CHAPTER SIX

When you have pigs and cows and a donkey and a horse, you might think to yourself: What I really need is some goats in my life.

Granted, you probably don’t think that. You probably don’t have all those animals, and even if you do, having the phrase “some goats in my life” cross your mind is unlikely. Hey, I get it. We live an atypical life. And then some.

I honestly hadn’t been pondering the overall pros and cons of goat ownership. But that didn’t stop the impending goat arrival—or the additional pig who was tossed in for good measure.

We got them in a somewhat convoluted way. They were coming from a small family farm in Sudbury, a few hours north of Toronto. I thought the farm was closing due to financial difficulties, that the farm owners were going to lose everything and because of that, they had agreed to give us the goats. From what I understood, the farm previously had been operating as a dairy farm, but the owners had fallen on hard times and were going to slaughter the goats themselves or send them to market. I thought we were saving them.

It wasn’t until later that I learned our volunteers had paid for the goats. Had we known this was the plan, we wouldn’t have let it happen. We never should have allowed those animals to be purchased, for so many reasons. Animals should never be purchased. When you buy an animal from a farmer, you’re just facilitating the purchase of another one. You didn’t really rescue an animal, so much as you took one out and let another be purchased in its place. But we were still learning how to run a charity and didn’t know all the rules yet.

We had no idea how complicated it was going to be to get our charitable status. We hired a lawyer to prepare our application and spent thousands of dollars, only to get a rejection letter that was literally fourteen pages long. Basically everything we wanted to do was deemed “not charitable” by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the Canadian version of America’s Internal Revenue Service.

The CRA even went as far as saying, “You should just register as a zoo; it would be much simpler for you.” They just didn’t get it. A zoo? Seriously? They told us that rescuing an animal that was eligible for slaughter was against the rules. Slaughtering animals is obviously legal, and the CRA wouldn’t let us advocate against that. We couldn’t promote veganism, we couldn’t run a community garden, we couldn’t do almost any of the things we wanted to do.

So we needed to get creative. We were lucky in that we already had an organization called Esther the Wonder Pig that was completely separate from the charity we were trying to create. We had to ensure an iron wall went up between the two organizations, letting Esther the Wonder Pig do all the things we weren’t allowed to do as a charity. We had to ensure that the charity’s board of directors was not controlled by Derek and me, so we brought in people with an arm’s-length relationship to us—people who shared the same values and objectives but wouldn’t be afraid to tell us no if we wanted to do something that could jeopardize our charitable status.

The sanctuary was barely up and running, and we were already losing control of it, just to satisfy the demands from the CRA. But we knew we were being scrutinized and that we would continue to be scrutinized even after we got our status. So we had no choice but to do everything we possibly could to meet the CRA’s criteria, while remaining true to our objectives and ourselves. It would end up taking almost two years, but we stuck to our guns, and eventually we became a registered charity as a farm sanctuary.

But that was later. At the time of the goat purchase, we weren’t quite there yet. We hadn’t learned all the ins and outs of accepting animals, so we were playing it by ear. We were expecting three goats: William, Catherine, and her baby, George. Yes, we named them after royalty because what royal family doesn’t want to be likened to a family of goats? We sent a team to the farm to get the goats, but when our volunteers got there, they found a pig by herself in a barn, which seemed odd to them. When they asked the farmers what was up with the pig, they said she was heading to market. (Those are words we rescue people never want to hear.) One of the volunteers mentioned that the pig looked pregnant, and the farmer agreed, but he couldn’t confirm that (and didn’t seem to care). The farmer definitely wasn’t letting that get in the way of sending the pig to market. Our team couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her behind, so they convinced the farmer to let her go, as long as we would agree to take her.

The volunteer who called us couldn’t tell us much about the situation, just asked if we could take the pig, presuming the farmer would give her up. Derek and I spoke briefly, knowing time was of the essence, and agreed we could handle an extra head, especially when we knew it was either us or the slaughterhouse. When we got the call that the farmer was in fact giving up the pig to us, we thought, Great. But then when we found out that she might be pregnant, we started to worry a little bit.

