My battle with Bert

It's 2:34 am, and life is not good here at our farm. Bert is gravely ill. We are sleeping downstairs, as he is in the house. Yes, I have livestock in my home, is that not frightening? Goats are amazingly NOT stinky. Thankfully I have a mud room with a vinyl floor. No, I am not sleeping in the mud room. : )

Bert has just had his third shot of penicillin, as he has a fever of 105. Goats should have a temperature of 102-103, so his is elevated. Unfortunately, the fever has not responded in the last 12 hours, and in the morning I will have to go to the farm store and pray that they have a broad spectrum antibiotic, and we'll switch to that. I have bought many items for my "goat medicine cabinet" but I have not bought them all, unfortunately.

It has been bitterly cold here, as you know. Yesterday Bert was shivering more than the other goats, and then he was literally tremor-ing, and I decided we needed to get him warmed up to actually see if it was the cold temperatures or something else. He stood in the corner of his pen, listless, didn't eat, just stared down at the ground.

I brought him in the back porch, got him a little warmer and took his temperature, and then discovered he was very ill. As I realized that he was going to require more than just a few minutes of attention, I decided to bring him in.

What I don't understand is why God makes an animal seem to give up when it's sick. Humans know that if you are not hungry or thirsty when you are sick, you still have to eat and drink something. Drink, especially. Animals don't do this. Remember my time with Valdez (the cat)? He would have died had I not stuck a tube down his throat and squeezed milk into his stomach. He had a respiratory infection, and wouldn't eat because he couldn't smell.

And so it is with Bert. He will not take water or eat. Fortunately, things on the other end are working well (and are easy to clean up with goats on a vinyl floor), but if I don't get him eating and drinking, there will be nothing to come out the other end. I have had to use a syringe to get him to drink (that is called "drenching"), drench him with electrolytes, with probios (a mixture of enzymes to restore the balance in his rumen), force him to lie down so he can actually REST while he sleeps (how much rest can you get when you try and sleep standing up?).

It seems like not only do they lose their fight to live, but they have this will to die, and the only one fighting for them to live is me. It's frustrating. It's all-consuming. I'm exhausted, and he's no better. If I don't fight harder than they do, then they die. I don't get God's logic on this.

So, I'm back to bed. I will be up at the crack of dawn and at the farm store to see what ammunition they can provide for my battle with Bert.

Wish me luck.