Officially Insane

I'll have to back up a little to preface the story and explain my insanity. Last Friday (the 4th), Daddy and I went up to Tulsa for a Christmas party and to drop R off for the weekend with Grandpa and Nana. We got home pretty late, close to midnight and found two very large dogs in our back pasture. I was scared for my safety, but my brave husband immediately thought of our goats and their safety. He went back there and found our sweet Belle dead. We found Cinderella cowering in the barn, apparently unharmed (though we found a little bit of damage on her ears in the morning). Daddy put her into the chicken coop and attempted to round up the dogs into the old goat pen. They ran off, but we brought Sydney in just in case they came back, because they were at least twice her size. In the morning, we found one of the dogs - a full-blood German Shepherd - apparently stuck in the back pasture, but dutifully guarding the pasture against intruders. I thought, well the dog is obviously trained, maybe we'll just keep it if we can't find the owner because its instincts are pretty good. Sam went out and both dogs were back there and he got them into the goat pen and found the owner's number. He called the owner and his wife came and picked up the dogs right away. They had just moved out to our area less than 2 weeks earlier and their dogs had gotten out. Long story short, they paid us for the damages, but in the interesting ordeal, we think we've found some friends out here in the sticks. They have 2 daughters close to R's age.

But there was the problem with Cinderella. You can't have just one goat. They are herding animals and will try to escape to find herd-mates. They can hurt themselves in the process or even get killed. So we kept her locked up for a few days while I searched craigslist.com for a goat friend for her. We were lucky and found one that is only 5 weeks old, but weaned and a full-blood Boer goat. So we picked that sweet goat up on Monday after R came home. She looks a lot like Belle, but is a little lighter brown, what goat-people call red-headed. So R named her Ariel. They are getting acquainted, but Cinderella has the big sister-attitude with her, but doesn't mind her hanging around all that much.

Ariel

I told Daddy we need to rename our farm to XX Farms with all this female-ness going on! (In reference to the X chromosomes, not anything bad.... goodness what were YOU thinking??? )