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Since laughter is good for what ails you, I’ve decided to find in my memory something really funny that happened to me in 2007.

“Would you look at this?” I said to Gene, “Come here.”

We were in a drugstore waiting for a prescription refill, and we were just sort of wandering through the store.

Gene came over, and in my hand was a bottle. I handed it  to him, and read the label aloud: “Horny Goat Remedy.” He doubled over he was laughing so hard.

This happened right after, by popular request, I had just written and submitted a column entirely about our pet goat, Willy T for Trouble, and all the other goat pets I had and loved.

I received lots of emails and calls saying they enjoyed reading about the absurd antics of our goats.

But one mail was from a Clark County woman who said she also raised goats, but some of her goats were lately having horn trouble. It seems their horns were getting soft, and she wondered had I ever heard of such a problem with my goat horns.

Writing back, I explained to her my goats were Nubian goats, and they had no horns, just hard stumps on each side of the head. None of the stumps ever got soft that I knew of.

When we were in the drugstore and I saw a bottle of horny goat remedy, I was thrilled.

“Just think, Gene, maybe this is like a tonic you give goats to keep their horns hard,” I said. “Shall I tell my readers about such a product?”

I thought Gene was going to bust a gut laughing so hard.

When he finally caught his breath, he had attracted a few shoppers.

He said to me between gulps of air, “Jean, sweety, I don’t really think this for goats with soft horns.”

By then, I swear half the folks in that store were rolling in the aisle as they passed this bottle around that said, “Horny Goat Remedy.”

Well, I am sorry, but I do not see anything funny about a goat with soft horns, and my finding a cure for their suffering was wonderful, and I said so, to which my endearing husband grabbed me by the shoulder and thrust the bottle into my hand and said, “Jean, sweety, read the whole label.”

Reluctantly, I began to read it.

As the light slowly dawned in my dulling brain, I said, “Oh!”

I could feel my face blossom into blotches of red, and I felt my laughter starting in my toes making it’s way to my face and out my mouth. Almost everyone in that store were gathered to see what could be so darn funny.

You know, during these times when nothing is so funny and stress is written across the faces of all of us, it is genuinely funny to mix up a cure for two very different kind of horny problems.

So people laughed loudly and felt better.

It clearly should have read “Horn problems for goats,” which claims to cure something entirely different than a poor goat with a soft horn on his head.

Being the animal lover that I am, I left the store pondering just what would have happened if you gave those pills to ailing goats?

I think they would have ended up with a far harder problem to deal with.   

Jean Brody is a passionate animal lover and mother. She previously lived in Winchester, but now resides in Littleton, Colorado. Her column has appeared in The Sun for more than 25 years.