It seems like I can barely remember my life before goats. I definitely remember sitting at the bar of our local roadhouse, while some neighborly friends talked me into buying a milking doe from their cousins. And it wasn't but a matter of days before I brought GiGi up the mountain.
Heh, I'd never milked a goat before... so I had to teach myself on the fly. I mean, she had to be milked, and I had to be the one to do it. Thus my milking style is different from anyone else that I've met... because I'm self taught. It takes me two hands to milk one teat. Crazy.
GiGi was a good girl. We had our share of rodeos though. At that time, my cabin was only 8x16, so I milked her on a bench outside the front door. I'll have to try to dig up a picture somewhere. I'll never forget the time that a Cessna pilot buzzed the cabin while I was milking, and GiGi about jumped out of her skin... spilling the milk jar and leaving milk EVERYWHERE.
I was pissed and sped the 4-wheeler down to the local airstrip to give him a piece of my mind, but he'd left in his truck by the time I got there. Word spread around the community though, so it got back to him... and I did, at a much later date, get an apology and a promise to abstain from future buzzing.
GiGi went with me on a road trip to McCarthy, which is road accessible bush living at its finest. It was excellent! Each family I visited traded me free meals/lodging for fresh goat milk... a sweet commodity for both me and them. One morning I woke up and she was gone though, she had followed a neighbor on his skinny skis back to his house... and he let her sleep in her entry way. I can't tell you how nervous I was, following her tracks in the snow- not knowing what I would find or where I would find her.
Then there was the first time we took her down to the coast. I guess it was a spring trip, to our remote camp on Prince William Sound. She rode in the back of the truck down to Valdez, then in the backseat of our bushplane out to camp. Ben couldn't bring both of us at once, so he left her there on the river bar with my father-in-law.
GiGi had to swim the river to get from the airstrip to the cabin. That was the first test. The second came when Ed didn't tie her up after milking, and she ran to the top of the waterfalls cliff behind the cabin and screamed and screamed until I got home. Then came step three.
We took off backpacking to one of our spike camps, and GiGi was trailing along like always. We had to cross the creek (a small river, really) several times... and one of the crossings had a really fast moving deep channel that swept her downstream through a bunch of rapids.
But she fished herself out, ran back to the crossing point, climbed up onto a huge boulder, made this fantastic leap across the channel into the shallower water... and came bounding up to find us. Seeing her fly through the air like that is etched in my memory for sure.
There's nothing like traveling in the backcountry with goats. Its far finer than packing with dogs, thats without a doubt. You don't have to pack their feed, they don't chase game or make a bunch of noise, and they don't try to shed their packs. Plus the constant fresh milk, and the fact that they can carry alot...
Yeah, I'm addicted to goats. I can barely imagine life without them. I don't want to. Goats are great.