

The cow through the eyes of a young adult and its proven therapeutic effect on us

Nostalgia

We always had animals when I lived at home. I have always been a real animal lover. We got seven chickens that were saved from slaughter and I sat with them for several hours. It only took a few hours before they had their own names and I recognized their characteristics, even though at first they looked exactly the same, white chickens. The chickens quickly became dear to me and the death of my favorite chickens was especially hard on the little girl.
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After the chickens, we got a goat and three sheep. After that, I got the little goat you see in the picture as a birthday present. I nursed it from a bottle and we spent a lot of time together after school playing. For a year, we also had two horses that were rented from the stable. The goat population grew so much that the hobby became quite an extra job for my mother. I didn't allow the goats or goats to be slaughtered and soon there were well over twenty goats.

Cow?


​Now for the nostalgia itself. Animals are very familiar to me, cows not so much. I remember my mother dreaming of a single cow and even though I was an animal lover to the core, a cow was quite distant to me: “A cow? What are we supposed to do with one cow?” When the other animals came to us, I was quite excited, but I remember that this excitement, even as a thought, was not reciprocated by me. And we never got a cow. I moved away from home, the last thing on my mind were cows.

One day my mother excitedly told me that she was doing an exhibition called " If Cows Could Talk ". I didn't really understand, I just thought: "Oh, nice". Honestly, I didn't even realize what this exhibition would really be about, let alone its deeper purpose. A year later, the situation was completely different, I saw my mother's idea concretely; the exhibition was ready. Now my reaction was "WOW, mother!". I saw pictures of the opening of the exhibition in Berlin and then I understood. From the pictures, I saw how interesting animals cows are. I understood how big a project it had been. At this point, however, I could only look from the side and admire the big project my mother was doing. I had distanced myself from cows and my mother's exhibition was the first step towards paying deeper attention to cows.

Children's book and social media


Then my mother wrote a children's book about cows. When I first heard about the book project, I was like, "Oh, that's cool." I knew my mother loved writing books, so I was happy. I'll admit that I didn't really see her vision. When I read the first version, I was like, "WOW, this is wonderful." And so the cows surprised me again, with all the things they and their surroundings could offer. At this point, I was involved as one of the readers of the text and helped find the last hidden mistakes before the book was printed. From there, we continued working together, initially helping with the social media accounts. Later, the situation escalated, and we signed an employment contract.

I created our own Instagram account, where I started following the profiles of many farmers (there are so many nice ones!). It has been special to notice how interesting and rewarding it is to just browse through cow pictures every day. Cows and farm pictures bring a moment of peace, life and humanity to my everyday life as an athlete. I have paintings from our interior design series in my home. The pictures have surprised me by how much joy they bring me in the midst of everyday life. On bad days, I look at my cow picture and it always brings me a little bit of warm-hearted cow nerves!
In short, I never understood how much emotion cows convey before. I haven't really paid attention to them, and I'm sure many other young adults haven't either. However, it's worth giving cows a chance. Just seeing cows in the pasture brightens my day and subconsciously calms my mind.

The next time you feel like life is a whirlwind and you're in a storm of emotions: Look at cow pictures and calm down, let's enjoy the little joys of life too. Now cow nerves; it's gonna be alright!
/Tanja
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Did you know?

The cow has been proven to have a calming effect and is used in therapy, for example. In animal-assisted therapy and rehabilitation, the strength of cows is to calm stressed people and ground them in the present moment. In burnout treatment and prevention, cows are more effective helpers than horses and dogs. The gentle impulse in cows is so strong that socially disturbed children and prisoners can learn to live a non-violent life. Reading cows, on the other hand, help first graders read. The cow listens calmly to the young reader, the tension in front of it is released and reading begins to flow smoothly.
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