Meet Tenacity, The Tiny Runt Goat Helping 20-Year Buffalo Navy Veteran Heal

She was such a tiny goat, she should have been a stillbirth. But Tenacity wanted to live, and boy has she ever.

The little runt with a heart so big it shouldn’t even fit inside her pint-sized body has been making the rounds in Buffalo at places like Bombshells American Cantina, and she’s making new friends everywhere she goes. 

She's been utterly irresistible to everyone, starting with her owner Lonnie Frericks, a military veteran whose been on an unconventional path to healing and back into his first love, agriculture.

Frericks is a relatively new Cowboy State resident, though an old hand at farming. 

He knows a wise farmer or rancher doesn’t typically spend money saving the runt of the litter. The economics just do not pencil out.

But there was something different about Tenacity right from the start. She was so small, but had so much spunk.

"It’s a pain, it’s a cost center,” he acknowledged. “But the thing is, sometimes in agriculture and life, sometimes you are supposed to do those things, because that’s what makes us human.”

Finding Buffalo

Frericks landed in Buffalo after a 20-year stint in the Navy as a member of an elite bomb squad that partnered with Navy Seals, jumping from airplanes and disarming bombs all over. 

He found Buffalo after traveling the country, checking in on old military buddies while also trying to find the right, new place for his and his wife’s feet to land. 

They didn’t want to retire in the Washington, D.C., metro area. They wanted a small-town place that would feel more like home. 

After a career that had been filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of death and destruction, Frericks needed a place that could offer him a little bit of healing. 

Buffalo turned out to have exactly what he and his wife needed.

“The biggest appeal to this area was the agriculture,” he said. “The agrarian values. There’s a lot of 4-H, you’ve got the rodeo, you’ve got the cowgirl rodeo here at the fairgrounds, FFA — all sorts of ranching and all the agriculture. And on top of that, you get into nature.”

The Road Back To The Land

Agriculture’s not an easy industry to get into these days.

No one knows that better than Frericks, who grew up on a dairy farm in Iowa and has dreamed his whole life of being a farmer.

In fact, dairy farming was part of the reason he joined the Navy when he was 18. 

“My intention was to join the military and retire, and then have a retirement check from the military where I could actually buy tractors, so I’d have nicer tractors,” he said with a chuckle. 

“But then 20 years later, that wasn’t possible anymore, because the farming has vertically integrated and now, if you want to farm in central Iowa, you need like 20,000 acres,” he added.

Frericks had all but given up hope on a retirement as a farmer or rancher. Then he came to Buffalo, where he met an old-timer from Banner named Bob Chefs.

“He used to own a log home company up here, but i met him, and he kind of took me under his wing,”  Frericks said. “Then he got me in to talk to some people, and we found out about this 45-acre property outside of town here that wasn’t on the market yet but was coming up.”

Frericks took a look at the property, and it was love at first sight. 

“I had kind of fallen in love with the Bighorns and Wyoming and the people and everything,” he said. “So I called my wife and I said, ‘We need to just move right now. We just have to do this right now.' And interestingly enough, she was like, ‘OK.’”

They “burned all the bridges” and “burned the ships” to get to Wyoming, Frericks said, describing how he and his wife approached selling everything they had, and diving all into their new home.

‘If You Live, I’ll Take Care Of You'

Traditional approaches to ranching require a huge scale these days to make ends meet. But Frericks has been finding innovative ways to make his small-sized farm work for him.

He has an egg-laying operation with 500 hens, for example, and a growing number of those eggs. 

These can be found in certain area grocery stores and restaurants, though for now he doesn’t have any eggs left over to sell to the general public.

He’s also raising Jersey cross Hereferds, a hybrid that’s made a name for itself with a docile nature and high milk production, plus calves that can be raised for excellent beef.

And then there are the Kiko meat goats, of which Tenacity was one, although she’s since been promoted to what Frericks is thinking humorously of as head front lawnmower lead.

That’s just so he can follow his own rules learned from growing up on a dairy farm in Iowa, that every animal has to serve a useful purpose to remain on the farm.

Lonnie has a lot of experience raising livestock, so he knew the minute that Tenacity was born there was little chance this teeny baby goat would survive.

For the baby to have any chance at all at a relationship with its mother, he also knew he couldn’t intervene. He had to just leave them alone for a while, even though every instinct was telling him to just pick her up right then and there.

“If you go in there and intervene, you’ll ruin the scent,” he explained. “And then the mother won’t take them. So, you kind of have to have a hands-off approach.”

The next day when he returned to check on things, though, he could see the mother wasn’t having anything to do with this runt, who he could see was on the verge of dying.

Frericks knows his parents would have just let this baby goat die. 

It was far too small. 

It would eat a lot of food and never pencil out as a meat goat.

But Lonnie couldn’t quite bear the idea of letting this life, which he was now literally holding in his hands, die right in front of him. 

“When I was in the military, I saw a lot of death and destruction,” he said. “And when I came back, I was having some issues with that. The way you manifest that is you kind of segregate yourself from society. 

"So, if you go through all that trauma and you see all that, it actually makes you appreciate life more.”

Lonnie made a deal with the baby goat then and there.

“If you live, I’ll take care of you,” he promised her. 

Frericks said she looked up at him with those spunky eyes and he know she was taking him up on that deal.

He shook his head and laughed at himself and this goat a little bit. 

