Abby and the Goat

 

     Thirteen of us began the winter 30 miles off the nearest plowed road, high in the Salmon River Mountains of central Idaho. Four were under the age of five. A friend who had a mining claim nearby decided we needed more milk for the smaller citizens and showed up before the first snows with a load of hay and a milk goat. Her name was Mandy, marked like a mule deer with floppy ears. Howdy had an older resident goat, Granny, who was about milked out. Granny was pleased to have company.      
     The only other domestic critters in town were six scraggly hens, a pet rat named Roscoe who had been to Japan with his owner when she was Miss Tanfastic, a Collie named Snoopy, and a full grown Great Dane, Abby. Abby got way overexcited when dealing with quickly moving objects, like humans on sleds. By riding down a long hill, one could shoosh right into a large hot springs pool. Abby liked to run alongside the sleds and nip at butt cheeks. She rarely drew blood, but I didn’t slide down the hill on my back. 

     In early February, Abby’s owners winter killed, loaded up their snow machine and trailer with two kids, announced that they’d had enough of the high country and that they were headed back down off the mountain to the snow-free sagebrush. No room for Abby. They would be back to get her in June when the road opened. There were three hundred pounds of dry dog food in their cabin. Would we keep her company? 

      At dusk a couple of weeks later, two fellows from the valley showed up on snow machines bearing whiskey and lettuce, tickets to the time when Miss Tanfastic swam nude. We did it up right. When the whiskey was gone, the city boys tore back out of town. About midnight, Beth, who took care of all of us, loaded a dishpan from the party house and headed down to the wash room at the foot of the hot pool.

     Two minutes later she screamed. We scrambled down to the pool, to find Abby, red muzzled, standing over Granny’s body. Mandy treaded water in the pool. The noise and speed of the snow machines had triggered Abby.

      We held a town meeting. Should we shoot Abby? I said that if she was mine I probably would, but she wasn’t and I wouldn’t kill another’s dog. No one else wanted to play executioner. Should we butcher and eat Granny? No, we had plenty of food in the root cellar, particularly with Abby’s owners gone. We would bury Granny in the morning. I didn’t sleep well with Abby snoring beside my bunk that night. She had just killed a critter my size. 

     It required pick, shovel, axe, pry bar, a bonfire and six hours for Howdy and me to dig a goat grave beneath five feet of snow and through four feet of frozen rock patch. When we yarded Granny to her resting place we discovered that she was frozen stiff in a prone position and would not fit in the hole, Granny went to goat paradise as a quadruple amputee.