Lending a Helping Hoof

Sometimes, we need to be kind goats and people, and lend a helping hoof to someone who needs it.  We should always be kind goats and people, of course, but there are times that we need to go that extra mile, or kilometre, depending on where you live.  Sometimes we need to eat that extra blade of grass, or demolish that extra rose bush.  It all depends on your perspective.

For example, the other day when my lady was shopping, I channeled thoughts to her that we should help others. She received my message loud and clear, and now this nice pink decoration is stuck on a wall at the shop with lots of other nice pink decorations.  We are helpful, my lady and I.  This was to help other ladies who are being hurt by people.  That's not very nice.  I think I should butt those nasty people.

Sometimes, we need to help somebody we know personally.  That's what we're writing about today.  You might remember on my grand cross-country journey, I visited our friend in New York, Isobelle Golightly the Beautiful Goat!  Well, Isobelle's lady has a sweet wee pup who has a bad thing in her hip.  It's going to need an operation called....oh dear, I'm not very good with long words....it's...a female oh-stick-to-me.  I think her bone is stuck.

Ohhhh Lucky Nickel, I have to interrupt your post here.  We have to tell everybody properly what the problem is.  Kezia the puppy has femoral deterioration.  That means her femur bone in her leg is sort of crumbling away.  How very sad for such a young pup.  She needs a very expensive operation called a femoral ostectomy.  It's going to cost over $3000 for her lady to have this operation done!  Okay, you can keep telling the people now what we are doing for sweet little Kezia.

Right.  I shall just say she needs an operation.  Like my operation, when I got spayed, but it's much more complicated.  The good thing is, once she has her operation, she will be able to run and jump like other puppies and goat kids, and she has a very good chance at a normal life, because she is so young and her body will more easily recover.  Isn't that good news?!  We are very happy about Kezia having such a lovely lady to take care of her.  Here is my lady playing with Kezia on her lap!

My lady said, when she met Kezia, that she was a very special dog.  My lady can tell these things.  She said that Kezia has a special role to play in this life.  She knew it was very important to help Kezia.

So, here is what we are doing!  This is so exciting!  My lady has two online shops.  One is her former online shop for Whispering Acres in Iowa, and one is her new shop for Scotia Spinner in Nova Scotia!  Both of her shops have lots of lovely handspun yarns and also some fibre if you want to spin your own!  If you read this blog post and put in the 'message to seller' that this is a Kezia purchase, my lady is donating ALL the funds from the sale to Kezia.  She will do this for the rest of May.  You have two whole weeks to go and purchase anything from either of her shops and all the funds will go to Kezia's operation, AND my lady will cover the shipping costs herself.  Here are the addresses for her two shops (she will slowly be closing out the Iowa one over time):

http://www.etsy.com/shop/whisperingacres  (this is the Iowa shop)
http://www.etsy.com/shop/ScotiaSpinner (this is the Nova Scotia shop)

Also, if you don't need yarn but you do need goat coats or wonderful goat soap, go see these other two wonderful blogs who are also helping Kezia!
http://pricillaspeaks.blogspot.com/  (10% of goat soap proceeds to Kezia for May!  Hooray!)
http://texan.blogspot.com/2011/05/okay-here-they-are.html (wonderful goatie coats for kid goats!!  I want one but I'm too big now!)
(and keep reading on for another way to help!)

Remember to put in the "message to seller" that it's for Kezia.  That way my lady will know.

BUT WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!  That's not all!!!

My lady has been learning a new art form.  She is doing some jewelry work.  She has always wanted to do that, but she was much too busy before.  Now she is having fun with it, and she has done quite well with making bracelets so far.  My lady hasn't got any of her bracelets listed in her shop yet, so she is offering them here, first!  You are getting the first view!  Aren't you lucky?!  Anyway, my lady is offering the bracelets for the Kezia fund raising too!  If you buy any of these bracelets in the next two weeks, she will give all the funds to Kezia, and again my lady will cover the shipping.

