Sassy
This was the perfect name for my first success at raising a baby goat on the bottle. A friend named her and it so fit. She was feisty from day one. Until she outgrew crawling through the gate panel, she never stayed in her pen. She always greeted me at the barn door for her bottle.
Dusty, my barn cat, a faded orange tiger, and Sassy became fast friends and companions. Many a time when I went to the barn early, there they were cuddled together.
For a while, I tried to keep her penned; that soon went by the wayside and she had the run of the yard. I worried for a while about her getting run over when she ventured into the road, but the sound of the vehicles sent her scurrying towards the barn.
It was nothing to see her and Dusty playing tag early of a morning down by the barn. That was a comical sight. As time went by, it was nothing to see the two of them peeking through the storm door on the back porch early of a morning eagerly awaiting their breakfasts.
The lowboy parked near the barn was a favorite place for her afternoon nap. She hopped on it and played on it frequently.
There were no other goats her age to play and relate to, so she was a loner and I guess didn’t really feel like one of them. The other goats have never really accepted her into the group. Maybe they suspect how spoiled and privileged she is.
My granddaughters played with her when she was small, made her necklaces out of clover and pony beads, and she napped on their laps. When they left in the evening one time, she wanted to go with them. She didn’t understand why they had left her.
Her reign of the yard ended last fall when she started hopping and playing on the cars and my oldest son caught the action. He promptly fixed her a pen, she was in it a couple of hours, and then she was out.
It took me quite a while to figure out how she was escaping; until I caught her coming over a wood palette, it was like a ladder.
When she was finally put in with the herd, they didn’t much want to share the barn with her. She was on the outside of the barn hollering one evening, I called to her, she sneaked around them, and I let her into another part of the barn. I fed her there, she spent the night, and after she had been fed in the morning, I let her out.
Recently, I noticed she was going to have a baby by and by, so she was getting extra TLC. A week or so ago, I hadn’t let her in for a few days, because it hadn’t been handy to let her into the barn. One morning, I saw her by herself by a gate, and she called to me. I let her out into the outside barnyard and into the barn and fed her. I had to leave for a while and knew she wouldn’t run off. When I came back two hours later, she had a baby boy waiting for me. I put her in the pen and she stayed four days.
I came home one afternoon, she was outside, and called to me to let her back with her baby. I have since put them where she has lots of room and two other goats have babies, so at least hers won’t be a loner. When I scratch her back, she wags her tail. She knows which side her bread is buttered on. She’s my Sassy.
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