A baby goat born without hooves became friends with a blind goat after being adopted by a New Jersey rescue shelter for animals.
When Pocket, the baby goat, was born without legs, his owners were dismayed, reaching out through social media for help. “Is there any hope for him, or should we let him go?” they asked on a FaceBook group for vets.
When someone forwarded the post to Leanne Lauricella, the founder of Goats of Anarchy, a New Jersey rescue group for goats with special needs, she got in touch with the owners and drove all the way to Virginia to pick the tiny creature up.
The five-day-old goat weighed a mere 2 pounds, and due to his diminutive size, could literally fit inside a pocket, which is how it ended up with its name.
Though the goat’s overall health was good, its legs were extremely deformed, so Lauricella eventually fitted Pocket’s back legs with pipe insulators wrapped in medical tape to act as makeshift prosthetics. “He has to have something,” she said. “He’s a baby, so he wants to be running around and playing. So he has to have everything covered and padded, just to protect those stumps, basically.”
Upon arriving in its new home, the baby goat immediately formed a loving bond with Polly, a blind goat with nervousness and various other neurological problems. “Polly and Pocket have a calming effect on each other,” wrote Lauricella wrote in a Facebook post that showed the two goats cuddling together. “It was truly meant to be.”
Lauricella expressed the hope that the special bond the two goats had would endure their respective medical treatments. “When they move outside in the spring, I’m hoping that Pocket will be Polly’s seeing-eye goat,” she said.
Source: The Dodo, UPI