The single strand bracelets and memory wire bracelets are $15, the 3 strand bracelets (and the green single with all the dangly bits) are $18, and the 5 strand bracelets are $22.  If you would like to buy one to help Kezia, please send my lady an email or post in the comments.  Our email address is ScotiaSpinner at gmail dot com.  We know that you all know how to change the "at" and the "dot" into the proper bits.  We don't want our email address picked up by web bots.

Here are my lady's lovely bracelets.  Please buy one to help little Kezia!  My lady is sorry about the pictures being not very bright.  The weather here is dismal for photography.  We will try to mark them off as they sell.

SOLD!! This one is 5 strands, with beads made of glass, shell, and dyed Jasper.

SOLD!! This one is 3 strands, with beads made from Amazonite, Aventurine, shell, glass, and metal.

SOLD!!  This is a memory wire bracelet with beads made of glass, along with garnet chips and Russian jade cubes, as well as snow obsidian chips.

SOLD!! This is another memory wire bracelet with beads made from glass, along with aventurine chips, Jasper and Carnelian beads.

This is a 5 stranded bracelet with beads made from glass, shell, yellow tiger-eye, and Jasper.

SOLD!! This is a single strand bracelet of glass nuggets and Jasper.

This one is a 3-strand bracelet with glass beads and jade cubes.

 This is another 3 strand bracelet with rose quartz, glass and metal beads, as well as green Aventurine beads.

 Here's a fun bracelet with lots of dangles on it!  This one has glass beads, wire wrapping, and Australian Jasper beads too!

 This is a 3 strand bracelet with glass beads and yellow tiger-eye chips.

 SOLD!! This is the last one - 5 strands with glass beads, Carnelian, Russian Jade cubes and Mookiate chips.

We do hope you'll like one enough to help out our favourite little pup!  Goatie kisses from Isobelle!

Mainely Maine, and then Can of Duck

Ok, finally, my lady is letting me finish the journey blog, because there are lots of other blogs she needs to do (so she says, although I don't see how anyone could possibly be interested in her stuff because my stuff is infinitely more amusing).  In fact, this last bit occurred on April 12, but she has been so ridiculously busy since arriving in Can of Duck that I am only getting to do this now.  Anyway, last I wrote to you, we had just entered our 9th of 9 states on our journey, which was our last state, and which was Maine.  I don't know where the "e" comes from but that's how my lady said they spell it.  Why isn't it just Main?  Maybe they thought that would be too short.  I think my name would be pretty silly if I was Luckye Nickele.

I liked it there because there are a lot of yummy pine trees.  I think that's why they call it vacationland, because you can go on a vacation there to eat the pine trees, since they have so many.  In fact, my lady began to complain about the scenery a wee bit, because she said it was getting boring...all those trees.  She was just anxious to be back in Can of Duck Canada and was tired after 4 days of driving.

Due to the boredom of my lady, and her friendly helper man, there were a couple of rest stops in Maine.  Her man was feeling a bit stiff and sore after driving that U-Haul all that long way from Iowa, so he tried doing the exercises in the rest stop area.  I thought he looked like a donkey rubbing its bum on the fence, except there was no fence.  Don't tell him I said that. I'm supposed to be nice to him.

We kept on driving, and while in Maine, we got to see very pretty views of Mount Katahdin.  My lady couldn't get good pictures because she was driving and couldn't look at what her cell phone was pointed at.  This is the best one, and the mountain is hidden behind the trees.  I wanted to climb the mountain because that is what goats do, but she said not this time.  You might like to know that Katahdin sheep are named after it though - they were developed by a man from Maine who imported wool-less sheep from the Caribbean.  I'm not sure why there aren't any Katahdin goats.  Anybody knows goats are better than sheep.

On the day of our border crossing, we stayed at a hotel called the "White House" and my lady had a discussion with her favorite President before we got on the road.  She was quite excited to have her picture taken with him.  He didn't say much though!

When we finally got to the border between the USA and Can-of-Duck, that is when I really showed my skills.  My lady had to get a lot of stuff she called "paperwork" completed before she could take me across the border.  I think I could have just walked across and nobody would have noticed, but because I was in her car, I had to have "paperwork" with me.  One day soon, my lady will write a post about how to take a goat or sheep across the border.  It might help somebody else.

