You Can’t Fault Them……….sigh…..
Animals are animals.
Beasts are beasts. You can’t expect them to behave differently than Mother Nature intended. (I’ll throw humans in that animal category as well.)
But a person can intervene and try to alter the outcomes.
And here we are AGAIN—–with the dead electric fencing…………..
One of our clever (stupid) dairy goats somehow got into the backyard yesterday.
Not the best of choices. Not a choice that reinforces her personal longevity.
Now enter seven cavorting Irish Wolfhounds and two terriers who I left out of the house to bound around the backyard and evacuate at their leisure.
Unbeknownst to me there was a solo dairy goat in the hound’s territory.
No es bueno. Esto es muy malo para la cabra lechera.
Seven Irish Wolfhounds make a pack. Add two terriers as distractions. Don’t forget the rusty field fencing, plus there’s no juice in the electric lines that would have protected the rusty field fencing.
There’s even a chance that the doe wasn’t actually in the backyard to begin with. She may have been dragged under the fencing.
Regardless, I realize badness is happening by the agonizing, goat-cacophony coming from the side of the backyard about half way back.
So this old girl gets moving. Not pretty, but I get up a head of steam and momentum pointed in the same general direction. I know that plaintive cry……………it’s not good. And we don’t have a small backyard. I’ve got distance to cover.
And again I start with the full-throated banshee screaming……………..not that it helped………………but I was not quiet.
When I get there the doe is down, and there are Wolfhounds at her head and at her hind, keeping her down and systematically attacking her. These complacent couch-potato hounds have transformed into the Baskerville mutts………………very focused, very deaf to my commands, very intent on the kill.
The only thing I could do was launch and dive onto the doe and try to cover her with my body for as much safety as I can offer (as long as the hounds still consider ME sacred and they don’t try hamstringing ME).
DO NOT tell my orthopedic surgeons that one!
Over the years I have cultivated and nurtured the understanding that I am the alpha-bitch in this household. At that moment in time, I was really relying on that knowledge being foundational and that the Wolfhound pack remembered my status and respected it……………..especially with the odor of fresh blood in the air.
Even with my ample-ness, it’s difficult to cover all of a one hundred and twenty pound goat. Plus the idiot is struggling to get away from ME. And we are in a newly sprouted patch of nettles (I still don’t know what they are officially named)-(I don’t feel them until later……….)
And the hits just keep on comin’!
Instinctive pack behavior is phenomenal to watch……………….even though I didn’t want to/and I certainly didn’t want to see it from front-row seats………………….but I was thoroughly in the fray now…
And wouldn’t you know, with all of the downed limbs and trees from Hurricane Irma, there was NOTHING I could reach to use as a weapon without exposing the doe to more damage. But I could yell———-and yell I did.
I yelled each attacking individual’s name, I alternated eye-contact as best I could, I flailed at them when there was a lull. Plus, I was the only human at home. There was no cavalry riding in for our rescue.
Slowly the fervor started to subside. The doe was in shock, but still alive and looked like she would heal and survive. But it was so hard getting her and me up off the ground in a safe way without incurring another round of hound attacks……………………..plus she was being, you guessed it, a butt-head. She was completely set on trying to twist off my hand and wrist (which had a death-grip on her collar). Silly, dumb-butt goat……………
I managed to get her back in with the rest of her herd. She was wobbly but alive and not too dramatically damaged———-that I could tell with a cursory spot-check and the waning evening twilight.
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So as of today. The doe is still amongst us. She has not yet departed to her caprine version of Valhalla. Her temperature did spike to 104.2 F. She is on 6cc/SQ of antibiotics daily. Her hind quarters have lacerations and punctures. Her tail is broken. She is still capable of nursing her singleton kid.
My older daughter and I have nailed up a welded metal panel to cover where she either got out or was pulled out.
I’m re-wiring the top-line of the entire pasture. I am about 3/4 done. When I have that one line with an optimal charge, then I will add another, and then another, until they are all up to “steam” appropriately. I’m not chain-sawing, I am re-routing.
The priority is getting a working fence as soon as possible without any further damage to livestock, hearth and home……………………and me.
Oh, and apparently I am allergic to these nettle-whatevers. I have infected welts all over my body………………………..what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, huh?
I also write notes to myself on my hands. “Wormer” means I wormed the stallions and I need to post it on the calendar and the Rolodex…………………….that’s just how life rolls on the oasis……………………
Plus, my daughter just reminded me———-this was not the first belly-whop onto a goat to save it from the marauding horde of Wolfhounds. She had to do the same thing to save Optimus Prime as a baby goat when a tree went over the fence from a different storm and he foolishly wandered out……………….
I love Irish Wolfhounds……………..but you have to respect the “wolf” AND the “hound” part together.
That’s just how it is.