Goat in the ICU or Jackson, the amazing Pygmy goat

November 30, 2017

So I missed blogging last week and am late this week. I know you are on the edge of your seats waiting to hear about the goat in the ICU. I was traveling for Thanksgiving and too lazy to blog. Another reason I missed last week is that I couldn't find a good photo of Jackson, the goat. I was looking for the Christmas card I made one year where his head and most of his body was inside a paper feed bag and only his rear and tail were sticking out. But, alas, I couldn't find it. I might have been able to recover it, but that would involve cleaning out the closet in my office. Then the fun of trying to close the door before everything falls out would be gone. I also looked for the photo of him on the dishwasher door when it was open and the one of him on the kitchen table! No luck. If I find either, I promise to post.

For Valentine's Day one year, I gave Michael, my first husband, a pair of pygmy goats. We named them Señor Wences and Topo Gigio (re: Ed Sullivan show). They were sisters and very young when I bought them. A few months after we got them, we were backpacking in the Grand Tetons and Michael's parents were house sitting. We came in after a few days in the back country and called home. His mom said, "One of the goats had some yuck coming outta her. Then we found two goat babies on the ground. What should we do??" The good news is we got four goats for the price of two. The bad news is that the second pair came while we were gone and we had no clue the mother goat (Topo) was even pregnant (insert how many doctors does it take.........). I told them I thought Topo would know what to do. Since we were near Jenny lake and Jackson lake, we named them Jenny and Jackson. Definitely not our most original animal names.

If you haven't ever seen baby goats, you are missing out. They are the most adorable little things. All was well in the barnyard until one day in the fall I went out to feed and water and found Jackson in a ball on the ground. He was having trouble walking and kept wrapping his body around things. It was so weird. He was obviously very ill. Between one of the vet techs at UC and the Merck veterinary manual, we realized he had Listeria encephalitis, known as "circling disease." It is nearly 100% fatal, UNLESS your owners are both doctors.

Our utility room became the ICU for the next several months. It was so sad, bizarre, and unnerving to see him try to wrap his right side around the washing machine. The vet tech at UC helped us a lot. We gave Jackson shots of antibiotics twice a day and fed him via a tube in his nose. Do you know how embarrassing it is to ask your neighbor to help you tube feed a goat when your husband is away??? I was able to re-pay her later by holding her potentially anti-freeze poisoned Labrador while she force fed him vodka as an antidote. With the huge doses of antibiotics, we wiped out all the gut flora. So one day I was greeted with goat diarrhea all over the walls in the utility room. Enter probiotics. Miraculously he survived, but when we tried to put him out with his goat relatives, they were less than warm and tried to hurt him. So back to the utility room he went.

The dogs let him run with them, so he settled in. He was outside during the day and inside at night. When the UPS man pulled up, Jackson would walk up the steps prompting the driver to say, "that goat thinks he's a dog." Jackson went on to live a fulfilling goat life with eyes that pointed in different directions and the ability to ONLY turn right. He spent his golden years butting his reflection on the side of my red pickup truck with his horns and balancing on the tip of a dog igloo. He is no longer with us and I miss him so much. We are goatless, but I hope to one day remedy that situation. Don't tell Brian!

Coming next week-can't decide. Maybe the goat with precocious lactation or the horse spinal tap? Could be both, but I'll see how I feel.