My personal feeling is that you just have to be your charming self, and try to eat the paperwork, because it makes the inspection vet laugh.  Shows you how important that "paperwork" really is!  The vet wanted to look at the scar I had from when I was spayed, and also looked at my teeth.  I think he was worried that I might bite him, but I have never bitten anybody, at least not intentionally.  It doesn't help with making fans happy when you bite people.  After the border inspection vet and his assistant looked at my paperwork, petted me, laughed at how charming I was, and signed some VIG documents (very important goat), they had their picture taken with me, because of course I am famous.

After this experience, my lady was finally back in her home country, and I saw her wiping away a few little tears.  I'm not sure if she was excited or even more bored with all those pine trees.  Anyway, our first Canadian province was New Buns-Wick.  I was extremely disappointed that there were no buns to eat when we arrived.  I think maybe they put wicks into buns and use them as candles there?  I really have no clue.  Seems like a pretty weird name to me.  I could have done better than that.  For example, New Goatswick would have been a better choice.

Now, all through Maine, and then again in New Buns-Wick, we had to worry about large mice.  My lady showed me the sign.  It looks like this:

As you can see, the mice in this part of the world are very large, with enormous antennae on their head, and they are very tall as well.  If you hit one with your car by mistake, the mouse will win.  It is dreadfully dangerous to hit a mouse while driving.  The mouse is a timid animal and mostly stays in the woods, but in mating season, sometimes the male mouse is seen on the side of the road, snorting and breathing fire.  Well, I heard that from another goat, so it's obviously true.  I didn't see it happen though.

After a lot of pine trees and not a single mouse sighting, we finally managed to drive all the way through New Buns-Wick and we arrived in our final destination province, Nova Squasha, which made my lady cry a lot and she nearly had to pull over because she was all atwitter.  Now, you might be asking yourself, will I be squashed in Nova Squasha?  No, of course not, silly!  It's an ancient Gaelic term meaning goats.  Nova means new.  So "New Goats" is where we are living.  You can take my word for it.  

We drove past the area where my lady is going to have her new home, but right now she can't quite move into it yet.  There have been all sorts of delays with the new farm because the seller is not very well and has been in hospital, and there were some misunderstandings with the lawyers, and it has all made her very frustrated, but we won't dwell on that.  Here is a picture of the area she will be living on her new farm, with me of course, her first and foremost spokesgoat.

It is very pretty, and it has a lot of pine trees.  I shall enjoy eating them.  As you can see, I will not run out of pine trees for a very long time.  For now, though, I am staying at another farm near my lady's parents home, so that my lady can visit me.  It makes my lady very sad that she can't have me there all the time, but she has to be patient, and so do I.  For now, everything my lady owns (except me and the cat) is in one of two enormous storage units.  It's a little bit upsetting for her and she's not in a very writing sort of mood lately, but she'll be alright soon, and you'll get to hear all her boring human news sooner or later.  

In the meantime, you can rest assured that I am a very happy new Canadian goat, and I shall be monitoring the situation here so that you can learn all the news as soon as I can write about it.  Goatie kisses to all my fans in the US, Can of Duck Canada, and anywhere else in the world!  

The Journey Continued!

I know you're all just anxious to hear about my continued journey, and I don't want to disappoint, so I thought I should keep going with my stories.  Last I left you (before I had to go eat some hay), we were visiting Isobelle and her friends.  Here is the entrance to their lovely farm.  There is a helpful "critter crossing" sign so that nobody would run me over.  Small goats can be dangerous on the road!  See the lovely stream?!

My lady had some special things to give to Isobelle's lady. First, she gave her some things called "house plants."  I really don't understand the need for plants in her house.  If she wants to eat something, she should go outside and nibble on some twigs and leaves and grass.  Who needs plants in the house when you can go outside to eat?  Anyway, my lady and Isobelle's lady spent a long time looking at my lady's plants.  I think my lady was telling her their names.

Or perhaps she was telling her which ones were tastiest?  They sure looked happy about it though!  

