CALLAWAY, Neb. — Jo Ellen Wiese herds goats.
A few years ago, she and her husband, John, lived year-round in a tent in the hills above the South Loup River.
One of her husband’s herding dogs, a border collie named Cinch, had a habit of jumping out of his pen when he was bored. Cinch had learned how to grab zipper strings with his teeth and open tent doors.
One day, Cinch went too far. He herded several goats into the tent.
“We come home, walk into the tent, and his dog is in the swivel recliner and all these goats are huddled on our bed going ...’’ Wiese said, imitating the frozen gaze of bug-eyed, terrified goats.
“Let me tell you what, if you’re a woman living in a tent, keeping everything clean enough to make you happy is a difficult task,’’ she said. “You come home and you find your house full of goats, you’re not going to smile. I was so angry.’’
It was a few weeks before she saw the humor.
The Wieses now live in a house on a farmstead, but she still herds goats.
The arrival of goats in cattle country created an uproar, Wiese said, but the opposition quieted when landowners noticed marked improvement in pastures grazed by goats. Goats eat weeds and saplings of trees that compete with grass favored by cattle.
Wiese, 46, manages a herd of about 1,000 goats with the help of dogs, mostly border collies and Pyrenees-Anatolian crosses.
“The things they do and the things they understand are so amazing,’’ she said. “If every human in the universe behaved as straight and honest as a good old canine, we’d have it made. There’s no faking in these guys. They tell it like it is.’’
Wiese likes to tell how Shag, a guard dog, caught a rabbit and carried it for more than a mile and then turned it loose unharmed.
“I knew the cottontail was fine because it kept turning its head and its eyes were so big,’’ she said. “It kept looking around like, ‘What’s happening?’ Shag had it by the back haunches, but he never chomped down.’’
It ain’t a life for everyone, but when you’re out where Jo Ellen is, on top of the table, you can see from horizon to horizon. No man-made structures in sight, no sound but the wind and the goats bleating. That’s how some folks define freedom. When the night comes, that big sky fades away and there are stars, lots and lots of them, from horizon to horizon — three hundred and sixty degrees all around. Those stars glide right into the ground, like the universe is a big dome been set down right on top of you. Like I said, it ain’t for everyone, but it’s enough for some.
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