"Everyone tells you a dog makes you heal quicker and better!"

AJ was told to find a dog to help her post-chemo recovery.

"Everyone tells you a pet, especially a dog or cat, makes your healing quicker and better," AJ explained to me.

This is why we took a journey to a farm out of town, recommended to her by a trusted friend as a place to find good companion dogs. We knew we would venture to several places around the Valley: adoption centers, rescue agencies, street adoptions, pet fairs, etc.

This was going to be a process for her, and I was along for the adventure. Today's adventure was a journey to a farm where a pug had been recommended to her.

"I need so much time and meditation now, I'm afraid an animal won't fit!"

She was wrestling with a side issue, I should explain, because a year of treatments which made her cancer-free also left her exhausted. She performs a full regimen of exercises every morning and night. Her meditation takes hours, and it has profoundly altered her experience of recovery, working, living, offering her increased conscious awareness. All the while she works full-time for a famous couple. Her side issue, therefore, is worrying about adding caring for another living thing while she still has to work overtime to care for herself.

This is her road to walk, and she is wrestling admirably with the idea of adding a pet to her life, responsibly, obligating herself to necessary care and duties, versus simply doing these things she does for balance, already making her feel maxed-out.

I told her, if the dog doesn't add energy but becomes too much of a drain, I'll help care for the dog. I need one now. Maybe this is the pet step-parenting opportunity I need, too?

A tree shoots up nearly a hundred feet high, the trunk as wide as a driveway.

We enter a fascinating farm, belonging to Wilson Parcels, a minister, percussionist, life coach, counselor, and lover of seemingly every moment, and also a farm belonging to Jeannie Lamb-Parcels, his spouse, who started the farm as a dog rescue and adoption site and converted it into an ethical breeding facility, raising labs to improve the breed.

They had a pug for AJ, if she wanted it.

"Want to see Willie?" Wilson explained that Willie was a goat who loves to roam the farm, walked on leash.

While she visited with the pug, I went with Wilson for a tour of the farm. And on the farm I heard about a pig, ee yi ee yi oh. Their pig ran away one day, and this disturbed them because they loved their pig very much. But the pig is alive and well, still, neighbors reporting back about sightings and happy squealings coming from the area their pig chose to hide and dwell.

From pugs and pigs, Wilson told me about his goat. The goat used to be very antagonistic, butting anyone who reached out to pet it. The goat lived with the pig, and they were outsiders to the rest of the farm. They weren't interested in the dogs or other visitors. And they made sure the visitors and dogs weren't interested in them.

So, what happened? The goat I met, Willie, was extremely happy, friendly, willing to hook up to a leash. He even let me leash walk him around to various trees and tall grasses for his lunch.

Wilson explained a process of building trust with the goat, giving him love and good greens, while showing him the things which Wilson wanted from him, like submission to grooming and petting and walking on a leash. Together they reached an understanding.

Willie doesn't heel, but his relationship with Wilson is very healing.

AJ couldn't make up her mind about the dog, eventually deciding against it, for now. But I was amazed at Wilson's humor, joy in the moment, engagement with everything on his farm from the fruit trees to the feel of the goat's fur. Wilson was awake. Walking the goat, awakening the goat herder.

How much of my day is awake? How much of my day, instead, is butting heads with the goats like Willie (the way he used to be before Wilson loved him into a transformed pet)? And what did Wilson do to succeed in turning an outsider goat into an insider friend?

Willie was not a goat raised for milk, obviously, but he performed an important function on the farm, besides mowing the lawn. In a place where dogs are measured by their ability to conform to human standards and needs for companionship, this very wild spirit brings out the little boy in Wilson. Together they share a love of eating wild fruit and veggies, roaming the outdoors, and nudging one another appreciatively.

We had a goat, when I was a child, and it destroyed things and ate the clothesline, climbed on top of the car, butted a neighbor, etc. I never got to see the joy of it all. I just watched my Mom delight in the stories about how calamitous the situation was. With Wilson's laughter, I saw step by step how much life a little chaos brings to the play. An animal, with its willfulness and desires, shows us that side of ourselves. If all we do is "tame" it, we might actually make it an outsider. But if we love it and offer quid pro quo, we can leash train a goat, more or less, and learn to see life like a child again--or like a kid.