When I was in my early twenties I got my first goat. She was a three day old baby when she got injured and became unable to walk. She had gotten a serious infection that settled in her joints. The cowboys call it joint I’ll, and it’s not uncommon in very young livestock. Fortunately, we had a great veterinarian at the nature park where she came from, and he helped us keep her going. We had to try a couple of different antibiotics before we found that we were having good success with her on tetracycline. We had to go to his office daily for a stinging injection, but before long her fever was better, her joints weren’t so hot to touch or painful, and she was getting stronger. One of my friends and I took turns taking her home so that she could be monitored and fed at night. Both of us had middle aged German shepherds who were very mothering to this pathetic little baby thing that couldn’t even get up on it’s own. I also don’t think that spilled goat’s milk at feeding time hurt matters, either! Being mothered by two humans and two dogs, I don’t think that the little thing (one of our vet’s kids named her Sara Beth after a cartoon character) had any idea what she really was.

One of my happiest experiences was one cool evening when my parents and I and another friend of mine decided to take our dogs out to the local beach. It was a small beach and dogs weren’t supposed to be out there, but if you went in the evening when no body else was there no one cared. We had six dogs and we took Sara Beth, too since she liked hanging out with the dogs. The younger dogs were out on the beach running around and playing in the water while we sat at one of the picnic tables with Sara Beth and the older dogs. Sara Beth was in my lap, and she was being very restless, which was unusual. She usually loved to be held. I thought that maybe she needed to pee (she didn’t like to get herself wet), so I set her down. She had been standing on her own for a little while, but was still too weak to walk very far (or so I thought), so I let her go, and after a few tottering steps, she started running after the playing dogs! It wasn’t a pretty jog. It was pretty clumsy and she did tumble a couple times before she reached the dogs. They had all stopped playing and were waiting for her since she had been bleating after them the whole way. That short jaunt across the small beach pretty much exhausted her and when Sara Beth reached the dogs she stopped and laid down so I had to go collect her, but that was the beginning of her rapid recovery. Within two weeks, she was a typical baby, bouncing everywhere and into everything!

By the time Sara Beth was able to walk well enough to potentially be returned to her real mother, she was completely dried up, and had no interest in a baby (which wasn’t unexpected, since it had been six to eight weeks). Sara Beth was eating quite a bit of feed and hay, but she definitely still wanted milk, too, so it was decided that I would keep her as a pet. My friend Jack lived in town with only a small yard and lots of neighbors who probably wouldn’t have appreciated livestock in the neighborhood, so it really wasn’t much of a choice. I was more rural, even then, but by that time I was looking for a small farm up here, so it was a perfect fit. When I found this place and moved up here I came with three dogs and one small, but feisty goat. Come back for next week’s veterinary medicine segment for further adventures of Sara Beth. Until then, have a wonderful week!