Toady's Memorial and Smile Train Fundraiser

Toady was a baby goat born different.  She was born with a cleft palate and badly deformed face.  One of triplet kids we found her off by herself crying loudly while her mother was busily caring for Toady's brother and sister.  Working with great patience we got Toady to take her first nourishing drops of life sustaining  colostrum and each day despite the severity of her deformed mouth and nose she took in more milk and learned to take her bottle in her own very unique way. Every day our special little doe kid grew stronger and more eager to feed, explore, play, and most of all dance. She became my special little companion and though she had many obstacles in life along with the cleft she was your normal happy little goat. She was partially blind and deaf but nothing seemed to dampen her celebration of life. Just short of eight weeks she aspirated while taking her bottle and fought a good fight even to the end wanting to play and dance despite her weakening condition as she found it harder to swallow and breath. She passed away in my arms,  on the evening of April 18th and when we placed her in her little grave in our backyard we noticed that her final resting position was like a pirouette frozen in time as if she was still dancing.  We'd like to see the lives of children around the world who need corrective surgery for cleft pallettes join in a great big dance of joy celebrating their lives and the hope that will be theirs through Smile Train and so would like to help raise funds for at least one child per week of Toady's life; so please join her in the the dance and help bring smiles along the way with the gift of a smile from Toady.

 https://www.mysmiletrain.org/campaign/Smiles-From-Toady-