My lady wasn't allowed to take plants over the border to Can of Duck Canada.  It doesn't seem to matter that there are plants that grow ON the border and they all share the same dirt.  I mean really, those customs officers must be a bit soft in the head.  Maybe they've been butted a few too many times?

Speaking of being butted, my lady just went right on into the pasture with Isobelle and her goat friends without worrying about Durin and Dayel.  They are two boy goats who are a little bit feisty sometimes, and they like to butt.  If you look at Isobelle's blog here, you will see a picture of Dayel trying to butt me through the fence! It was better for me to stay on the other side of the fence.  My lady went and fed everybody peppermints, and so did Isobelle's lady.  They are very brave, but the goats didn't butt them.  Maybe it was because of the peppermints?

Isobelle lives in a place with some sort of scary looking trees.  I think I might be a bit worried there at night, in case the kerfoozleumps come out of the trees.  Isobelle told me that kerfoozleumps are sometimes seen in her state of New York.

 My lady also gave a lot of chickens to Isobelle's lady.  I don't know how she managed it, but Isobelle's lady gave all of them names!  She is very creative that way.  She also has a lot more eggs now than she used to!  I think she will be having a lot of omelets!  You can see the chickens on Isobelle's blog too, but I'd rather you didn't because there is a picture of my bum in a diaper on there too, and that's rude.

My lady also went to visit with all of the dogs at Isobelle's farm, and she loves all the dogs, but I think she has a special friend in Kezia.  Here is my lady snuggling with Kezia, which made me kind of jealous, but then I found out that poor little Kezia has a hip problem, and she is going to need a big scary surgery.  It will be sort of like my spaying surgery, but different, and a LOT more expensive.  Stay tuned for future blog posts about Kezia and her surgery.  My lady will be auctioning off some of her handspun yarn to help raise some pennies for Kezia's surgery!  It's going to be exciting!

So we had to keep going, even though we would have liked to stay with Isobelle for a longer time.  Our next state is very difficult to say.  You have to listen carefully when I tell you.  It's Mass of Chew Sits.  Now you might say to yourself, what on earth does that mean?  I, being a goat of great and broad knowledge, can tell you that.  It means that this state was founded by large groups of ruminants (sheep and goats mostly) and there were so many, it was a "mass" of them.  Back in the day when we didn't have big words like ruminants, because the humans didn't know about all our digestive parts, they described all ruminants as "chew sits" because that is what we do.  A lot.  We chew.  Then we sit (or lie) down.  Chew.  Sit.  Chew.  Sit.  Get it?  So it was "Mass of Chew Sits" because of all the chewing and sitting goats and sheep.  I was honoured to visit such a great state.

While we were there, we had to visit the rest stop, of course, to see what was on offer for the Chew Sits.  Here I am checking out the grass (which was a bit short, mind you, perhaps due to other chewers?)

But then, I discovered a new treat!  Pine cones!  I ate several of them.  I did not have those on my previous farm and so these were a very exciting new adventure for me.  Crunchy, good flavour, and nice texture.  All in all, a great chew experience.

After all that chewing, I was a little thirsty, so we had to get some water.  I am pretty good at determining which bottles are full of water, and I make my needs clearly known to my lady, so she has no question in her mind about my level of thirst.  I prefer Fiji mineral water.  It's good for my horns.  Oh, by the way, in this picture, you can see that I am *just* starting to get my beard!  I am such a grown up goat now!

After Mass of Chew Sits, we had only 2 states left!  Our next state was just a very short drive through, because we only had to go through a small corner of it.  The state is called New Hamster.

I'm not sure why this is the name.  I didn't see any hamsters at all.  Here is a hamster from Wikipedia.

I think it is also a sort of Chew-Sit animal.  Perhaps the ruminants went to Mass of Chew Sits and the hamsters didn't have enough food there so they went to New Hamster.

Our last state before Can of Duck was Maine!  Here is the bridge to Maine.  I'll have to wait and tell you about Maine in my next episode, because I've got to go chew and sit now.

Goatie kisses from Lucky Nickel to all my fans!!

