R.I.P., Pugsley

Today we had to euthanize Pugsley. We realized that he could not grow up to be a healthy 250 pound billy goat. He struggled to stand and wasn’t able to eat the kinds of solid foods that his siblings could. In his memory, I would like to share part of one of my favorite poems, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman:

I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals….they are so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
No one is dissatisfied….not one is demented with the mania of owing things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them

Goodbye my brave little goat. I’ll see you in heaven.