I am an animal lover! Even as a little girl, I wanted the whole zoo in my bedroom. When my parents wouldn't oblige me, I turned to a zoo of stuffed animals. They didn't seem to mind that so much!
Anyway, time passes and I and my husband and family had moved to Colorado. We lived in a high mountain desert town called Gunnison.
We had our dogs and our cats, and a couple of horses, but I wanted a goat. So, we got to inquiring around, and found a man who lived way out in the county, off grid, who had some Nubian goats for sale. We went to check them out and I decided on this one goat. The man's daughter wasn't real happy that her dad was selling the goats, but when I asked her what this goat's name was, she told me Mocha. I told her I would keep her name the same.
Mocha was young enough that I bottle fed her. I would use a plastic Coca-Cola bottle with a nipple attached to feed her. She would 'butt' the bottle and spray me with the milk and then chug that puppy down! Goats butt their mothers to make the milk flow and that was what she was thinking she was doing.
I had a little Subaru Justy (a VERY small car for those who know what that is) and I would take her with me when I went places. She would lay in the floor board on the passenger side and place her head on my accelerator foot as I drove. I took her to the local Wal-Mart so my coworkers could meet her. Everyone loved Mocha!
We wanted to bring her in the house and fashioned a baby diaper so she could come in during her first Christmas with us. It was a very interesting experience!
Time moves on and so did we. We uprooted our little family and little zoo and moved to the Pacific Northwest! I drove the pickup truck with the back turned into a rolling hay wagon for Mocha. My (at the time 12 year old son) road in the back with her. My husband drove the U-Haul and had the two dogs in the cab, pulled a car trailer with my cats in the big cat carriers in the Justy. Oh, I forgot to mention that I had smaller cat carriers with our pet rats in the cab of my truck. I would feed them cheese nips as I drove and later discovered they had lined the entire floor of their carrier with them. Sort of a yellow brick road!
Thus began our life here in Washington state; zoo intact. We built Mocha a fenced stable and she had a pasture for daytime grazing. There was so much here to eat! Things were great and she thrived.
Then one night, while I was at choir practice, I came home to find that my youngest son had gone to her pen to feed her for the evening, and that she was down in her pen, on her side, somewhat unconscious. He and my husband took her to the vet, who was gracious enough to meet them at the clinic way after hours. The vet pronounced her 'brain dead' and said that the movement of her feet (she was shuffling them back and forth) was just 'paddling' and that essentially she was gone.
Thank goodness my husband reacted the way he did and said no to putting her down. He brought her home and the vet was kind enough to give us ringer's lactate, put a catheter in her neck so we could care for her and told us what shots to give her. I became a vet tech over night!. We moved Mocha into the house in the mud room; got her a twin bed mattress; surrounded it with hay bales and began a journey none of us knew how would end. I remember getting up one morning on a day when I went to work later, only to find that she had somehow rolled over the hay bale and in between the hot water heater and a bale of hay, with all 4 feet stuck up in the air! No one was home to help, and I like to have never gotten her back on her mattress again!
I missed days off and on from work because of the care she needed. We would literally have to turn her from one side to the other each day to make sure she didn't get any bed sores. We petted her and talked to her and my son would sleep at night with her so she knew she wasn't alone.
We LOVED her as best we could and was hoping she could feel that. The vet was never really sure what this was, but they believed that she had contracted some organism through the dirt around here that invaded her brain and caused some major issues.
Onward we went, giving her water with syringes, giving her IV's and her shots of B vitamins and penicillin. She slowly responded and became conscious again.
Then came the real challenge:how to help her learn to stand and then to walk again. My husband built a stanchion for her out of 2 X 4's and we created a sling on it out of canvas with 4 holes for her legs. I would then grasp her horns (we never had her de-horned, thank goodness as I need them for this) and he would grab her around her 'waist and we would get her picked up and put into her sling. It was a balancing act at first once she was placed in it as her sense of balance wasn't too good.
She began coming back to us. You could see she was 'present' in her eyes and she would stand in that sling for a few hours every day watching me cook as she was just inside the kitchen at that point. She learned how to make a ton of dishes and loved strawberries and peanut butter. Of course, I spoiled her!
The original incident took place in January of that year and in April, we took her outside for the first time. She was thin, but stood there so proud. I could envision her with a cane and a top hat as if she were having the performance of her life! It was truly amazing! I wish I could find the picture I had of this event, but alas, for now, it is lost.
Although healed from whatever ailed her, she had a vertigo issue at times. She would get dizzy and then have to stand there until it passed. You could see the event in her eyes as she tried to focus on a world out of balance for her.
She developed milk (Nubians are milk goats) but she shouldn't have as she had never been bred. So we took her to the same clinic and one of the guy vets checked her out. What we didn't know at the time was that the entire clinic staff was watching out the window as this goat chased the vet around in the grounds behind the building! They named her Mocha, the miracle goat. She had been pronounced dead, but there she was!
Mocha lived for about 5 years after all of this. She never did fully recover the imbalance issue. We moved her pen into the garage and took her out daily to the pasture for grazing and so she could chase me! She could give me a good run for my money, lol! She just wanted to butt me......a little.....but those horns!
Eventually, one evening, she went down in her pen and absolutely nothing we could do, could get her back up. It was the hardest call I ever had to make to the vet to come help. It was time.
He was kind and made it quick for her. It still brings tears to my eyes to think about the loss of my baby goat girl as I loved her...a lot!
She is buried here on our property amongst the tress she loved so much. Mocha will never be forgotten. She truly was a miracle and was the result of just what love can do.
Mocha----RIP💜💜💜