What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.

The crime: Something attempted to tear off Hagrid’s tail, but he managed to slip away and lose only an inch or so from its tip.



The victim: Hagrid the goat.



The suspect: Sugar, the appy alpha mare.



Likely eye-witnesses: Odessa and Daisy





The story:
My male goat, Hagrid, is much as I imagine Harry Potter’s Hagrid would’ve been as a juvenile – he’s ALWAYS into SOMEthing – and sort of a big goofy galoot. All Daisy ever wants to do is run and dance and hop around and play, but boring Hagrid is too much of a slug, which brings much frustration to Miss Daisy. Hagrid would rather stir up hornets’ nests with the mares and cause a commotion.

Whenever we have a new hay roll delivered, he loves to climb on top of it and make various displays of arrogant male behavior while making daring challenges to the mares as they attempt to munch their new hay.



My suspicion is that Hagrid’s peculiar penchant for messing with the mares’ patience may have come back to bite him in the ass…LITERALLY.

The goats have these cute fluffy tails that stay straight up in the air much of the time, like those of a whitetail deer. Hagrid is now sporting, however, more of a stub of a tail – not only has most of the hair been ripped off the end of his tail, but it also appears that something tried to take the tip of it off as well. And judging by my many previous viewings of conflicts between Hagrid and Sugar, I have a strong suspicion that it was SUGAR that tried to take the end off his tail during one of many run downs.



Now before you go slamming my fat appy mare for being a royal bitch (which she certainly CAN be at times), take note that Hagrid is almost ALWAYS the instigator in such conflicts. He seems to derive some sort of cheap thrill from antagonizing Sugar into running him down. The pixelpyro and I observed one such event a couple of months or so ago. My hay supplier had just brought over a new hay roll that morning. That evening around dusk, the mares were munching contentedly and peacefully at the roll when Hagrid decided he needed some excitement. He climbed up on top of the hay roll and began to aggravate Sugar, threatening her with challenging postures. As the alpha mare of our teeny herd of 4, Sugar wasn’t ABOUT to be intimidated by some goofy goat – she’d pin her ears flat and lash out with her head, trying to get a chunk of him, but he would just turn and put his horns (stick, duct tape and all) between him and her gnashing teeth, which only made her madder. She’d then whirl her butt around in kicking mode before realizing she couldn’t reach him on top of the roll. When numerous warnings continued to go unheeded, she resorted to body-slamming the roll, knocking him to the ground, at which moment she immediately took out after him in a dead run, neck stretched out toward the ground, ears pinned flat to her head, and angry teeth ready to mow the aggravating little cuss down. The expression on Hagrid’s face as he ran for his life, was a peculiar mixture of both boyish delight and sheer terror.



Hay roll, $20.
Stick on horns, $1. (Well, it was there the FIRST time this happened)
Duct tape to hold stick on horns, $4.
Expression on angry appy mare’s face and fleeing goat faces, PRICELESS.
Bare naked, scabbed up goat tail tip?
I’m just hoping it will continue to heal with no veterinary intervention,
lest the vet tell me what THAT’S worth.