Then he said, “I’m going to call you Tenacity,” and he took her with him inside his home to find a syringe because this goat was too tiny to even feed from a baby bottle.

House Goat, Lap Goat, Tiny Boss

Frericks' wife was pretty surprised when little Tenacity showed up all of a sudden in the couple’s home.

“Goats aren’t supposed to be in a house,” Frericks said a little sheepishly. “But I had to take her in the house because she wouldn’t survive outside.”

Goats, Frericks soon learned, are not nearly as easy to house train, no matter what the internet says.

It’s taken some effort in that regard, Frericks admits. But eventually, Tenacity figured out that the puppy pee pads are where such business is done, not the living room or the bedroom floor.

She’s also quickly gotten the hang of something else as well.

“She requires cuddling every day,” Frericks said. “So, she will bug you until you actually let her get on your lap to cuddle. And then sometimes she’ll take a nap on your lap, and sometimes she even refuses to eat unless she’s on your lap.”

If her humans are napping and not around to provide a proper lap to sleep in, she’s also figured out that the wood stove makes a mighty fine substitute, at least temporarily.

“But if she gets hungry, she’ll wake up at like 2 in the morning, and she’ll come into the bedroom and be like, ‘Lonnie, I want food,’” Frericks said. 

That means Frericks has to get out of bed, as quietly as he can so he doesn’t wake up his wife, and make her a bottle. 

But she often still won’t take the bottle unless Frericks sits down with her so she can climb up on his lap.

“Then she drinks the whole bottle,” he said, a little ruefully.

The Goat And The Dog Pack

Tenacity has managed to worm her way into a few other hearts in the Frericks household as well. 

“We have these big Polish chakras, and they look a lot like a Great Pyrenees,” Frericks said about his ranch dogs.

These two dogs are great big galoots that would have no problem roughing up and rolling a baby goat if they wanted to.

Instead, these gentle giants will lay down with her and let Tenacity jump up and climb all over them. 

“So, she kind of hangs out with the pack of dogs, and she’ll follow the dogs around more than (the goats),” Frericks said. “She doesn’t really want to go and be with the goats. She wants to be with the pack of dogs and the humans.”

It’s gotten to the point where the Frericks joke about her being their “pack” goat, because she’s become so integrated with the family pets.

Now whenever Frericks opens the door, he sees Tenacity standing there alongside the family dogs, eager to greet the human who is coming through the door. 

One day, Frericks made the mistake of mentioning his funny baby goat’s antics to friends at one of his favorite places in Buffalo, Bombshells American Cantina.

Everyone immediately insisted he bring the goat to the military-themed hangout and cocktail lounge.

So Lonnie brought her by the next day in a little cat carrier to show her around. Faster than The Flash, everyone was passing Tenacity around, taking turns cuddling the goat with a heart too big to die.

She’s become a regular there now, giving her a brand-new side gig in addition to her lawn-mowing duties.

“We would all be mad if he got rid of her,” Bombshells co-owner Tucker Alger said. “She’s like our mascot. She’s Bombshells' mascot.”

A Place Where Veterans Feel Seen

Bombshells is something of a home away from home for Frericks, and it’s one of the reasons he was so attracted to Buffalo.

“I was disillusioned about my military service,” he said. “And the bar here, it’s actually a lot more than just a bar.”

Owners Alger and Luis (Lue) Elizondo have been particularly active about veteran outreach, with Elizondo himself being a veteran. 

The bar hosts weekly meetings for veterans, among other things, and frequently gives tours of the cantina, which is decked out with lots of World War II memorabilia.

It was the memorabilia that really caught Frericks’ attention.

“Anytime you’re in the military, especially after 20 years, and you retire and you’ve got all this stuff,” he said. “Military plaques, flags, awards — and it just kind of sits around your house and you’re like, ‘Why do I have this stuff?’”

Lonnie decided to bring some of that to Bombshells to display one day. 

“A lot of people come in here, and Lue and Tucker will give tours, explaining this stuff,” Frericks said. “And you can watch that and you can actually see that people appreciate it while they’re looking at everything.”

It was particularly healing for Frericks to see people exclaiming over some of the items he had contributed to the display — even if they had no idea that any of that stuff actually belonged to a certain veteran sitting quietly at the bar, observing from afar.

For Those Who Have Heart

Wyoming, Frericks firmly believes, has been exactly what he needed, and he’s glad he found Bombshells and Buffalo.

He’s even glad for the runt of the litter he has saved and named Tenacity. If anyone had ever told him going in that he needed to save a little runt goat, he’d have probably laughed out loud in their face.

But now that he’s here, it’s somehow been just right for his healing journey.

“A lot of people want to put you on drugs,” he said. “But I didn’t want to take drugs. I wanted to figure out how to fix the trauma without that.”

He’s turned to yoga, becoming an instructor, and he’s turned to farming and to nature. 

And now the universe has shown up with a way to show him just how big a heart can really be, even when it's stuffed inside a teeny, little goat that should have died.

Tenacity was the runt of her litter, rejected by her mother — an underdog who wasn’t even supposed to live. But the universe always has great plans for those who have heart and spunk and refuse to give up.

Nothing has been easy for a military veteran who always dreamed of being a farmer one day.

Now it’s all the more enjoyable, thanks to special friends along the way, like the tiny little goat with a spark in her eye named Tenacity.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.