My herd queen Allie is out of foundation stock, but was unregistered when I got her.   Last summer I tried unsuccessfully to track down the necessary info and paperwork to get her dam registered so I could then in turn register Allie and her offspring.

My friend and goat mentor Sarah from Mac's Rainbow, took up the challenge and yesterday she presented me with Allie's registration papers.  I was so excited, I was nearly in tears!  And then she topped it off by telling me that in her searching she had found the info necessary to register Molly's dam as well, so now my whole herd is registered or in the process of being registered. 

Molly of course, is my doe that died last spring two weeks after kidding.  (She is pictured in the website header with Ramie) Her daughter Ramie is a beautiful very dairy looking girl, who will be the first of Sunny's daughters to be bred.  Needless to say we are anxiously waiting to see what type of udder she will have.

It really isn't a movie, even if the website where I created this fancy slide show calls it that.  But I just had a share these shots of our little cutie.

This handsome fellow is our new pup "Itzak".    Like Elijah he is named after my grandmother, who's married name was Elijah and who's maiden name was Isaacs.  Isaac was also the first name of hubby's great grandfather.

Izzy was born Nov. 9th, and is a purebred American Pit Bull Terrier.  He is a very friendly and people oriented pup, who seems to be a quick learner.

I took him with me to do chores yesterday, and as expected the goats where less than thrilled to see him.  Allie head butted him and knocked him off his feet.  While it may seem hard hearted to let that happen, it is exactly the lesson that he needed to learn.   "Stay away from the goats".    The chickens fascinate him, but after the reception he got from Allie he kept his distance from them.  

He has sniffed noses with our cat Sophie, and was tried to play with her.  But his play bow and bark sent her running and the chase was on.    I was really hoping she would have stood up to him.   He hasn't really come nose to nose with our other tom cat Meeko yet, although they been in the same room a few times.  Meeko is bigger than Sophie and more likely to stand his ground.   

As soon as possible I will be teaching Izzy the commands "sit, stay" and "leave it!".    Those commands are some of the most important for any dog to know, and will make them much better members of the family.    Teaching those commands to Cindy, who is obsessed with cats, is VERY important, but doing so is taking a lot of time and patience.

And speaking of Cindy, Izzy and Cindy played through the fence ok, but when I allowed them together yesterday afternoon, she was a bit too aggressive with him.   She got along fine with Elijah, but he was older and a lot bigger than she, so she didn't stand a chance of dominating him.    We will continue to slowly introduce them to each other.

We had been looking for an adult dog to join the family and help with the coyote problem, but we were having trouble finding one that was cat friendly.  Then we had a friend offer his coyote hunting skills, which means this pup will have a chance to grow into his duties.   We don't want the dogs fighting the yotes - just barking at them.   Which unfortunately Cindy won't do.  

Another sad day on the ranch today.  We had to make the heart breaking decision to put our almost eleven year old Elijah to sleep.   He has been blind most of his life and now his hearing is almost gone too.   His quality of life has diminished greatly over the last six months and then while were on vacation he got into a dust up with our other dog, and the wounds on his face got infected and abscessed.   We also discovered that he probably had the beginning stages of heart and renal failure.  So as much as we hated to say good-bye to him, we knew it was the right thing to do.

We got back from our trip to Disney World last night and it is so good to be back on the ranch.   We are very fortunate that we have a reliable ranch sitter to trade vacation chores with, since many folks that farm are never able to take vacations.   Florida was experiencing a rare cold spell while we were there with temperatures in the teens at night and hovering around freezing during the day.  So nice to get back to Oregon where it is warmer!

While we were at Disney's Animal Kingdom we made a point to visit the "Affection Connection" where you can "interact with rare and exotic domestic animals".   The main attraction - NIGERIAN DWARF GOATS!    And while there was some nice looking goats in the bunch, it certainly wasn't nearly as colorful of a herd as ours.

By the way, Nigerian Dwarf Goats are now listed by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy as "Recovering" which is an improvement in standing related to their increasing popularity in the United States.  They are however, still considered a rare breed.