The Animal Rights Activist Who Got it Wrong

Livestock Guardian Dog & Granny help new mama
clean off baby Sofie. Is this abusive, too?

OK, so that’s kind of a strong statement to lead off with. But, dammit, reactive “animal rights” activists make me so mad I could spit. Spit, dammit. And my day started off so well, too.

I was drinking my coffee on this fine Labor Day when Katherine told me about a Facebook tirade on our friend’s page. The friend had posted a memory of her all-time favorite goat. In this happy memory, the goat and girl were smiling for the camera with ribbons galore. To protect the innocent, I will not share the exact picture but here’s something similar to give you the idea. 

Katherine and Pupa

The sad part of the post is that the goat died in kidding later that year, much to the dismay of the young breeder. Hence the commemorative 1-year memory.

We’ve all been there. I’ve written about the intense emotions of raising goats. Long days and nights waiting for a goat to go into labor, watching for subtle signs, rushing home from school, burning rubber out of the driveway at 2:00am to help someone else’s goat in labor. Hours in the barn/garage waiting for a goat to give birth. The unimaginable stress of a complicated birth: pullers, lube, various repositioning techniques, crying goats, crying people. Tears of unadulterated frustration, tears of abject grief.

And that’s not even when you have to make the hard call to put a goat down. In that scenario multiply all of the above by 10.

If I can do it So Can You

So, back to our friend’s post. There she is smiling with her now-deceased favorite goat. The post was meant to pay homage to her goat, to her relationship with her pet, and to her love for this animal. Back in early 2018 when she put her goat down, she posted photos of her “tribute wall” to her goat: a wall full of ribbons, plaques and photos attesting to the wonderful partnership of the goat and its handler. Awww, big smiles. That’s why we are “in goats.”

The memory included a collage of photos about her goat. Again, to protect her identity and privacy, I won’t use her photos. But I will include a similar montage of our own goat. (We adored this goat and the myriad of life experiences we had with her. She lived 11 or 12 wonderful years and taught us so much.)

Pupa

At first, the responses to our friend were all normal – like, like, like, “that was last year!,” love, tears, etc. But then… there was this left-field response:

I scratched my head in baffled confusion.

Slaughter? Um, what slaughter? The goat was euthanized after a bad kidding. Her owner was right there with her the entire time – scratching her shoulder and holding her hoof. Slaughter? What the hell? And … Jesus…? What does he have to do with this? Protein? It’s as if we were transported to parallel universe where you say one thing and the “universal translator” comes up with something totally different.

Universal Translator at Work

Our friend responds: “She wasn’t slaughtered? She was a beloved pet.” (Duh).

The Activist responds:

Um, right-o. Our buddy can account for each and every one of her goats. Not just their whereabouts, either. In fact, I will bet you $10 right here and now that she could recite--off the top of her head--the registered show name, barn name and three degrees of pedigree for each and every one of her goats… AS WELL AS their favorite treats and individual idiosyncrasies. I know Katherine can. I just asked her.

And we aren’t talking about one or two goats here; these girls have 50-100 goats at any given time.

Where is this verbal abuse about “animal abuser,” “Jesus” and “protein” coming from? I’m disappointed to say that, after stalking my friend’s page, this is not the first false accusation of goat abuse she has received.

[Sidenote: CHECK YOUR FACEBOOK PRIVACY SETTINGS! The activist in our story is not a “friend.”She must’ve stumbled across my buddy. I’ll get to that. First things first,check your settings!!]

My buddy is a better person than I, ‘cuz I woulda blasted The Activist. Like a true Christian, my friend let it go.

What really frosts me is that The Activist jumped on this post making some blatantly wrong assumptions. She viewed the post through her “save-the-animals-from-the-evil-humans” filter. And then she reacted. Without thinking. (As my dear ex-husband used to say, “There’s a difference between being open minded and having a hole in your head.)

The Activist obviously didn’t read any further on my friend’s page or she would’ve seen a slew of loving posts about baby goats, about piling goats into the cab of her truck when the trailer got a flat tire, about preferring goats to people, etc. etc. Totally normal stuff in the Pygmy Goat World.

