METCHOSIN, B.C. — If you know anything about sitcoms from the 1990s, you’ll appreciate why Sheila Mansell named her goats Monica and Chandler and her sheep Rachel and Phoebe. “There’s a ‘Friends’ theme,” Sheila smiles before reaching down to pet the animals on her hobby farm. “Because they’re my friends.” But Sheila couldn’t call her Highland cows after the other characters on the TV comedy—Joey and Ross—before she got them; they were already named Mischief and Norman. Before we continue, you need to meet Amy Wong, who didn’t know Sheila and her friends, but did have a dream. “I always wanted to hug a cow,” Amy says. “They just look so big and cuddly.” Seeing as you don’t just bump into a bovine in the city, Amy posted her wish on a social media page from the country. Sheila saw it and invited Amy to visit Party Chix Farm. “I just know how much [the animals] make a difference in my life,” Sheila says. “I thought that would be nice to share that with someone else.” No matter how stressful her day, whenever Sheila comes outside to care for her friends, “everything just melts away.” If you feel like when the Friends theme song says, “no one told you, life was gonna be this way,” Sheila says goats will prove “they’re very good listeners.” Or—like the song—you feel like you’re “always stuck in second gear,” hugging the Highland cows could be “therapeutic.” “They did feel like a big real life teddy bear,” Amy recalls meeting Mischief and Norman for the first time. When she realized her cow-hugging dream, Amy says her new furry friend did lean into her embrace. “It was a really nice hug,” Amy smiles. The cows were there for Amy just like all the animals are always there for Sheila. “Farm animals give us unconditional love just like our cats and dog and our inside pets,” Sheila says. If, as the ‘Friends’ song says, you feel like it “hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year,” Amy says her farm friends will show you the final line of the chorus, “I’ll be there for you.”
