On Being Breedist

I struggle with profiling. Not with people. I can meet a lovely person, have a three-hour dinner conversation, feel like we've bonded for life, and walk away not knowing what they were wearing or the color of their hair or eyes. I'll remember what they had for dinner and that their dog loves oranges.

I profile with the goats. Constantly. To be fair, however, a lot of it is learned. I expect LaManchas to be bipolar, super-smart, and occasionally humble me with moments of pure sweetness, and I expect the Saanens to be placid, loving and more or less perfect. (No, I don't have a favorite. Hush.) So what happens when you get an exception? Or when you mix the two?

Take Echo. Echo is a baby Saanen who belongs to my mother. Because she belongs to my mother, and my mother loves her whole family for their irrepressible goofiness and obnoxiousness, I feel no need to educate Echo on the salient points of respectful goat-human interaction. This decision was made in no small part due to the fact that the little smartaleck learned how to duck the hand that comes back to smack her when she jumps on my back. (And then wiggles away as if to laugh at me.) She also has an unsettling resemblance to her late aunt, Zi Zhi, who was also a hellion as a child. So I let her put her hooves on my shoulder and her mouth on my jacket. Or in my jacket. Or under my jacket. The hair's off limits though. Her sister is a bit more subdued, but will still come over for a good finger-chomping session.

There's also Desi. Desi is the humblest, sweetest creature on four brown legs and is a purebred LaMancha. She spent the first two weeks of her life living in my bedroom, though, so she's pretty seriously socialized with people. (I could spend so much time studying imprinting and social behavior. It's so fascinating. And I truly believe it has long-term effects.) Desi is still a Lamancha, though, in that if I go in the pen while they are eating, she'll stroll over to see me, sniff my face, and then go back to eating for a bit. No rush. I'll be around. Just wanted to say hi.

And then there are the SaManchas. (I have a friend who calls them Saanchas. I struggle with it because the double-"A" makes me want to add a syllable even though the root word isn't pronounced that way and by the time I get the word out, I've had a minor aneurysm.) They are a distinctly mixed bag, but most of them tend towards one extreme or the other. Most goats go through a hormonal, bipolar yearling stage - even the Saanens - and most of the SaManchas seem to use this time to get the Lamancha attitude out of their system. Ramoth, Lisbon and Abbey are all half-LaMancha yearlings and all three of them have the "Don't touch me, I'll touch you" attitude going on. They've gotten sweeter as they approach their second birthdays, though, so we'll see. Lily, a 5-year-old, is ALL Lamancha. Her dam was a Lamancha though - as opposed to the others who had Saanen dams and a Lamancha sire - so she learned it early. (And now I wonder if the dam's breed has an effect? Do they pick up on it in utero? Hmm.)

And then there's Chloe. Chloe has the LaMancha energy and the Saanen love rolled up into an adorable fluffy white elf-eared ball of cloven-hooved labrador puppy. She can't get enough of people and is a total ham, happily taking picture after picture with me and occasionally even posing for the camera with a runway-model glare.

She is the reason I want all of my kids to be SaManchas for the rest of my life. And if I ever grow up and start a dairy, they'll all be white and earless.

So yes, I may be breedist. But I have a right to be. And I love them all anyway!