Yesterday I was posting comments on one of my blogging friend’s blog, which is about farm life. In this particular post she was talking about how much she enjoyed taking care of and playing with her goats. It got me to thinking about how much I have enjoyed my goats. I got my first goat many, many years ago (I refuse to say exactly how many!) when I worked in the nature park. We had a little petting/feeding zoo area with goats, deer, turkeys, and chickens. My first goat lost her mother when she was born and several of us took turns playing Mom. She ended up getting a joint infection and she couldn’t walk for quite some time. After numerous trips back and forth to the vet for stinging antibiotic injections and lots of TLC from both us humans and our dogs she did get better, and ended up being fine. One of the vet’s children ended up naming her Sara Beth (I’m not sure why, but we all liked the name, so it stuck).

When I moved up here, she came with me and lived a long, happy life pretty much sure she was a dog. She did everything the dogs did with the exception of coming inside the house (when she was a baby I was able to teach her to go out to urinate, but I was never able to stop her dropping her little pellets everywhere). Back in those days I would frequently take walks or runs in the woods behind my house. The dogs loved to go with me, and so did Sara Beth. In her prime, she could run two to three miles with me and the dogs without any problem. I was definitely the only person in the neighborhood who had a goat as a jogging companion. When she got a little older, though, we had to keep it to shorter walks only. We learned that the hard way. I had a friend visiting, and she decided to take a run in the morning before I got up. All the dogs and the goat went with her. When I got up I realized she had gone for a run, but I started to get concerned when she wasn’t back after over an hour. About the time I decided to go look for her, she made it back. They had gotten about a mile out and Sara Beth had pooped out and laid down, panting. My friend and the dogs had waited for her to recover and then tried to walk back, but Sara Beth kept having to lie down. Needless to say, it was a long walk home!

Besides being a great companion, Sara Beth was also an fantastic watch dog. One night I had fallen asleep on the couch and woke up about 2 am. I had just gone to bed when I saw headlights coming up my driveway. Being so late and out in the woods, it was a little scary; especially when someone got out of the car and started walking around the yard with a flashlight! I had all the lights out, crouching in the kitchen with a knife in hand while all the dogs were still sleeping in the bedroom! When the person started heading towards the front door, I was ready to run for the phone (no cell phones back then) when Sara Beth charged down the steps with head in butting position and chased the person back to their car! It turned out the intruder was a deputy who was looking for someone in our area who had been calling 911 and hanging up. He saw my lights go off when I went to bed and thought I might be hiding from him. He hadn’t expected to be attacked by a goat, though! It wasn’t until after I had lights back on and was talking to the deputy that the dogs finally woke up.

Over the years, Sara Beth and I had a lot of fun. She is even the goat I used to play a joke one of my clients once. I have had quite a few more goats since Sara Beth. They came to me for various reasons, and some were born here. I have enjoyed all of them. I just lost my last goat at the end of last year at the ripe old age of 22 years. During all those years of having goats, I learned quite a bit about caring for them above and beyond what they taught us in vet school and it’s been a lot of fun. But that’s a story for a different day.