JANUARY 27th (#26) Two years ago today was the day our dog Gracie died. Before I can tell you about Gracie, I need to tell you about Little Bill.

When Cathy and I sold our beach house, we moved to 10 acres on the Pisgah National Forest in the Blue ridge Mountains of North Carolina. That fall I went with Cathy to Virginia Beach, where Cathy was teaching an Alcohol Ink workshop. The hotel didn’t allow dogs, so the daughter of a neighbor was staying at our house with Elle. We called to check on Elle and Natalie said, “Elle’s fine, but why didn’t you tell me you had a goat?” “We don’t have a goat.” “Well, you do now!”

Elle used to lay on the bed in the master bedroom and look out the window across the side field to the woods. One day she saw a black and white pygmy billy goat come out of the woods. As soon has Elle was let out, she ran up to “Little Bill” to make friends, and they became great pals. Elle and little Bill would take turns chasing each other around the yard and act like they were going to butt heads, then lay down next to each other to rest.

Little Bill even tried to follow Elle into the house, butting the screen door that lead into the living room from one of the front porches. We weren’t going to be home for 10 days. I hadn’t yet made the carport into a garage and was afraid Little Bill might try to climb up on my Corvette, so Natalie’s Dad came and moved it to their house.

Every time we called to check, Little Bill was still at our house. He slept on the front porch on one side of the glass storm door and Elle slept on the other side in the living room. Natalie kept the glass storm door closed so Little Bill couldn’t butt completely through the screen door. When we came home, there was Little Bill to greet us.

Little Bill had a blue collar, so we knew he must be someone’s pet. We put up a notice at Cheek’s Crossroads, the gas station, grocery, and diner a few miles away on US 321, north of Lenoir on the way to Blowing Rock. If no one claimed Little Bill, Elle could keep her buddy. We got a call the next day. To make sure the call wasn’t from someone who just wanted a free goat, we asked the color of the goats collar. “Blue.” Poor Elle.

When the man came to get Little Bill, he explained he had bought him from a man who had two goats and had already sold one. He said goats were social animals and didn’t like to be alone. So Little Bill had crawled under the gate and set off to find a friend. When the man picked Little Bill up, the goat started to bleat loudly. Cathy had trained Elle not to jump on company, so she just kept jumping up and down in front of the man, looking him in the eyes. In the middle of all of this commotion his cell phone rang. He put Little Bill under one arm and answered, “Yea, it is Little Bill alright. You should see this goat and their dog! If it weren’t for our grand baby, I just let them keep him!”

The next day and every day, Elle would go back and forth from the bedroom window to the living room window looking for Little Bill. When we let her out, she would run to the edge of the woods in search of her goat. When she couldn’t find Little Bill and had to come back in the house, she would jump on the bed, facing the window, and lay down with a big, sad “Sigh!”

Cathy decided we needed to get Elle a dog.

Cathy always said she found me, our log home, and Elle on the internet, so she starting searching for a poodle mix for Elle. She found one four hours away at Big Dog Rescue, just off US 321 in Lenoir City, Tennessee.

The neighbor who bought our beach house had a Schnauzer and his mother had a Poodle. I thought the dog Cathy found looked like a combination of the two. So we left Lenoir, North Carolina and followed US 321 to Lenoir City, Tennessee to get Elle, our Labradoodle, a Schnoodle.

Note: Other than taking bad falls and Cathy getting sick, January 27th, 2019 was the worst day I’ve had in SMA. It is going to take a few days to tell the whole story, so please bear with me. Then we’ll pick up with Tom Paxton.