So, how did The Activist even find my buddy? All I can figure is that The Activist was trolling around Facebook doing some random search or another--maybe “goat”? But wait. I just did that search and got this:

Certainly nothing about slaughtering goats. Or maybe those search results are based on my preferences? On a complicated algorithm I’m certain. Facebook seems to think I like cute videos of animals (which I do).

So, what does Facebook think The Activist likes to see? Yikes. If you include “slaughter” in your search you do come across some gruesome images and videos. But, not about Pygmy Goats. And not about my friend.

I know my friend has an active and successful breeding and sales program, and I suspect she sources a lot of sales off of Facebook (since Katherine does, too). But, again, if you search “goat sales” you get lots of cute baby goat photos.

I have yet to unravel this mystery. Perhaps The Activist and her buds are targeting my friend?  God knows why, though. (Oooo, there it is … I invoked religion…! Per The Activist’s accusation.)

I remember a story in the newspaper a while back about an Animal Rights group (that shall remain nameless lest I use my voice as free advertising). In the middle of the night they raided a goat farm based on some misguided notion that the goats were being mistreated.

They found a baby goat with a runny nose and some lice and gallantly "rescued" it from the evil farmer. OK, I admit I am skeptical based on my own experience with goats. Runny noses and lice are not uncommon; they are yucky and sub-optimal, but not earth shattering. In fact, I bet I could find some goats that fit that description in my field right now. Hell, I could probably find CHILDREN with runny noses and lice, too. But I digress…

Back to our story. Our Heroic Activist steals the baby goat, ripping it away from its mother. And what do you think happened? The baby goat got SICKER… because it wasn’t eating…because it didn’t know how to nurse off of a bottle…because it had a mama. (I refer you to my post about bottle feeding baby goats. It’s not as easy as you – or The Activist—might think).

Fortunately, The Activist took the kid to a vet who dosed it up with some antibiotics and convinced it to eat from a bottle. The baby survived and was re-homed with some seemingly-sensible people who now love the little animal.

But, the story easily could’ve had a different, tragic ending because of the rash act of The Activist.

Time for a breather. I need to get my blood pressure back down. 

Here’s a cute baby goat video of the antics of our goat “Sofie” and her farmyard friends. 

The Antics of Sofie

Yes, of course, there are some bad farmers out there. And, yes, some animals are raised in deplorable conditions (people, too, for that matter).

As a society we must be careful not to view everything exclusively through our personal biases. Just because there are some bad people, doesn’t mean all people are bad.

 

The Law of the Hammer and the Nail

And for God’s sake, we need to educate ourselves before we react.

Yup

A New Mission: Enjoy Each Other's Company

Mark, our Therapy Goat, and his pals

The dust has finally settled here on the goat farm, figuratively that is (‘cuz there is ALWAYS dust on the goat farm). The antics and mudslinging of Convention really threw us all for a loop. But a lot has happened since then. And I am happy to report that it is all well.

In our last episode, Katherine wrote a scathing post about the less-than-stellar behavior of adults in The Pygmy Goat Show World. What she didn’t explain was “why.” So, here’s my 2 cents.

A group of people ganged up on an individual in the goat world to push her out of the goat show circuit. It started back in the fall, with the Johnnes scare … or shall I call it an outbreak? I refer you to my November 2016 post "Last to Know". 

I took quite a lot of heat for that post. Phone calls. Texts. Social media. No surprise. Johnnes is a sensitive subject, to say the least. Katherine took a lot of grief for it, too – being accosted on her Facebook page by one particularly angry parent who questioned Katherine’s own testing protocols. Maybe she didn’t read the blog? Anyways, the tempest blew over, as it always does, and I didn’t hear any more about the subject for … seven months. Until Convention.

Cicadas, thanks to National Geographic

In truth, I had secretly hoped the drama had drifted away again. Johnnes scares are as predictable as cicada swarms: 5 years for Johnnes, 17 or 13 for cicadas. 

The first day of convention, at the kick-off muckety-muck meeting, the s*&t hit the fan. Accusations flew: supposedly “Susan” (our friend in “Last to Know”) knowingly sold Johnnes-infected goats to families around the country. And, to boot, Susan allegedly FORGED her test results to hide the evidence.

For Pete’s sake. If anyone had just asked Susan, like Katherine did, they would have gotten to the bottom of the matter. Maybe they had ulterior motives or wanted to deflect the attention from themselves. Who knows.

