Funny Kapoorvilla Pet Story!

When we told our kids we were moving into our country home six years ago my daughter was so excited to hear we were moving out of the crowded subdivision with its small yard and into a home with sprawling yard surrounded by woods that she began to visualize being a farmer. She had dreamed of cows, pigs, goats and chickens. We explained that farm animals were a lot of work but were willing to compensate her with at least one farm type of pet which is what led to the idea of getting a pygmy goat. We visited a goat farm and there we found the most adorable set of baby goats. They were sister and brother and not quite old enough to leave their mom. They had white and black markings that resembled a dairy cow and where so tiny they were even smaller than normal pigmy kids. Once my daughter petted them there was no separating the pair so we returned a few weeks later to bring home the pair. She named them Rhoit and Nisha after characters in a very popular Bollywood movie ( India's answer to Hollywood ). She now felt she was a true farmer with her baby pigmy goats that looked like dairy cows.

Our new home came with a large fenced in side yard that already had a large dog house that appropriately was built to resemble a miniature barn. Our daughter spent a lot time with the two small goats as her swing set and trampoline were in this part of the yard as well. She would sit on the glider bench seat of her swing set with the goats seating on the foot rest or beside her on the bench. When I first saw her do this I worried the goat's may not enjoy this activity or fall and be hurt but I was proven wrong when they quickly learned to get on and off the glider swing themselves and enjoyed it so much we would often look out the window and find them own the swing. As they grew the swing became an issue. The swing was not big enough for both of them once they had grown so they begin to play a never ending "King of the Hill" dual to see who would get to sit on the swing. This made it impossible for Maya to sit with them on the swing as she once had because she would get knocked off as they try to shove each other off. Like with many pets things became harder to handle as they grew. When they were still small it was cute when Rohit wanted to play around with my son by lowering his head and charging but as he grew older even though he was a pigmy goat he was still able to give a hard enough hit to hurt and his appetite for this kind of game was never satisfied. They also proved to be experts at escaping their pen and getting in to our storage building or in the under house storage area.

It was during one of their "break ends" to the under house storage that what could have been tragic turned out with a funny ending. We came home and went to the side yard to give them fresh water and feed to discover they had eaten through the rope that tied the door to secure it and then pulled the latch to the doors that went under the house storage. While at first glance it seemed like a minor annoyance of clean up duty it quickly turn to fear as we discover little Nisha eating a box of rat poison. We discovered all the poison was gone from inside the open box and the green around her mouth confirmed she had eaten the contents. As we quickly pulled her out from under the house she brayed in resistance which brought her loyal brother from whatever corner he had been hiding to investigate what was going on. As he followed us into the sunlight we saw he too had the tale, tale green around his mouth from the coloring of the poison. As panic set in I quickly dialed up a friend who had experience in medical care for farm animals. He advised the situation was not as bad as we thought and that it was probably going to be ok but prescribed a substance to flush their system of the poison as a safety precaution to ensure the poison would not have the opportunity to damage the kidneys. You would think given two goats who had already proven they would eat anything oral medicine would be an easy task but it was a wrestling match to say the very least.

With the medicine given and the goats still show no ill effects from the poisons they had eaten we begin to relax and feel confident all was going to be well. Within a very short amount of time after going inside our home we heard a panic braying from their pen. We went flying back outside and around to their pen to see them standing there. Rohit looked wild eyed as if he had been spooked Nisha came around from behind their little barn braying. We looked closer to see her spattered with a brownish green liquid and as she came closer the smell confirmed it was not mud. As I was imagining what must of happened was Nisha as always was following close behind her brother when the medicine gave the desired cleaning out effect. As I was putting this all to the sequence of events in my mind Rohit confirmed my ideas with another explosive round of clean out which sent him in to another skittish run as he was absolutely unaware of what was happening! This time it was the little barn that was splattered. Nisha soon joined her brother in the clean out process. Over the next hour there was a horrible cycle of clean out explosions and wild running about splattering the sides of the house, the swing set, and trampoline. When things calmed down it took a pressure washer to clean up! As funny as it is looking back at the time it made it clear the goats were more than we could handle.

A small farm up the road had a nice enclosure where I had never seen the goats escape from. After speaking with the neighbor he agreed to let our goats join his in the very suitable home. Our daughter is able to visit when she likes and they are safely kept away from things that could harm them!