Highland cows and farm animals named after Friends characters bring a woman’s wish to life

If you know 1990s sitcoms, you can see why Sheila Mansell named her goats Monica and Chandler and her sheep Rachel and Phoebe. “There’s a Friends theme,” she says with a smile, reaching down to pet the animals on her hobby farm. “Because they’re my friends.” Her Highland cows could not be named after the show’s other characters, Joey and Ross: they already had the names Mischief and Norman when she got them.

Amy Wong did not know Sheila or her animals, but she had a dream of her own. “I always wanted to hug a cow,” she says. “They just look so big and cuddly.” Since people do not just encounter cattle in the city, Amy posted her wish on a social media page from the country. Sheila saw it and invited her to 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.”

Sheila says that no matter how stressful her day is, “everything just melts away” when she goes outside to care for her animal friends. She says goats are “very good listeners,” and hugging the Highland cows could be “therapeutic.” Amy recalls that Mischief and Norman “did feel like a big real life teddy bear” when she first met them. When she fulfilled her dream of hugging a cow, she says, her new furry friend leaned into her embrace. “It was a really nice hug,” Amy says with a smile.

Amy says the cows were there for her just as 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. Amy says that when a day, week, month or year feels as though it has gone wrong, her farm friends offer the final line of the Friends theme song: “I’ll be there for you.” The article also refers to other lyrics from the song, including “no one told you, life was gonna be this way” and “always stuck in second gear.”