When Jerry died, my show horse, Bree, was in Iowa, and Teddie, Jerry’s best buddy, was left alone. Horses are herd animals. While they can survive without a companion, they are happier with one. Teddie and Jerry were especially close because Jerry was deaf. I called her his hearing ear horse.
“She’s going to be lonely,” I said to Dewayne, a friend who’d come to offer support as Jerry crossed the Rainbow Bridge.
“Get her a goat,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Where am I going to get a goat?”
“I’ll be right back.” Dewayne hopped in his truck and was gone.
An hour or so later, he returned, horse trailer in tow.
“Oh, Lord,” I said. “What’d you bring me?”
“A goat,” he said. “Meet Billy.” He opened the back door of the trailer, and there was Billy, a white fellow who was not at all happy about the sudden change in his circumstances. Dewayne led Billy into the pasture, removed the ropes from his horns, and let him go.
Teddie was standing off by herself, grieving for her friend who we’d buried that morning at the back of the pasture. When Dewayne released the goat, Teddie’s ears perked forward, and she snorted in Billy’s direction. She’d never seen a goat before, and curiosity got the best of her. She trotted in the goat’s direction, and the two spent the next few hours trying to decide what to make of each other and who would be the boss of whom.
Pairing a goat with a horse is an age-old practice. Chances are you’ve heard or used the phrase “Don’t let him get your goat” when advising someone not to let someone else ruffle their feathers. Apparently, people used to pair goats with racehorses to keep the horses calm before they ran. If one wanted to disadvantage someone’s horse in a race, they’d upset the horse by “getting its goat.”
Within a few days, Teddie and her goat were inseparable. If Billy disappeared around a corner for a moment, she found him. I wasn’t convinced that Billy was as enamored with Teddie as she was with him, and he definitely wanted nothing to do with me or my best human.
Billy had been used for goat tying, a rodeo event where a rider gallops to the middle of a pen where a goat is tied to a stake. The rider jumps off the horse, flips the goat over, and ties its legs. Whoever does it the fastest is the winner. While the goats aren’t hurt in this event, it’s fair to say the experience is unpleasant from a goat’s perspective. It took two and a half years for Billy to trust me enough to take treats from my hand. I don’t take his trust lightly.
Although spring is in the air, it’s been very windy in southern Arkansas this week. Morning temperatures have dipped into the low thirties. Cold, windy weather is not Billy’s cup of tea. On more pleasant mornings, he joins the horses in the pasture for a breakfast of alfalfa flakes. Yesterday, however, when we turned the horses out, Billy left the tub of straw where he sleeps next to Teddie’s stall and made a bee-line for the three-sided shelter in the pasture. He spent the rest of the morning standing in the back corner, horns pressed against the wall.
Teddie ate her fill of hay. Then, instead of staying to graze with the other horses, she planted herself in front of the shelter, cocked a hind leg, and spent most of the morning dozing a few feet from her wind-averse companion. I glanced out my kitchen window from time to time, wondering if the allure of spring grass and Teddie’s innate desire to graze would be stronger than her loyalty to her goat, but they were not.
It was such a lovely reminder of how little it takes to support someone whose day isn’t going quite as they would like it to go. On a morning when he didn’t feel up to facing the elements, Billy found a place to turn away from the world for just a little while, and Teddie showed up to hold space a few feet away from her buddy. She didn’t do anything in particular. She was just there.
Eventually, Billy deemed the elements sufficiently tame to warrant leaving the shelter. When he was ready, Teddie followed him to the pasture, where they enjoyed the rest of the first day of spring grazing in the company of friends.
Teddie and Billy! I hadn’t heard that horses took to goats, though I had heard that billy goats could be quite a handful, as compared to nanny goats. It sounds like Teddie tempers whatever problems that might have occurred with Billy.
This was a heart-warming and fascinating story. Thanks for sharing!
Lovely.