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The October Goat

His Name is Goat

By Jennifer SharpPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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My son got a goat in early October... it was an accidental thing he did. We have friends who have horses, pigs, chickens and goats. He went to visit one afternoon and came home a little while later asking if he could bring home one of the goats. They needed to rehome this goat. Not because he was bad or anything, just because he was after the does who were already bred and he was getting antsy irritated. So I agreed (my son is an adult who lives with me, a volunteer firefighter and responsible adult by the way) and Goat came home. Before he came home, we spent several hours quickly converting a small lean to shed attached to my barn into a goat shed for my son's new pal. Thinking we had it secure enough and all set, Goat moved into his shed and my son screwed one of those really long screw in dog stakes in the ground so Goat could be outside while he did a little more work on the shed. A couple of hours passed by ( I was inside doing my own thing) and my son comes in the house sweating and out of breath... concerned, I asked what was wrong. Goat, it seemed, had pulled the stake out of the ground and had gone AWOL into the woods across the road! My son had been chasing him down, finally locating him and leading him home. The neighbors across the road (we live on a busy road in a semi rural area) could hear a goat but couldn't see it and were looking all over for it... then they saw my son emerge from the woods with Goat on a rope walking like a dog on a leash, