My Beautiful Goat

This morning the goats both had bloody heads. That's right - black fur, white patches, and between the ears, sticky with red. The first time this happened (a year or so ago), I was fraught with panic, grabbing the first aid bucket and the emergency vet number. Now I'm just relieved that their head-butting game has likely saved me the trouble of wrenching off Elliot's latest scur, or overgrown horn bud, which was growing ominously downward toward his skull. A quick check confirmed my suspicions that the blood was all Ellie's, and all he needed was a spritz of blukote to ward off the flies swarming his wound. Anyway, there are way worse things than a broken scur.

Last month my husband remarked, "Elliot looks so good lately - his coat is perfect!"  Yes, I wanted to shout, he looks amazing - because I fixed him!! This pristine goat with his sleek fur and flawless skin is indeed the same animal who vexed us for a year and a half with a horrendous skin condition resistant to all treatments, including (but not limited to) topical and injected parasectisides, antibiotics, steroids, anti-fungal powder, skin scrapings, multiple biopsies under anesthesia, evaluation by an Ivy League veterinary school, massage therapy, lime sulfur baths, the wearing of socks and t-shirts and the "cone of shame." Nothing worked, no clear diagnosis could be made, and when last winter hit with its bitter ferocity, I just gave up.

Then spring came, and I tried something new, and I cured him.

I wanted to gloat, to tell everyone I knew, to call my vets and my farmer friends and write a blog about this amazing thing. Come see my beautiful goat, I would gleefully offer to everyone who had known him at his worst, all mangy and itchy and scabby. I could brag a little... and I should have, before my window of opportunity closed once again.

I bought a little wooden table at a yard sale a few weeks ago, thinking how much fun the goats would have jumping on and off it. Well, apparently Elliot had a bit too much fun with it, stretching his front legs over the table and then rubbing his belly rhythmically up and down over the edge. By the time I realized what he was doing and got my husband to hold him upside down for an examination, Elliot had rubbed himself so raw that a very critical part of his "boy-goat" anatomy was in peril of detachment from his body. (That's right - due to his earlier neutering, he only has one "boy-goat" part left, and it is not one a male of any species can afford to lose.) The table is gone, the first aid bucket is back, and poor Elliot is once again subject to daily wound treatments with betadine and antibiotic creams and all that...

So come see my beautiful goat. (Just don't look too closely underneath.) And pray I can fix this problem too.