Moments with Number

As Lucky Nickel has told you already, we went to visit Isobelle and her friends on the long journey from Iowa to Canada.  Isobelle lives with other goats and some mini horses, and also a wonderful retired racehorse named Number.

I am particularly fond of Number.

He's very gentle, and I feel drawn to him somehow. Maybe it's because, when I was about 8 or 9 years old, I went to summer horse-riding camp, so he reminds me of my childhood.

Maybe it's because he's a retired racer, just like my greyhound, and I know how much he appreciates the wonderful home he has with Bev and her other four-legged friends.

Or maybe, it's because he brought me some very precious moments of peace and tranquility on a long and stressful journey, which was a rare and special gift.

Thank you Number, for your calming presence and your lovely soft nose.  Sending you long distance love!

More Cross-Country Adventures with Lucky Nickel

Well, it's been a goat's age since I was able to post anything.  My lady has been so busy with this moving business, it's really quite complicated.  I'm glad I didn't have to plan it.  Over 5 days, we traveled through 9 states and 2 Canadian provinces!  I am an extremely well traveled goat - probably one of the most experienced in this area, anyway.

We started out in Iowa, of course.  It was the only state I had ever known, because it's where I was born.  This was our last Iowa sunset.  It made my lady cry.

I really wasn't to sure about this whole driving thing.  I mean, I like being in the car - in fact, I like jumping on top of the car when my lady leaves the sun roof open, and then I get inside and practice driving and popping my head out the window to stick my tongue out at bad drivers.  This time, I had to be in a crate!  I usually get to run around inside the back of the car, but my lady said it was for my own safety.  This meant I could not lay my head on my lady's shoulder while she is driving, which I really like to do.

This is me in my crate.  It makes it very difficult for me to keep proper control of things going on around me.  How am I supposed to supervise from here?!

Here was the truck we took, with all the things in it that my lady owns.  Actually, she got rid of a lot of stuff before we left, but you would never know it.  We even needed an extra trailer!

My lady says goodbye to Iowa.  You can't tell but she had been crying because she was sad to be leaving so many friends and good times behind, and she loved her farm, but she has new adventures to go to.  Saying goodbye is always difficult for humans.  I was just excited about it.  Goats don't cry.

It wasn't just me in the car!  We took 10 chickens with us to our friends Bev and her goat Isobelle.  My lady determined that taking the chickens over the border was very complicated because of something called a "core of teens" and my lady doesn't really like teenagers very much.  She said the chickens would have had to be with the "core of teens" for 30 days, in a small room, so that they didn't give diseases to anybody.  I don't know what the teenagers have to do to stop chickens from giving diseases.  These government regulations are very strange.  I really don't understand this business at all, but my lady said it was a "pain in the bum" except she didn't say bum, because she was mad about it.  So, we had 10 chickens with us and they laid eggs on the way to New York.

Our first state after Iowa was Ill-a-noy.  Don't worry, we didn't get ill there. Chick-ago is a big city there, which my lady has visited before, but we didn't go there.  We just kept driving.  It was night time, so we didn't see much there.  We stayed overnight in Ill-a-noy just after we passed Chick-ago because we only left Iowa at around 3:30 pm.  My lady took me for night-time walks around the hotel that she stayed in, and I got to taste new shrubs!

The next morning, we got on the road again.   after Ill-a-noy came Indy-Anna! 

Indy was in a whole bunch of movies in which he wore a hat and looked for treasures and traveled to interesting places.  I don't know who Anna was.  Anyway, we didn't find Indy or Anna there.  It was fairly quick driving through that state.

After Indy-Anna, we went to Oh! Hi-o!  

The people there must always be surprised to see you, so they say Oh!  Hi-o! when they meet you.  Everywhere else, people say the short form which is just "hi" but not in Oh!  Hi-o!  We stopped at a rest stop there where I talked to lots of people, but that was in my last post so I won't talk about that again. 

I forgot to say that Izzy the cat came with us.  She was with the male unit, in the truck.  The male unit is my lady's friend.  Sometimes he took me for walks too!  I quite like him.  Here is the male unit with the cat in the truck.  He smiles a lot.  

