Tammey, Bear, and I are on the road again. I am sure that you all don't know but at the end of every trip when we get home I moan and cry about being too old for this job and say that I am never going out again. Then they offer me a job going some place that I love and there we go "again". On this trip we left Dallas headed for El Paso and Las Cruces and then up through White Sands and the Apache Reservation (yeah, we just got back from there) to Roswell and then on up to Fritch, Tx. Fritch is a very small cattle/oil town in a beautiful desert canyon just north of Amarillo. There we were loading a young U.S. Park Ranger and his wife's household on to our truck to take them to Atlanta, Ga. And it was there, while I was empting out their barn, that we encountered the Bad Goats.

They did not seem to be bad or evil goats until the Ranger's young wife held the pasture gate open for me to pull a boat out from the barn then the two of them shot out of the pasture over the cattle gard, as if it were not there, and into the front garden of the lovely farm house where they promptly started devouring the carefully placed shrubs and flowers that adorned the yard. Immediately, the Ranger's wife became incensed and yelled "Bad Goats, stop that you evil things and get back in that pasture!" The ravaging goats not only ignored her pleas but would bolt from shrub to shrub and flower to flower bleatting in defiance through mouths filled with pansies and hydrangea as we tried in vain to corral them. The quaint farm house was rapidly loosing curb appeal by the mouth full when an idea hit me. "Tammey" I call to the farm house "come quick and bring Bear!"

Tammey stepped out onto the porch and immediately saw what was happening. Without a seconds delay she hooked two fingers into the corners of her mouth and let loose and ear spliting whistle that brought Bear bounding from the cool shade of the trailer where he was laying and fearlessly in amongst the belligerent goats. Although, it was his first encounter with goats he carried a calm confidence about himself as he paused to pee on a clump of yellow pansis before trotting up to the apparent leader of the evil goats.

The devil eyed beast look down from the hydrangeas and seeing Bear approach bolted for the road but never had a hope of escape. Bear shot past the fleeing animal and yapped a quick bark as he nipped at the front of the goats thundering hooves. The terrified animal turned sharply to the left and Bear turned with him as if he were reading the doomed animals mind . Another expertly place nip at the razor sharp hooves and the animal was turned again this time dirrectly toward the gate. Bear dropped back a step and quickly snapped the air to the left of the goats rump and then the right and then the beast was back in the pasture. Bear, somehow knowing that that part of his job was complete, immediately turned his attention to the other goat but she apparently known her fate needed little encouragement to follow the foiled leader of the rampage back into the pasture where all evil goats belong.

Although, we knew that Bear was a very smart and capable pup we are now faced with the task of designing him a cape. Any suggestions?