Home Again

Ugh, yes the nightmares have begun again. I just got home from a much needed three day break. This morning I woke up sobbing from a nightmare about Heinz and Gertrud. I can't get away from them, even in my sleep. I dreamt they had bought a condo and the neighbors were ganging up against them because they were making a mess around the grounds of the building. It was so like them, because as you see Heinz is an avid gardener. He needs mounds of manure. In real life he regularly goes to a place in town where the Amish and Mennonites tie up their horses and collects what he calls the horse apples. He considers them gold for his garden. Heinz will walk up town with a rucksack on his back for the groceries and mail he'll pick up and then have an old plastic bag for the horse apples, which he will proudly carry home, something like other people pick up doggie doo.
Dogs are his bane I might add. He considers them mostly useless animals, only eating and pooping with nothing to show for. A goat on the other hand is much more handy. He would keep one right in town, if by-laws wouldn't prevent him. Ahh how he loves his goat milk. I listen to the praises of goats on a regular basis. You see he used to have a hobby farm on which he kept several goats. I hear about how everything about goats is useful. The milk is wonderfully healthy and highly digestible, their meat is edible and their coats can even be used if one wished to have them tanned and of course their pellet type output is great for the garden. The most wonderful thing however is that you can feed them just a couple of bales of hay to get them through the winter. He simply doesn't understand why anyone would permit dogs but not goats in town. Argue the merits of companionship and loyalty that a dog might provide and Heinz just shakes his head starts once again and begins on a one hour tirade of the wonders of goats.
So next time you look at that puppy in the window, perhaps you should consider a goat, like Heinz would strongly suggest.