But it turned into a full-blown ethics accusation. Susan’s membership was revoked, which cascaded into a torrent of other consequences --- which I won’t go into because it doesn’t matter now. What does matter is that the process was a witch hunt on par with the Salem witch trials of 1692. 

Salem Witch Trials

For a teenager, it was pretty shocking that adults sometimes act like middle school “mean girls.” (Welcome to the world, honey.) Hence Katherine’s post ("For the Youth"). 

Fast forward three months, and the dust has settled. People combed through by-laws and minutes, committee chairs left in protest, lawyers sent letters. Charges were dropped and the mob stood down. Susan’s membership was reinstated and everything returned to “normal.”

Kudos to Susan. She’s one of the strongest, most tenacious and most practical women I’ve ever met. And ETHICAL. So there. You all know what side I am on. But why are there even sides in this matter?

Aren’t we all in this for the same reasons? For the love of goats and fellowship with our goat-y community?

Apparently not.

Katherine and I have spent countless hours discussing the matter. Hashing and re-hashing the specific events. Speculating on motives. Venting about “fair” and “unfair.” Reviewing why we have 50 goats on the property and spend a ton of money traveling to remote (and dusty) places to walk our fancy animals around in circles. Anticipating the NEXT blow up. Because in the goat world, there is ALWAYS a next time.

Vicious Cycle

Unless you do something to stop the cycle. Wait. Whaaaaat? It doesn’t have to be this way? Stop it. 

I admit I was content to bury my head in the sand and to be glad that the din had subsided. But Katherine was not. (Ah, youth).

“What exactly is it that I want to get out of goats?” Katherine asked over and over again. It became her mantra. By God, she was going to fix this problem - somehow.

Instead of focusing on the negative, Katherine focused on the positive. She started talking to other goat people about what brought them into goats in the first place and what they ultimately want to get out of it. The answer was the same every time: community.

Yes, goats are cute, cuddly, furry little bundles of love. Watching them frolic makes your heart leap for joy. Holding their warm bodies against your chest calms your soul. Goats make great therapy animals ("Therapy Goat in Training").  

But ultimately, we embark on this abstract hobby because we enjoy hanging out with like-minded people who enjoy raising and living with goats as much as we do. It’s the community and the human-interaction that we crave.

In a world dominated by screens and permeated by the haze of blue computer light, we yearn for connection with other living creatures. For some, it’s goats.

So, how to get back to that welcoming, inclusive, FUN community? ‘Cuz that’s not what we have right now, that’s for sure.

Katherine reached out to people and they pondered the question at great length, finally deciding to form their own pygmy goat club. One right here in our own backyard (literally). The founders met IN PERSON — not over little screens—over and over again to hash out the foundation of their new club: mission, bylaws, non-profit status, accounting procedures, responsibilities, fund raising, websites, EVENTS. Especially events.

This club has to be fun. There have to be plenty of reasons for people to COME TOGETHER to enjoy each other’s company in the presence of goats. Potlucks, barbeques, goat shows, clinics. And the list goes on.

The group is deep in the throes of organizing their first goat show, and Katherine is back to her happy, goat-herder self.

She feels empowered to fix what’s broken. Rather than wallowing in what is wrong, she is reveling in what is right. At the same time, she’s building a community that shares her values. It’s not just about winning ribbons (though that is rewarding in its own right); it’s about connecting with people.

Bay Area Pygmy Goat Club

To illustrate that point, I’ll finish with one quick anecdote from a couple weeks back.

Katherine and her little brother embarked on a road trip to Cottonwood, Arizona, for—yes, you guessed it—a goat show. Well, actually, FOUR goat shows. Woohoo. The drive took 14 hours each way. Wretched in my mind, which is why I stayed home.

When they got home three days later, I asked how the show went.

“Did you win anything?” I eagerly asked.

“Nope.”

Disappointed, I ventured a tentative, “Was the 28 hours of driving really worth it….?”

“Of course it was. I made a new friend! He got into goats three years ago…. He has 14 goats, named….He told me about a new feed…He wants to be a judge too!” and on and on and on she went.

I was embarrassed by my own shallow priorities. I mistakenly thought Katherine went to Arizona to win some grands, when really, she went down there to connect with her people.

Silly Mom. I could learn a thing or two from this kid.

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