Phil and I went for a lovely drive today, but it ended with a small catastrophe in which no one was injured but a lesson was learned. It was a beautiful day and the sun felt nice.

As soon as I lowered the tailgate on the truck to load Finn and Sputnik, Coral leaped in and told me plainly that she wanted to come with us!

Pretty baby! Of course I let her come!

I love the sunlight glinting off those horns.

“Where did the boys go, Coral?”

She spent most of the drive right here by Finn’s flank.

When we were almost finished with our drive, I took the goats down a little side road with a narrow sidewalk up a hill. They did great, but on the way back down the hill our yoke broke! The wagon tongue hit the pavement and the wagon overtook the boys and whacked them in the hindquarters. However, their solid training foundation saved the day and they stopped immediately when I pulled the reins and said “Whoa!”. Had they spooked and bolted it could have been a terrible wreck. I got out and unhitched them and drove them back to the truck while Phil pulled the wagon. I made a new yoke last week because I wasn’t entirely happy with the first one I made. Unfortunately, the wooden rod was too narrow for the size of the holes I drilled for the ring. Furthermore, horse yokes always have a metal piece to bind the wood around the ring and keep it from splitting. My next yoke will be designed with a sleeve of steel pipe in the spot where the ring attaches. Lesson learned! But I’m very proud of how well Finn and Sputnik obeyed in the face of such a major spook.