If you read my last two animal stories, you will realize we raised goats for a while. These were not the fancy boar goats that were just getting established in this country at the time, nor were they the Spanish mommas that many people had to clear brush. No I had to have Angora Goats. These are the goats with all the hair that have to be sheared twice a year.

We bought about 4 nannies and a black billy (or doe and buck as the goat people seem to prefer). I had visions of raising colored angoras. It has taken years of breeding to get this nice, consistent, white color and I wanted to scrap all that and breed the color back. I planned on spinning the natural colored mohair (that is what the hair is called. Angora comes from the rabbits) and selling what I did not use.

The first couple years were not too bad. They multiplied slowly and we would get out there twice a year and shear them. My husband, Paul actually got quite good at shearing the animals. We soon learned not to tie their feet like the professional shearers. It seems they relaxed when they were not tied up and they would zone out. With them relaxed, it was easier to shear them and less likely to hurt them. When we were through we rolled them back on their belly and had to shake them some to get them out of their meditation so they would get up and move on so the next could take their place.

After they were sheared we would put them back in the pen with the others and the unsheared ones would butt the sheared one around a while. It was almost like they were making fun of the other one. The one who was bullying the most was the one I usually picked to shear next.

When the herd got larger than 12 we had to divide the shearing over several days, shearing three at a time in the evenings after work. One year I left the matriarch for last and she kept looking at me, it seemed she was asking “Isn’t it my turn yet”. When we were finally ready for her she came easily and willingly to the shearing area. She was happy to get rid of her thick hot load!

I never did get a decent shearing from the goats because of the lice. They were infested. We tried all the available products but all they succeeded in doing was making the lice dizzy until lunch. The lice made the goats itch. An itching goat will rub against trees, against fence post, against barns, against truck fenders – you get the picture. All that rubbing will make the mohair felt on the goat.

Finally between the shearing, the lice and chasing the goats back into the pasture (who were going through the electric fence to get out) we decided to quit the goat business and raise cows instead.

After reading my story last week, my husband reminded me of another episode with Suzy Que the goat dog.

We lived on 68 acres and had fenced in about ¼ of an acre for our yard around the mobile home. One night as we were lying in bed just about to fall asleep here comes this Boom, Boom, Boom of a deep Great Pyrenees’ bark. This is a bark that easily transmitted through those weak, thin walls and readily seeped through the window that acted as our headboard. Covering our heads with the pillow was not doing it for us. At 2 in the morning, my husband Paul decided he had had enough and ran outside trying to chase Suzy away from the house where she could bark without sounding like she was outside our window.

She wouldn’t budge but thought it was a game. Paul came back in and put his shoes on and went back out to chase Suzy. Here was Paul running around the pasture chasing a white dog at two o’clock in the morning. He was throwing what ever he could grab at her. He came back in shoeless. This happened several times. I guess if you are into late night exercise this could be useful.

Actually Suzy was just doing her job. A Great Pyrenees has several barks and will use one bark in one location then run to another location and use a second sound then run to a third and use yet another bark. This is to confuse the coyotes and other dogs into believing that there is more than one dog in the pasture. It was just that Suzy was choosing all her locations around the house (probably because that was where the goats were hanging out).

After that every once in a while I would see Suzy out in the field carrying a shoe in her mouth.

Even to this day if you went walking around the field, you would come upon old shoes scattered around that Paul had thrown at Suzy in the middle of the night. Hmmm, I bet that is what happened to the pair of shoes that Paul could never find after we moved.