Feeding time excitement

We had quite a time feeding. As may or may not have been mentioned before, Robert recently got some goats. They are curious about people but they dont trust them. Alyssa went to feed them but they werent in their run (we've got them in a horse stall.) We weren't quite sure how since there were no visible weak points in the fence. Alyssa wanted me to grab a lead rope and we would grab them and lead them in. I wasnt really sure how we were supposed to catch them in the first place, plus there wasn't another lead rope. Alyssa went out into the other run and found, much to her displeasure, that the goats were not there anymore. She went into the other run and shook the grain at them and I went out to watch. They weren't interested so Alyssa walked out there and boom, under the fence they went. So now we knew how they were doing it. I went out and crawled under the fence which piqued their interest in me quite a bit. So much so, in fact, that they wanted to come sniff me more than they wanted to go to that scary lady with the grain. I sat there to guard the hole in the fence and Alyssa wound up chasing them into the stall.

I went into the empty stall to get back to the aisle way. In the time it took me to open the outside door, close the door, open the inside door and then walk through and close that, Alyssa was gone. I checked the stall I thought was the goats' stall. (For some reason that barn disorients me something awful.) No goats, no Alyssa, outside door was closed. Checked the next stall, definitely not the goats' stall. So I shouted for Alyssa. I thought I heard her voice coming from outside, but if she was outside where were the goats? As much as I felt like I would look silly assuming the goats had escaped I decided to grab the lunge line belonging to Bella (which has a loop in the end for convenient slip knot assembly) and go outside and try to figure out where her voice was coming from.

As I approached the main barn I saw Reno rearing up surprisingly high in the air, while Imp stared at him. I found that the main barn (not the hay barn) had the front door closed. As I approached I heard Alyssa shout "careful careful careful" I peeked in and saw the goats standing there looking at me with interest. I slipped in and went to sit down to see if they'd sniff at me. I sat down and this spooked them a little. Alyssa and I tried to get them but they got past us to the other end of the barn.

Alyssa and I walked over there to try again. This time more slowly. We stood there watching the goats and contemplating what to do next while the goats stood there and did the same. Alyssa laughed and pointed out that Papillon was absolutely going nuts in her stall. While some of the other horses were a little nervous about the goats, Papillon was not, she was filled with a clear and intense desire to get the goats and get them the HELL OUT OF HER BARN!!! I knew Papillon didn't like dogs in her field. I still cant slow her down if she decides that she needs to run after a dog thats in her field. Once its out then she's back to her normal, mostly controllable, self. We used to go out and chase coyotes together and she was absolutely riveted. Apparently goats next to her stall are dramatically more enraging than dogs in her field. She was snorting, she was kicking, she was making the goats pretty nervous. She was making other horses pretty nervous. I have never seen her so full of what I can only describe as blood lust. We told the goats that they'd better cooperate or else we'd let Papillon out to get them.

Then we heard it. I big thud and a huge rush of water. Papillon had broken her water pipe above her water dispenser. Importantly she had broken it above the cutoff valve, not that I was especially keen on going in there and getting soaked while Papillon bucked and screamed like a mad thing. Alyssa and I lunged for the goats, Alyssa caught one. I was excessively dedicated to getting one with my slip knot, otherwise I would have grabbed the collar like she did. Anyway she got it and was off after the other goats.

I needed to deal with Papillon before she killed herself. I didn't think I could shut off the water from her stall. Lady was out in the run but given the choice between what those two were likely to do to each other in this tense situation and what Papillon was likely to do to herself I chose the former. I kept close to one wall of the stall. Papillon wanted to get close to me, she knew I was there to solve her problem but she stayed back like a good horse. I started to open her door and she really really wanted to go out the gap I had created. I decided I really needed the whole door to be open because she might hurt one of us on her way out the door. I turned and looked at her, got ready to have to really intimidate her to keep her from barreling through me. She looked at me and i could see the whites of her eyes all around. She rocked back like she was getting ready to bolt, looked at me one last second and then flung herself around to the side and let me get back to opening the door. I got it all the way open and I started to move away but quickly had to press myself hard against the side of the stall. Papillon avoided me, and not without some effort on her part, I think. She went through the door as far away from my side of it as possible without scraping herself. The stall was filling up with water.

