Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Yesterday was a tough day.

Didi continued to slide downhill. She started to get a bit better after having a really rough night. I gave her some oral penicillin and anti-toxin to kill all of her gut bacteria then started to rebuild her stomach flora with syringes of yogurt. Started her on antibiotic shots and kept up the anti-toxin shots. Then it started all over again. Last night around ten I called the Goat Yoda.

I'm frustrated and tired. Betsy brings over a sack full of additional meds to start her on and some banamine for her pain. This goat is not one of the stoic ones. If I hadn't brought her up here, she would have just gone off and died.

And, in the middle of all this, I'm still trying to get a small portion of my work done. But the goat nursing has worn me out. At one point, I go to let the cockers in after they've eaten. I'm bleary and cranky. My lupus is hurting me and my head is fuzzy.

I go out on the porch and I hear myself call it, without thinking, as I've called it so many times over the past five years. I know there isn't an answer to this question as I feel the words sounding into the twilight.

"And so, where's Aegis!" I holler.

I tear up as I gaze over to the hill where his grave is, answering myself.

I keep running into photos of him while I'm pulling stuff for websites. He's so gloriously young and alive. I just can't wrap my brain around him not being here anymore. BossyToe and Phoebe are running my ass ragged and he would have been the one who would have taken care of them. Damn that dog loved a baby goat.

He was the one dog I had that really did something to help. He took care of me. Every animal on this place relies on me to take care of them, the cockers are needy little bastards and I just miss my big yella fella.

But at least Freaky Didi is on the mend now. She was hungry this morning and ate some alfalfa. She's bright eyed and asking to leave the porch. I may stob her out in the sun for a while. She's skeletaly thin from her ordeal, but it looks like she will survive this bout.

Life goes on. I have a backlog of three days worth of farm and house work to catch up on. It's a glorious day today. The sort of day I would have packed Aegis up in the jeep to take for his first swim of the season. We would have taken the balls and the ball thrower and he would have dived into the sparkling water of the creek with more joy than a being has a right to feel. It was what we were doing exactly a year ago.

God. I just miss him so damn much.

Don't know why I was ever concerned about how these two would get along. Max has fallen under BossyToe's spell. Max is my self-appointed cocker spaniel stock dog. This basically means he chases the goats back in the fence when they get out. Unless one of them decides to make a "stand". In which case, Max yelps like his tail is on fire and runs back to me. A few of the goats have taken note of this behavior and more of them are giving Max the finger...or hoof...as the case may be.

I did my first disbudding today. I nabbed Rose, the smallest of the triplettes and I think I did a pretty clean job of it. It's a dreadful job. I held Rose on my lap in the porch rocker and each time she started to freak out, I'd stop and rock her. This seems to calm her down much as it does a human child. We took our time, but the screaming was terrible. When I was done, the entire herd had left the property. Even BossyToe.

Goats are smart. If torture is happening and you can leave....Leave.

No worries about Max though. He's turning into a right nice goat daddy. He's licked BossyToe from one end to the other. He's having a bit of a hard time translating dog play to goat play and I've had to remind him to be gentle. She's putting up with it. She's not thrilled about all the dog slobber all over her where Max keeps licking her.