Thursday, August 12, 2010

Goat in the House!

A riot happens at the 'stead every day when I arrive home from work. Dogs are happy and excited and barking, goats are bleating (or whatever goats do), chickens are making a ruckus - the source of food just came home!  It starts in the yard, and as I go inside the dogs follow and mill around the kitchen along with the cat.  Desmond is the barker, but since he's mostly deaf, he can't hear himself bark.  So he barks REALLY LOUD.  Picture dogs milling, a cat underfoot, and LOUD barking - until food bowls are set down and the whole thing calms.

Yesterday, as I was driving up the hill, the neighbor's dogs came out and chased me up the last 1/8 mile, so there were 2 more dogs than normal.  Then, as I was getting out of the car, into the barking and milling, I noticed a goat in the front yard.  Penny waited all day inside the fence with Coco and then came out after she saw my car come up the drive.  Gasp.

I'm comfortable that the goats are safe with MY two dogs, but I don't know about the neighbor's 2 dogs.  It would be extremely cool if one of my dogs were to protect the goats, but that would be dreaming at this point.  What to do, what to do?  The only thing I could think to do was bring the goat into the house while I fed everybody.

So there we were, two dogs, a cat and a goat milling about the kitchen.  It was pretty amusing.  The kitchen isn't big.  After I fed the dogs and cat, I got a leash and took the goat back to her eating place.  I took a moment to find the camera and snap a quick shot (being verry concerned about goat pee in the house).  Here's the picture.  Penny being curious about Desmond eating his dinner.


P.S.  The Perseid meteor shower will be at it's peak tonight (actually tomorrow in the early morning hours).  It was cloudy last year for this shower, and it will be this year as well.  That's not a terrible, terrible, bad thing though, because the shower will last another week or so.  The Perseids are so named because they come from the constellation Perseus, which is near the horizon in the north.  So, look north young man!

3 comments:

  1. Don't you just love those ears? There's always a chorus when I get home, too - especially if the sheep spot me before I can sneak in the house. I love the description of Desmond's deaf barking - reminds me of my dad...

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  2. You may not currently have a human waiting for you when you return home at night, but what a fantastic substitute your animals are! Loved the description of bringing the goat into the house for a few minutes until you could deal with her. Sort of like throwing a big, soft quilt in the bottom of the bathtub (empty, of course) and laying your infant there while you deal with a small emergency!

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  3. It's so funny when the goats shake their ears, flop, flop, flop. And when they run, the ears go up and down. It's approaching nubian ear size (from daddy) and alpine ear shape from mommy.

    I'm beginning to think that I have one "bad" goat who won't stay in, and one "good" goat.

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