SANCHO, THE HOUSE GOAT Out in the Hill Country of Texas, people call orphan Angora goats “Sanchos.” Since we had a herd of about 10,000 goats and Angora nannies are notoriously poor mothers, we had quite a few sanchos. My first Sancho was a pitiful little white thing whose mama birthed him and walked away without even licking him clean and dry. With all those white nannies dropping all those wee white kids everywhere, there was no way to know who his mother was. It was February and pretty darned chilly out, so there was no time to wait to see if a mama goat would come claim this pitiful little thing. I scooped him up and dashed to the house with him, filled the kitchen sink with warm water to warm him up, wash all the dirt encrusted placenta off him, and then I put him on a towel on the oven door to see if he would revive. Oh boy! And revive he did. In ten or fifteen minutes, he bounced out of the oven on stiff legs baa, baa, baa, baaing as only a baby goat can do. All around the kitchen of our small ranch house he went. I hurriedly warmed some milk 22
Pat’s Horse Tales
for him, and he latched onto that nipple like a snapping turtle. He was so cute, all white and curly. Well, from that minute on, he followed me like a little puppy. I couldn’t put him back out with those common goats, so he stayed in the house with us. He had his own corner and an old quilt to curl up on, and he settled right in as a house goat. At night, he slept on the end of our bed with us. That only lasted until we woke up one night with him bouncing and baaing all over us, his finale being that he peed on me. Sancho was banished to the screen porch at night. Baby goats grow really fast, so it wasn’t long before Sancho was leaping and bouncing up on everything. The morning he bounced up onto the breakfast table and took a big mouthful of sugar out of the bowl, he was banished during the day, too. He was a slippery little booger, though, and as soon as anyone opened a door to go in or out, he would fly into the house. When the day came that he zoomed in and made two boing boing leaps and landed