Alyssa had grabbed the other goat so I opened the door and ran to get Robert. Alyssa makes fun of me for shouting for Robert but water had started to spill over into the aisle way and who knows how much damage could have been done. Plus I was pretty excited about the whole thing, I've never seen two goats getting loose cause anything like this. I got to the house, Lil had heard me and was telling Robert I was at the door. I told him that Papillon had broken her water pipe and we needed to shut off the water. He got his shoes and he and Chuck were shuffling out. Robert called to me as I was running back to the barn "which barn is it?" and I couldn't think of the name of the barn (the all have names but no one uses them) so I shouted back "the one that Papillon's in." I think I heard Robert say "Oh," in kindof an oh right, kind of way.

As I was running to the barn I realized I thought I did know how to shut off the water. The water to the arena is shut off via two valves in holes covered with a green cap on either side of the arena. I had noticed such a cap outside of the barn one day. I ran to it and opened it up but there was nothing but dirt. I started digging and sure enough the red handle to turn off the water was buried in the dirt. I had my gloves on and I kept digging. Robert got there and saw that it was buried but thought I had gotten enough free to turn it. I tried but I couldn't, Robert tried and agreed that it was really buried down there and asked for a stick. I got him one from one of the dead shrubs behind the barn so he was digging away. Chuck was just standing there watching everything, looking bemused by the whole situation. Alyssa had come back from putting the goats away. Water was coming out into the aisle and was pouring out the door of the stall into the run. Lady was looking concerned and Papillon was on high alert. Robert managed to turn the water down but wanted to make sure that it was this valve that was doing it. "Stand back," he told us as he turned the water back on and a mighty rush sent Papillon, who had come back to investigate now that the water had stopped, flying and bucking in her run.

With the water flow stopped Robert went out to get something to fix the water pipe. He told us we did good and agreed that we needed to put Papillon in one of the other empty stalls. I went out through Lady's stall, which had started to flood as well but only around the side nearest to Papillon's stall. I got Papillon who was pretty happy to see me and looking, to my eye, to be calmer although Alyssa laughed at this assertion. I led her out through Lady's stall, of course, and into the empty stall next to Colonel's, this way she could still have a familiar face to bite at out her window. I took off her halter and started to step out and she followed me very closely, some more white showing in her eye again. "Oh God dont leave me here, Oh God Oh God," Alyssa mimed from the hallway.

I slowly closed the door and looked over to see Lady sniffing a very very excited Luca. Lady had walked out of her stall where I had absentmindedly forgotten to put the chain back up to block it. I looked at her, she looked at me. Alyssa went to try to get her back into her stall. Lady resisted and broke out of Alyssa's grasp. They were both turned towards the partially open barn door. They both looked at the door, they both started running at exactly the same time. My appeal to Lady to halt went completely ignored. She ran out the door, pretty pleased with herself. A moment passed. She ran back in the door when she realized that it was feeding time and some other horse might get her grain if she wasn't there to eat it. I just pointed back to her stall as she ran by. Lady stopped to sniff and potentially bite Moonbeam but was easily shooed back into her stall.

The goat's grain was still sitting in a bucket on the floor of the barn. So we went back to feeding. I fed Papillon some grain right away. There was no bucket in her stall at first so I just fed her straight out of her feed bucket. She started to calm down and Alyssa brought a feed bucket and all was basically back to normal. All but the ridiculously flooded stall still draining slowly out into the run, and the pool of water on the aisle. Robert had come back and fixed the pipe already so all the horses had water again. We fed all the horses, closed their doors, gathered our things and were leaving for the day. We walked out to the bus stop and as we crossed the far pasture and I was thinking about finding that weedwacker to cut ourselves a better path through the grass I heard an enraged shout, "FUCK YOU, GOATS!!!" Her animosity was returned by the quizzical stare and calm chewing of the two goats, now back out in the neighboring horses' run. Their door open by only the tiniest crack. I just fell on the ground laughing. After all that we hadn't even managed to get them in from their run.