San Diego Reader

Both Scott Carhart and Helen Flaster are undoubtedly animal people.

Their family pets number 26: seven dogs, seven cats, three horses, two goats, two tortoises, two turtles, two birds, a miniature horse, and a few tankfuls of fish.

Many of these animals are rescues, as Carhart works as a veterinarian and Flaster as a veterinary technician.

“Occupational hazard,” says Carhart, with a smile.

Their enclosed patio, adjacent to a spacious, brightly painted kitchen, is the center of the animal action. This is where the dogs and goats spend most of their time, playing in the grass strips that border the concrete floor. The dogs jump and whine for attention, which Carhart and Flaster administer lovingly.

Beyond the dogs are the goats, Gomez and Lurch, who have taken up residence under a round outdoor table. Gomez has managed to stuff himself under an overturned chair. His white nose sticks out, while Lurch stretches out by the table legs.

“Gomez is a Nigerian dwarf [goat], and he’s the one that I walk,” Flaster explains. “I also give him a bottle two times a day, just with water in it, but it’s something he really likes, like a child likes a blankie and pacifier. It’s calming for him. It’s very cute.”

Two kids on horseback pass by their backyard, most of which is dominated by a horse corral, and wave. In Poway, where Flaster and Carhart live, trails cut between ranch-style homes and wind behind backyards. It’s not uncommon to see people riding or walking horses past houses and down the sidewalk.

On the patio, Gomez emerges from under his chair. He’s an all-white goat, his flanks protruding like two pannier bags. His ears twitch and his tail bobs, but he’s quiet, watching as the dogs carry on around him.

Gomez and Lurch, like the dogs, spend their nights indoors. “They’ll lie right here,” says Flaster, pointing to a carpeted spot in front of the living room coffee table. “We’ll put a towel down and get diapers on them — thank goodness for Depends — and they’ll come in and they’ll lay very quietly while we watch TV.” Before going to bed themselves, Carhart and Flaster tuck the goats into oversized dog crates in the garage to sleep, for fear of coyote attacks.

In addition to walking Gomez, Carhart and Flaster also walk Buckaroo, their white-and-tan miniature horse. Considerably smaller than a pony, Buckaroo, as his title suggests, looks just like a horse, only about a third or so of the size. He is perfectly proportioned from head to hooves, with a classic, slightly buck-toothed, horsey grin.

Buckaroo walks with a harness, Gomez with a collar and leash.

“When I walk Gomez, more than when I walk the horse, people just kind of think he’s a dog,” says Flaster. “If they’re driving by, they just see an animal, and for all intents and purposes, he could be a dog. When he walks he just…toddles along.”

And he does, stepping carefully on the asphalt with his small hooves, slipping only once. In the distance, mountains rise, miles of scrub brush and ruddy dirt. The heat, which is considerable, beats down on the roofs of the two-story houses and pristine lawns on either side of the street.

Buckaroo walks along, all knees, just like a horse of a larger size. Carhart and Flaster walk side by side, Buckaroo to Carhart’s right and Gomez to Flaster’s left. Occasionally, the two animals will cross paths, Gomez skittering lopsidedly out of Buckaroo’s way.

“Oh, Buckaroo, leave Gomie alone,” admonishes Flaster.

Carhart tugs gently on the leash attached to Buckaroo’s harness, and Buckaroo shakes his head slightly in defiance.

All in all, both animals walk well, minding their respective handlers.

Few neighbors are out and about, but when they are, says Flaster, they are largely nonplussed by Gomez and Buckaroo.

“Some of them do [say hi],” says Flaster. “And if there are kids out, of course the kids like to come over. For the most part, because this area is an area where people do see other people riding horses and walking horses and what have you, it’s not…I mean, if it was in my father’s neighborhood, it would be different. He lives over by the university, and there are no animals like this.”

On the street, Gomez and Buckaroo shuffle positions, keeping an almost steady pace with one another, Gomez a few inches behind.

“They seem to walk really well,” says Flaster. “I mean, Buckaroo always wants to pull us over to eat everybody’s grass.”

