Epic of compassion- my approach towards Vegetarianism

It was in 2010, while I was on tour to a place called Bumthang, half way drive up the hill, I noticed a calf running to and fro, bellowing with very unusual and frightened behavior. It was midsummer and that slope was fully covered with bushy grasses. On closer watch, I saw a cow, supposedly his mother strangled with tethering rope, fallen inside the thick meadow, struggling and almost dead. I climbed into that bush and immediately loosened the rope, putting support beneath her body until she could wake up, where that calf just stood by my side with utmost silence, watching my progress of helping his loved one. Thereafter they started licking each other, to express in human term, kissing and embracing each other. 
Seeing diseased or dead isn’t uncommon for me being an animal health worker, but the expression of that calf made me speechless, clouded with love and emotion. I don’t know how much they might have thanked me, and had they been humans, I would have heard their speech of thankfulness. This is one example how every sentient being have the heart to love and care each other, no different from what I would have felt if my mother was in such trouble. Having come across few more of such incidences, I committed to become vegetarian thereafter, placing animals at the level of my heart, and it is over five years now, no matter whether my culture allows sacrifice of some or prohibit others, because the sentiments are same with all these animals, alike mine, or any one of us. Even the religious views of sin or the law of cause and effect is also more of self interest that I don’t want to suffer later. But respecting other’s rights, considering their pain and pleasure same as one’s own is a genuine wisdom and compassion, and this forms the basis of humanity.