Goat

My G is for goat, or should I say its dedicated to a very special goat!!

As you may have gathered, I live on a farm.  I love animals of all shapes and sizes (spiders excluded) and was thrilled to move onto the farm with Richard and his family and got to help out with the sheep and the cows.
As well as this fantastic home life, I managed to bag myself a job at the local theme park on the children's farm section.
I got to work with horses, cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens.  I really enjoyed it and loved all the animals.  Sadly foot and mouth hit the UK and the managers of the theme park decided that all the animals must go and the consensus was they were to be put down which there was no way I was going to let happen so I managed to find homes for as many of them as possible!  Rich said he had always wanted a goat so a goat is what we got!  She was born in June 2000 and called Beth.
She was only a few months old when we brought her home and decided straight away that I was her mummy.  She would follow me around the farm yard all day long and if I sat down she would curl up on my lap and go to sleep.
Rich made her a little shed for her to sleep in and during the day she would roam around the lawn munching the grass (who needs a lawn mower!!)  On the odd occasion she would come into our cottage and curl up on the rug and go to sleep.
I think it amused people who came down to our farm, most people have dogs walking around the yard, we had a goat :0)

As she grew bigger, so did her horns and by God she could cause some pain if she wanted to!  She had to be tethered as she would munch her way through Richards mums substantial flower boarders but she had a mega long lead and spent most of her time escaping from it and munching on said flowers!
When she did escape it was like something out of Benny Hill trying to catch her!  People would be diving everywhere while she would slip through  your legs.  At first you could bribe her with food but she soon got wise to that.  It got to the point where I was the only one that could catch her but you had to just sit on the floor and let her come to you then as you were smoothing her you had to wrestle her to the ground!

Beth was very much my first "baby".  See normal people have dogs or cats as a pet, not me, im different, always have been always will be!!

Sadly late last year Beth did her usual escaping trick and managed to munch something she shouldnt!  This wasnt the first time she had done this and on previous occasions we had taken her to the vet who had advised us to give her strong tea to neutralise her tummy.  Beth, like her "mummy" was not a big fan of tea so didnt really enjoy this very much but needs must so she had to have it.
This time the tea didnt work, she went downhill fast and I sat in the hay barn with her as she fell asleep, very peacefully.
I didnt get the whole crying over a dead pet thing until that day.  I phoned Rich and sobbed down the phone to him that she had died (am getting all emotional about it now!!)
Later that evening he came home, got a pic and a spade and dug a grave for her.  This was at the height of his bad shoulder and although he was in excruciating pain he carried on digging.  He then came to get blankets and laid one on the bottom of the grave, carried her over and laid her on top of the blanket.  He put another on top of her to keep her warm (sob) and buried her in a corner of our garden.  He marked her grave with stones and laid her collar on the top of the soil.  We said our good byes.

I miss seeing her about our garden, munching on the grass.  We have had to buy a lawnmower!!
So this post is dedicated to Beth, the best pet goat in the world!!

RIP Beth, the worlds best goat!!