We could handle one pig, but pigs can have litters of upward of fourteen piglets. We weren’t prepared to take on something like that, but how could we say no now? We started to ask more questions, but we didn’t get much in the way of reassurance or even a solid answer as to whether she was pregnant. Regardless, we knew what we had to do: we would have to just figure it out like we always did. That pig was coming home to us no matter what.

When the new pig arrived and we got a look at her, we weren’t convinced she was pregnant. She couldn’t have been more than two years old, we thought, which would make her just barely able to get pregnant. Nevertheless, we scheduled an appointment with the vet for a few days later. But two days later, on April 1, when Derek and I were taking some friends into the barn to show off the animals, Derek immediately yelled, “She’s having babies!” Of course, knowing full well it was April Fools’ Day, I told Derek to fuck off. I didn’t believe for a second that he was telling the truth. But then Derek held up a slimy little piglet with the most hilarious expression on his face.

We all started to panic. I immediately grabbed my phone and called the vet to tell him the piglets were coming. He said, “Okay, let me know if you have any problems.” My response: “This pig is having babies. We’ve never delivered babies. That is a problem!” The vet laughed and tried to calm me down, explaining that there was nothing we could do except comfort the mother and help catch the babies as they arrived.

It was a pretty incredible experience. Eight pigs were born, one of which was stillborn due to a very rare physical disorder. We soon lost two more just because they weren’t strong enough; no matter what we tried, we just couldn’t get them to pull through. But both of the piglets we lost passed away comfortably in our arms, and they knew nothing but love. They were buried together in one plot on the farm, in a small marked grave in the forest where they would’ve played with their mom and siblings. The five surviving piglets have been thriving ever since, and each weigh about three hundred pounds now! And we named the mom “April,” considering the auspicious, if not ridiculous, day she had her litter.

We were concerned about having piglets on the farm, having heard so many excuses for why commercial farms use gestation crates. They say the mother pigs will step on or roll over onto their babies, crushing them to death. The piglets were tiny when they first arrived, and once the vet examined them and April, he said she had likely given birth prematurely, potentially as a result of stress from the move. Since we obviously weren’t using gestation crates, we were afraid April would crush her babies. So we were incredibly careful, keeping constant watch over them.

For the first few days, we kept the piglets in a large wooden box beside their mom, taking them out every couple of hours to let them feed and walk around. April was always super gentle with her babies… and protective. As soon as we started lifting them out of the box, Mom would come over and lie down. Then she would start making these really funny honks and grunts, which is apparently called “singing” for pigs, although I can’t lie—it’s not the prettiest of tunes. But the piglets know exactly what that means: dinnertime! The whole time they fed, she would keep the noises going. It was incredible to watch, and the look on April’s face was amazing. We weren’t sure how many litters, if any, she’d had before and experienced their being taken away. But we knew she was going to be keeping these babies, and that felt wonderful.

Eventually we decided to build a small space in the corner of the stall where the piglets could go but Mom couldn’t fit, to give the piglets an area where Mom couldn’t accidentally smother them. There also was a heat lamp in there, and the piglets loved it. They love to be cozy, so we knew the heat lamp would attract them. Mom would still be close, but the little corner area was a totally safe place where accidents couldn’t happen.

We were under a microscope, scrutinized not only by other sanctuaries that might have been a bit jealous of our success, but also by farmers and industry people who would have loved the opportunity to say, “Look how badly those idiots screwed up.” We were trying to dispel myths about pigs, and we wouldn’t be doing anyone—particularly the pigs—any favors if we screwed up and cost those piglets their lives because we hadn’t done the right thing. It’s hard to live under so much surveillance. You know the vast majority of people are cheering you on, but there’s always someone in the shadows who can’t wait for you to fail. We weren’t going to give them the satisfaction.