After Oh! Hi-o! we visited Pencil-Vanilla.  I didn't get to eat any pencils there, so I don't know if they taste like vanilla or not.  It was a very long state to drive through.  Sometimes the roads were very bumpy.  We visited a rest stop there, and there were some very unusual chickens at the rest stop on a bench.  My lady took a picture of them for me.  I wanted to remember those funny looking chickens.  We don't usually see these in Iowa.

Our next state was New York!  I was very excited to be there because of meeting Isobelle and her lady, Bev.  But I'll have to write about that later because I'm a tired goat and I need my beauty sleep.    Stay tuned for my next adventure posting soon!

On the move!

Not a lot of time for a long post today.  My lady says we need to get going, and I am ready for my next public appearance.  See, I glow like the shining star that I am!  I am probably the first goat EVER to ride in the back of a Jetta from Iowa all the way to Nova Scotia Canada.

So far, I have been spotted in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and now in Pennsylvania.  Yesterday, I was a big hit with a bus tour of senior humans!  They all wanted to pet me and I had my picture taken countless times.  Here you can see them all coming over to visit me.  I am on the sidewalk, sort of to the left, with my lady.  It's a bit hard to see me.  Just follow the crowd...

My lady's friend took me for exercise.  I think he's still a little confused about what species I am.  Oh well, it was the thought that counts.  She says he's going to be around a lot so I need to goatucate him (that's goat education) about a few things.

Oh goodness, she is hurrying me along...we really must go....but I will post again soon!  Goatie kisses!!!

Three Wishes

Yesterday I had one of those funny hypothetical discussions with someone, about what one would wish for if one had three wishes.  The parameters required no "global wishes" such as world peace and cures for various dreadful diseases, which (hopefully) most of us would wish for if such things were possible.  These had to be wishes for oneself.  I thought, I pondered, and I imagined.  I came up with my first wish fairly quickly.  I wished that I could have a long, healthy life, and that I would eventually pass on quite painlessly and without great suffering.  To me, that was a reasonable wish, as far as wishes go.

I had to try a bit harder with my second wish.  I was initially stumped for a while...but I came up with the wish that at the end of my life, I wish that I will be able to look back without any regret.  I want to know that I made the best decisions I could, given the knowledge I had at any given time, and that I never threw away a worthy opportunity.  I wanted to feel that I'd lived life to the best of my ability, and that I'd learned from mistakes, rather than becoming bitter or frustrated by them.

So it came to the third wish.  I considered carefully....what else could I wish for, specifically for myself, that I really, really wanted?  After a while, what I really, really wanted was the ability to come up with a third wish!  In all seriousness, I couldn't really come up with one.  Sure, I could wish for a million dollars or a fancy car or a fully functioning fibre mill in my backyard.  But really....did I really wish for those things?  No.  Fancy cars are no more useful than my 2002 Jetta.  I don't want to be responsible for the upkeep of a fully functional fibre mill.  A million dollars would be great for setting up a sheep and goat sanctuary, but that's not "for me" as much as it is for them.  Anyway, having too much money brings people out of the woodwork who think they're entitled to some of it, and causes no end of heartache.

This led me to think about my life, and who I am, and brought me to the rather wonderful conclusion that I have all I need, or I have the ability to get what I need.  I do not really wish for anything more than what I have.  This was a sort of "epiphany" moment for me, because I don't really think very often in abstract terms of wishes that cannot be fulfilled.  More than anything, my inability to find a third wish helped me realize that I must be on the right track in life, that I could have the luxury of not really needing a third wish.

I've thought about it several times since the conversation, but I still can't come up with a good third wish.  I've toyed with frivolous ideas like a lifetime supply of key lime cheesecake, or aged gouda cheese, or even Bendick's Bittermints (a delicious British chocolate covered mint fondant confection).  I thought I was onto something when I decided to wish for a garden that always looked beautiful and took care of itself, but really, that takes away the joy of gardening.  The closest I've come so far is a house that cleans itself.  I'm not a natural house-cleaner.

So I take it out to you, my blog readers - what are your three wishes, for yourself, and only yourself?  What am I forgetting or missing?  Or do you, too, find it hard to think of wishes?