The bad thing about sharing your life with animals is they don’t live as long as we do but then there’s so many good things – wonderfully funny, heartmeltingly touching, hair-tearing, belly laughing, foot stamping, gratifyingly glorious things – that we don’t even blink before we do it. Opening our hearts and paddocks and lifestyle to a menagerie of beings, we know that we’re entering into something that will eventually, for a variety of reasons, end in tears.
This said, this was the week we said goodbye to Leia.
The wonderfully ramshackle, massive of hearted, wonky footed, goofy faced, unbelievably noisy goat girl who took up residence at our place nearly eleven years ago, teaching us so much in the intermim – much of it about caring for goats, died in the early hours of Thursday. Her departure, much like her arrival on 27 August 2013, was no fuss, no nonsense. She simply slipped away after a day of being “a bit off colour”.
Every year we celebrate Homestead Day: 27 August, the day it all began.
This year, the one that started it all won’t be in residence.
Union Homestead 
Our animal friends will always be missed.
So true!
Oh, so very, very sorry! How she will be missed. This post brought tears to my eyes, but I was glad to read Leia’s passing was relatively easy. Unfortunately, we have had to watch beloved fur buddies suffer. Anyway, a sad day for the homestead.
A lovely tribute.
Thank you
I’m so sorry. As you say, the down side to having these creatures in our lives. She was in your lives for such a long time.
She really was The Homestead in the beginning and I still look for her in the paddock most mornings. She was a very noisy goat girl and things were unnaturally quiet for a while but Amelia now sounds exactly like her. Weirdly, I love it😁