Throughout the long ride and since arriving at the farm, Dan hadn't eaten food or drunk water. He walked gingerly over the floor inside the barn as he adjusted to the feel of the metal shoes attached to his hooves. His nostrils flared at a smell. He nosed out the scent of water and followed it to a filled trough, but at that point, Dan hesitated.
To lower his snout into the trough and drink would be accepting his new life as this thing... this donkey... he had become. But he was terribly thirsty. He looked almost longingly into the trough. He saw some stray pieces of straw floating on the water's surface.
He had to drink. He lowered his head but pulled back, snorting his dismay, at the last second. He still couldn't bring himself to drink.
Looking down again, he noticed what he had missed. His vision was blurred, at best, but when he ignored the floating bits of straw, he saw something else. His reflection shimmered in the water held in the metal trough. Only it wasn't his reflection. It was the mirror image of a donkey with huge, upright, hairy ears, a wide snout, dull, dark eyes, and a scanty mane of darker hair than the rest of his body.
"Eee-Haw!" Dan protested sadly. "Eee-haw."
The water rippled and his donkey image vanished as he plunged his snout into the water and began to drink. His body welcomed the water so much that he kept drinking for several minutes, still standing there dumbly when the Yoder men entered the barn again.
Levi Yoder looked approvingly at the job his son had done shoeing the donkey. "Now we have to get his weight down," the experienced farmer said. "We want to get the maximum productivity out of him, and he will work better at a suitable weight."
"How'd he get so fat?" Aaron wondered.
Dan, unable to understand the conversation, continued to drink greedily at the trough, re-hydrating after the long, tiring ride that brought him to his new home.
"Take him out to the sheep pasture for tonight," Levi instructed his sons. "He can graze to his heart's content, but we're going to have to restrict how much straw he gets."
Dan still had his snout buried in the trough when he felt one of the younger men tug at the bridle. He stubbornly continued to drink. A more firm pull, however, forced him to lift his head and fall in line, trudging out of the barn and following the man in control of the bridle.
After a short walk, the man released the bridle and left Dan in a wide field. Scattered around the distance he saw a flock of sheep of various ages and sizes. It became readily apparent that he was expected to remain in the field.
His body also expected him to do something. The man hadn't walked far when Dan felt his penis slip from its sheath and release a strong stream. All the water he had drunk now fueled a long piss right in the middle of the field, regardless of the human looking on.
It felt good, but then his sensitive nostrils caught the acrid smell of the urine, which also splattered on the ground around his front hooves. He groaned in dismay, producing a loud "Eee-Haw" that only drew more attention. The young man had other chores to complete, so he wasted little time watching the pissing donkey.
When he finished, he felt lonely, despite being surrounded by dozens of sheep. He brayed loudly, but got no response from the mild sheep. He wished he was home.
As he let his mind wander to thoughts of home, he lowered his snout, quite automatically, and began grazing. Shearing clumps of grass with his teeth and chewing them with his blocky teeth. He fed for nearly a half hour before he paused and actually realized what he had been doing.
At least he reduced the ache of hunger. He had drunk, he had eaten, and now he stood, alone, in a field as a donkey. He had fallen asleep, exhausted, well before the first stars blinked into the night sky. If a day of travel and adjustment had left him spent, the effects of a day of intensive and hard labor didn't bode well for him.