One Shabbos morning, I looked over at our dog and saw a huge swelling on one side of his face. When I say huge, it easily looked like he had a large golf ball inside his cheek.

Even more worrisome than that was his behavior. He was laying on his side without moving, not even lifting his head. His breathing was shallow and irregular; something was clearly seriously wrong. I looked at him and thought, he’s going to die.

My youngest daughter was home, and asked me what I thought was wrong with him. I told her I assumed he had been poisoned by something – maybe he was bit by something. Her next question was what could we do about it.

Naturally, these situations usually come up on Shabbos, when my ability to research a question like this is non-existent.

Without any other recourse, I relied on my own knowledge and thought about what I would do if it were a person, using what I had in my home. I suggested we use vitamin C powder to counter the poison, and activated charcoal to pull the toxins out of his body. We would have to put it in a liquid for him to drink since we couldn’t make a compress or poultice because it was Shabbos.

My daughter filled a bowl with raw goat’s milk, then added a small amount of vitamin C (it’s a strong flavor and we didn’t want him to reject the mixture) and a bigger amount of charcoal. Our dog couldn’t lift his head, so she held it in front of his mouth. He very weakly started to lick it.

She gave him three bowls of this mixture and in the next ten or fifteen minutes, it was literally like watching him come back to life in front of our eyes. He lifted his head a bit, then straightened his front legs and lifted his upper chest. By the end of the third bowl, he was acting like his normal self.

I hadn’t verbalized how bad I thought the situation was earlier, but once he was revived, my daughter told me she had the same thought that he would die based on his complete unresponsiveness. He was in really bad shape. It took until the next morning for the swelling in his face to go down completely, but once we saw him acting like his healthy self after the milk mixture, I was sure that the swelling would take care of itself.

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Every morning I take all three of our goats out. (I’ll have to tell you the story of how we came to have a third goat another time!) Two are milking goats, and the doeling is six months old. I’ve gotten them all used to a milking routine and include the little doeling because it’s nice for her to get out and get treats even if she doesn’t need to be milked. I figure it will be helpful whenever she eventually is ready for milking to have her acclimated to this schedule.

When I took her out, I noticed that her hind section didn’t look clean. Off I went to look online, when I learned that runny stools in a goat (called scours) are a very bad thing that can kill them. Having just experienced this with our bunny less than two weeks before, I didn’t doubt this claim.

I looked online for what to do, other than take her to a vet and medicate. Based on almost three decades of taking care of my own children, I was sure there was something I could do for her at home. While I was looking this up, my son asked me what to do. I told him I didn’t yet know, but if it was a person I would give them electrolytes.

‘What were electrolytes?’ he wanted to know. I told him I had no idea what it would mean for goats, but for people I would give a mixture of a sweetener, baking soda and water, and maybe some salt. He went off to shul, I continued reading online, and when he came back he told me he had spoken to someone who had experience treating farm animals, and had gotten a recipe to use.

While he had been out, I was reading lots of information, confirming that the issue was what I thought – loose stools – and how to treat them. By the time he got back, I had already made up an electrolyte solution based on something I found online. Nonetheless, I wanted to know what he had learned.

His recipe would have been cheaper to use, as I made a mixture with honey and his called for sugar, but basically it was the same idea – basically the same as what I had told my son would be what you’d give a person. The problem was getting it into her. I’d given her a container of my mixture to drink from, but she hardly touched it. I had read about using a syringe, but I didn’t have one, the neighbors we thought might have one didn’t, and I didn’t know where to get one.

Fortunately, along for a rehydration recipe, my son got instructions about how to get the drink into our doeling. He put the electrolyte mixture into a glass bottle (because she could chew a plastic bottle), pried open her jaws, put in the bottle and held her bottom jaw closed while he poured the fluid slowly into her mouth. He did this a couple of times that afternoon, then a few times the following day. He was so good with her, gentle and firm at the same time.

After a day and a half of this, the loose stools had ceased so we discontinued the ‘treatment’. My son later told me what a good feeling it was to be able to treat her and do what was necessary to help her get better.

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Yesterday afternoon, ds10 came out to do the milking with me (I’m teaching him how to milk). He milked a bit, then I took over. When I glanced in the bucket, the milk had a pinkish cast. I’d never seen that before; I threw it away, washed out the bucket and began milking again. Definitely a pinkish cast. I got a different bucket and milked her on the other side. That side was fine.

I assumed that there was some kind of minor internal bleeding, but the question was why, and what to do about it. After perusing the goat forums (new experiences make being a lifelong learner a necessity!), I was relieved to read that it seems to be something that can happen no matter how careful you are, and usually passes with time with no need for treatment. (It reminds me of when I was in second grade, I would get nosebleeds in the hot dry climate where we lived. The doctor told my mother that the dryness caused tiny capillaries in the nose to break.) When I milked her this morning, everything was fine. So I’ve learned about one more variation on the norm.

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Dealing with health related issues for the first time is always a little worrisome. Many, many times over the years I’ve experienced how empowering it’s been to successfully treat our children’s ailments at home. Though I’m now including animals along with people, the task remains to first of all not panic! – and then to appropriately support the immune system, so the body has the resources to heal itself.

Avivah