Mina’s Day Out

Mina, one of the World’s Cutest Fainting Goats, continues to make her grand tour of vets in middle Tennessee. The story of Mina’s vet visits began on New Year’s day, and the saga continues to unfold. About a week after her initial emergency vet visit we begged our favorite horse vet to come and exam her which was vet visit number two. We then had a consultation between our favorite horse vet and another mixed practice vet for visit number three. Although Mina is significantly better than she was on the first day of the year, we thankfully are no longer discussing euthanasia, she’s still not well. A week and a half ago vet visit number four happened.

Vet visit number four involved us transporting her to our equine clinic to see our favorite horse vet again. We put a dog harness on Mina (she felt shame wearing a dog harness) and she had another day trip to the vet, this time to Tennessee Equine Hospital. We made quite the entrance as we paraded into the horse clinic with our fainting goat on a leash. We told our vet to do whatever needed to be done; endoscopy, ultraound, x-rays, whatever was needed to try and pinpoint, and hopefully resolve, Mina’s issues. Mina had it all. Mina’s bills keep adding up and we haven’t yet gotten the bill for Mina’s second day trip off the farm.

After all of the diagnostics and reviews of the imaging, we had a mixed bag of results. We were happy to hear that Mina’s aspiration pneumonia appears to be gone thanks to all of the antibiotics. We think, from all of the diagnostics and imaging at the clinic, that somehow Mina damaged her trachea. The bad news is there isn’t really anything that can be done. The good news is that she is able to eat and drink comfortably, she isn’t losing any weight, and time might heal her trachea as long as she stays reasonably comfortable. She is on steroids for pain management, and we are in a holding pattern and waiting game for now.

Mina was a star at the horse clinic and probably a lot more cooperative than some of their equine patients. Everyone had their cell phones out and I’m confident Mina’s image was circulating around social media for a a day or two. She had her 15 seconds of fame and this would meet with Mina’s approval. We also told her she is most likely the only goat in middle Tennessee who has had four vets working on her behalf. Nothing but the best for the World’s Cutest Fainting Goats.

Mina standing quietly while having an ultrasound