By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
A SPRINGVALE sheep, whose right to live in a suburban backyard became a protracted legal dispute, has died where her owner desired – at home.
Baa, who lived to the ripe age of 17, died “peacefully” while her owner Vu Ho was changing her sesame paste dressing on Friday afternoon.
“I am happy that she passed out at home,” Mr Ho stated in an announcement last weekend.
“I have learned from a book by CW Leadbeater that a dog or cat after death finds he is in the same environment as before, because every form has its astral substance.
“If Baa died in another place her soul might not find the way back home.”
Over the past month Mr Ho had been using sesame paste to draw toxins out of a large inoperable tumour that had been growing on Baa’s shoulder.
Last year she had her right ear amputated because of a skin cancer and had another tumour removed in March.
Mr Ho said her strength had briefly recovered last month after being fed one of her favourite foods, fried chips.
In her final days Baa slept for most of the time but managed to eat cooked vegetables.
She was “still wagging her head” as Mr Ho changed her sesame dressing for the final time.
“But when the job was finished she stopped responding, either by eyes or by mouth.
“The breathing, if existed, was beyond the recognition of my cataracted eyes.
“A few hours later I reckoned that she was truly dead.”
Mr Ho and Greater Dandenong Council have been in a long-standing legal dispute over his desire to keep Baa in his backyard.
The council had written to Mr Ho several times requesting a meeting to “find an agreed position between us on where or how Baa can be kept”.
It had also wanted to discuss the council’s legal costs awarded against Mr Ho for his unsuccessful actions in the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal.
Last year, the High Court of Australia rejected Mr Ho’s application for the matter to be heard in the highest court in the land.
Though losing the costly legal skirmishes, Mr Ho refused to move Baa from home.
She remained there until her demise last week.
