Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

I love hearing everyone's stories... for Christmas my daughter wanted a goat. The only way I was able to talk my husband into a goat was to offer to get a fainting goat so he could at least get some amusement out of the situation. We got a one year old fainting goat and brought it home (just so everyone out there knows, I have absolutely no real knowledge about goats and am getting educated along the way) Of course with dogs and horses on property there is always the concern about everyone getting along. My precocious eight year old named the goat Scooby-Doo Johnson Cline (everything right now needs a first middle and last names, this includes stuffed animals, Littlest Pet Shop trading cards, etc... and no our last name is not Cline)

Our first experiment was with the dogs and the goat. I had my daughter bring our two dogs outside, Snickers and Lucky, on a leash to see how much a commotion they were going to cause. They sniffed at the goat, but didn't carry on so I had her let the dogs off their leashes knowing that I could intervene. The Australian Shepard was the first to brave the goat coming forward and sniffing. Scooby was fine until Lucky got close to his face and then proceeded to head-butt the dog. Snickers, who is a rottweiler/border colline mix, and able to strike fear in the hearts of men just by standing in the yard, was next to approach. Not only did the goat not faint, but proceeded to chase her around trying to head-butt her as well. This play continued until later on in the day when I caught Snickers trying to head-butt lucky and later our six year old as she was playing.

We then took on the challenge of introducing Scooby-Doo to our horses. I led him over to the horse pen, with visions of my horses trying to stomp the poor beast into dust. Scooby-Doo sniffed the left over hay in the feeder and proceeded to shimmy through the stall rails and into the pen. Thunder and Lightning both ran from the goat. Scooby, finding great amusement in his power proceeded to go in and out of the pens herding the horses from one side to the other with I'm sure some amount of glee.

So we reached the end of December with a dog thinking it was a goat, a goat thinking it was king of the pack and horses being herded by said king.

Luckily, everyone seems to have settled down now. The horses have regained their place of dominance, once we had them herd the goat. Snickers still head-butts on occasion and Scooby-Doo, while he still doesn't faint, much to my husbands disappointment, seems to find his way in the mix of our crew. Along with our six kids and my niece on occasion, we generally have a full house and our hands full :-)