Unlike April and her piglets, the goats were already a family when they arrived, so it was really neat to be able to keep them together. Goat and cow dairy farms operate the same way in that the animals produce milk only when they have babies. The babies get taken away; the male goats are raised to be meat goats, and the females are turned into future dairy goats. Very rarely, if ever, would they be kept together. Catherine had just given birth to her baby, George. William was the stud. When they carried George off the trailer he was tiny, about the size of our dog Reuben, and still nursing. Now that Catherine was at our farm, not only would she not be forced to have another baby, but she would get to keep this one. Keeping the mom, dad, and baby together was a rare situation. William, being the stud, probably had many “wives,” but when they came to us, Catherine got to be the only wife.

When they first arrived, we decided to put them in the forest pen. It turned out goats are even worse with fencing than pigs and cows—not because they break the fences but because they jump over them. Catherine would climb up a big rock five feet away from the fence and leap over the fence to get to us. We used to joke that she was the worst mother in the world, because every single day, we’d be in the barn with the animals, and suddenly Catherine would appear at the back door of the barn. At the time, we thought it was hilarious that Catherine would just abandon William and George and that they were too scared to make the leap.

There were times we’d be done with breakfast and doing errands or whatever, and Catherine would be grazing in the grass and doing her goat thing for up to two hours, while poor George was starving. Catherine seemed to prefer to spend her time with people in the barn, while poor William and George looked on from the fence.

William did not take this betrayal lightly. He would always make a big fuss, alerting us to Catherine’s absence really quickly. He was such a tattletale. And when we walked Catherine back to the pen, William would greet us at the gate with his little tail just wagging away. We never knew if he was happy to see Catherine return, or if he was laughing at her because she got brought back to the pen. Probably a bit of both, we thought. This went on for a while, until we moved them into the pasture where the pigs were, an area that didn’t have a rock close enough for Catherine to launch herself over the fence.

In this instance of fence debacle, we hadn’t failed. We just hadn’t thought of animals leaping. A friend of ours made a joke that’s apparently an old saying: “If it can’t hold water, it can’t hold a goat.” We hadn’t heard that one before, but it’s definitely true. Goats are the Houdinis of the farm animal world. So this became our new challenge. We had finally succeeded in building fencing that kept our other animals in, and now we had these escape artists to deal with. But once we got the goats into a pen that didn’t have rocks Catherine could climb, things were under control. She’d stay put, so George had his mom there for nursing.

The way George would feed was ridiculous. Goats head-butt things, as I’m sure you know. He’d put his head down and ram Catherine at full speed, right in her crotch—I’m not sure why—but then he’d make his way to her nipples. As silly and painful as it looked for her, that was George’s source of food. He fed off her religiously for four months, well past what we’d believed was acceptable. His little horns were growing in, and he was almost half Catherine’s size, and by that point she was trying to wean him. George didn’t care. He kept coming back and ramming her for more. After a while, she wanted nothing to do with it. (Can you blame her?) She’d kick her leg and run away from him with one leg in the air, and he’d be hanging on to her with a nipple still in his mouth. It was awkward, like those pictures you see where the way-too-old kid is still on the nipple. I’m all for breast-feeding, but when you can walk up and ask your mom to whip out her boob, I think maybe it’s time to stop. That’s how it was with George and Catherine.

But it’s worth noting that we had this dairy baby who wasn’t taken away from his mother at a couple of weeks, as dairy babies normally are, so we got to see the whole process. We watched George nurse for as long as he wanted—or as long as Catherine would tolerate it—and then grow to be happy and healthy. To this day, they’re inseparable. They sleep together, graze together, play together. It’s the sweetest thing.

The situation with William, however, turned out not to be as good. I loved William; he was so sweet, and he and the other goats were the first animals we got from a true commercial setting, so I knew William had had a hard life. I was ecstatic to be able to give this goat a happy, peaceful retirement. William was hilarious, and he was an awesome dad. When Catherine was constantly escaping from their pen, William always stayed behind with baby George and took care of him. He was more like a dog than a goat, always affectionate, loved to be scratched or petted, and would follow you around pretty much everywhere you went.