“He’s a character,” adds Carhart.

Back at the house, Gomez returns to the patio and Buckaroo to his personal pen, adjacent to the corral.

Indoors, it’s spotlessly clean, the living room floors sparkling and the furniture immaculate.

“We work hard to keep it clean,” Flaster says. “I can’t stand smells. It’s just the way I was raised. My parents would just die if they saw all this. They’d love it, but it would be too much, for my mom especially.”

She laughs.

“She’d say, ‘Oh, my God! Goats in the house?’ She would think I’m crazy.”

Kiki and Melanie, Shannon and Spanky
In the beginning, Melanie Ariessohn could only admire Kiki the macaw from a safe distance.

“[At first] I could just pick her up with a stick,” says Ariessohn. “I tried to get my hand near her and she’d just lunge at me like she was going to bite me and she has a pretty big beak so…I got a few bites. Then one day she lifted her foot up, and Kiki’s owner Bonnie said, ‘That means she wants to step up on you.’ And I put my hand out, and she stepped up onto it.”

Kiki is an inquisitive bird, cocking her head as though in question. Almost entirely blue and green, she’s a magnificent 12-year-old macaw with brilliant blue and emerald-green feathers, her belly as yellow as a sunflower. She warbles off a string of nonsensical sounds with the distinct cadence of language.

Beside her sits Ariessohn, who speaks back conversationally. Kiki, in her nearly human voice, mumbles a few garbled syllables.

“She talks a lot of macaw,” Ariessohn explains.

Kiki, half great green and half blue and gold macaw, is a parrot-in-residence at the Parrot Education and Adoption Network, a nonprofit organization designed to rehome birds and educate the public about their care. Bonnie Kenk, at whose house Kiki resides, is the president of the organization, which has chapters in Alaska, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and her home serves as its headquarters.

Ariessohn has been taking Kiki for walks for the past two of the three years she’s been coming to see her. For a few weeks after she was able to pick Kiki up, Ariessohn, who works as a medical-text editor, carried her around Kenk’s backyard until, quite suddenly, Kiki herself requested they venture farther out of doors.

“One day she said, ‘Go outside and take a little walk,’ ” Ariessohn says. “It’s something her previous owners taught her. And so we went.”

Two years later, they still walk together, traveling up the hill from Kenk’s house to a wooded park.

Bird-walking, according to both Ariessohn and Kenk, is not and should not be done for the “cool” factor; birds, like humans, need sunlight and a change of scenery.

“We give them tons of toys to play with and different places for them to be outside and inside, but, you know, if you sat in the same room all day, no matter how many toys you had, you’d get bored,” Ariessohn says, with a laugh.

“Walking them isn’t, as some people feel, for the humans’ benefit,” Kenk adds. “Walking them is for their benefit, to get them out, to get them stimulated with something besides the four walls they live in, to allow them to feel the sun on their heads and the wind in their feathers.”

The park Kiki and Ariessohn walk to is not far from Kenk’s, its entrance at the bottom of a small but steep hill. Ariessohn, with Kiki perched on her hand, ventures only a little ways in, to a large rock shaded by a low-lying pine.

Kiki scuttles along the rock’s surface.

Typically, they stay until Kiki gets restless, which, on this outing, doesn’t take long. She picks up her foot and extends and retracts her talons, a signal that she’s ready to go. Kiki in hand, Ariessohn gets off the rock, and the pair head back to Kenk’s house.

Aside from a quick “hello” from a neighbor, Ariessohn and Kiki walk without interruption. When Ariessohn used to walk her own bird, China, in her old neighborhood downtown, reactions were more frequent.

“Whenever I’d see a neighbor, I’d cringe because they’d come over and say, ‘Oh, you’re the one with the birds.’ And I’d say, ‘Oh, my God, I’m so sorry about the noise they’re making.’ And they’d say, ‘No, it’s great.’ I lived right in the airport’s flight path, it’s such an urban environment, and it is great to hear wild birds — it sounds like wild birds — it’s really refreshing.”

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