Cuzco went missing last night sometime between 5:00 – 9:00 p.m. and I suspect the worst. I took the horses with me to saddle club and Phil was at youth group. When we got home, Cuzco was nowhere to be found. I didn’t worry about him… he often visits the neighbors’ horses if they venture close to our fence line and I just swing by and pick him up in the morning.

Well he wasn’t at the neighbors’ this morning and they said they’d had their horses down at the corral all night, so they would never even have come by our property at all. We had major coyote activity all around our house last night, and I fear that Cuzco wandered too far from home at a time when there were no horses in the pasture to protect him. We spent all day combing our property for any sign of him, but with all the oak brush, and acres upon acres of surrounding woods, it could be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Tomorrow I’m putting up “MISSING” posters around town in the slight chance that he followed some riders down the road or someone decided to “adopt” him, but I’m also going to be beating through the oak brush all day and scanning the skies for buzzards, seeking closure. I feel exhausted and numb at the moment. Nibbles stayed in the goat house all night and is fine. I don’t know what would have possessed Cuzco to wander away from home without the horses. He’s not usually that bold. He and Nibbles had just started sharing the shed together for the first time earlier that day, and I’d been watching them start to butt heads a little bit they way goats should do. I was so pleased. And now I’m devastated. But I’m also glad Nibbles didn’t follow him wherever he went.

If you think of us, we’d a appreciate a little prayer. Perhaps God will pull a miracle out of the hat for us.