Then one day we noticed something was wrong. William just wasn’t himself. He was usually very social and always came up to say hi when you went into his stall, but now he was keeping to himself, not his usual happy-to-see-you goat self. He also seemed uneasy on his feet, a little bit wobbly.

I called the vet out to take a look, hoping maybe it was just a virus or something. The vet tried treating William with meds, but we soon learned William had a disease called caprine arthritis encephalitis virus (CAEV), which is actually from the same family of viruses as HIV. The vet said we would have to put him down.

I hadn’t known about this goat disease. These were our first goats, and we’d done only a basic vet check. We didn’t have any other goats yet, so we didn’t quarantine them or do any of the procedures we do now when we take in new animals. Not that it would have made a difference.

The way this went down, we didn’t really understand what was happening. William was limping a little bit one day, and we just thought, Well, goats are goats. He’s climbing and jumping, he probably just needs stall rest. But that wasn’t the case. This was heartbreaking. I was gutted.

I had expected to have him here much longer. I felt like William had just arrived, and he didn’t get to experience as much of a free life as we’d hoped he would. In my hokey vision of life on a farm, I pictured being best friends with all my animals. I imagined walking around with my goat and my pig and my cows all following me, and William fit that bill. George was a wily little bugger, and Catherine would abandon her family without giving it a second thought, but William was my pal. He was so calm and loving; he just wanted to be touched. The minute you walked into his pen, he’d walk up and stand right at your legs and touch you with his shoulder, and then he’d nuzzle up against you and rub his face on your leg. He didn’t want to wrestle or chase or head-butt you. He wanted to be your pet. He would run over when he saw you and always wanted to be cuddled. He was like a dog-goat to me.

He’d been on our farm only about six months, so we hadn’t even considered death as part of the process. It just wasn’t on my radar—but this was a stark reminder that the more animals we had, the more often we would have to say goodbye to them. You always know that, of course, but you can’t really prepare for or figure out how to handle it. Moreover, because these are sanctuary animals, I thought I’d remain a step back from them. I thought I could keep myself at arm’s length and believe these were not my pets. (I guess that’s hard to do when a pig is an integral part of your immediate family.) We’re rescuing these animals, but they’re not part of our immediate family. I’d do anything I could to try to detach a tiny bit, because I knew that if I got too attached and lost an animal, that sense of loss would shut me down.

But even with all the mental preparation I thought I’d done, William’s death hit me really hard. I realized it was going to be a lot more difficult than I’d thought to keep my chin up and not get too emotionally entangled when these things happened. But it was something I knew I would have to learn to deal with if this was going to be my life from now on.

People ask what’s the hardest thing about running a sanctuary. It turns out everything is hard, whether it’s losing an animal or dealing with a financial concern—the unknown about where your next dollar is going to come from—or regretfully having to say no to taking in an animal. That last one is something I’m not well equipped to handle. I’d never thought about how much of an emotional drain it would be to say no, but we can’t take every animal, and some people, as a result, can be really cruel. They’ll say, “If you don’t take this animal, it’s going to be put down—this death will be on your hands.” That’s pretty harsh when you’re trying to do a good thing and simply can’t save every animal in the world.

I was not ready for William to go. Watching him deteriorate over those last few days, hoping he’d get better but knowing he wouldn’t—that was one of the most painful things I’d ever experienced. We had to put him down. You never want to think of having to make that call for somebody, to say, “Today’s the day.” Scheduling a death is not easy, even when you know it’s for the better. Knowing you’re going to lose someone is different from knowing you’re going to lose that someone at 1 p.m. It’s tough, but it’s part of the deal.

William was cremated and joined the piglets in a plot on the farm. We told him that the Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary would be his home forever, and that held true even after he passed away.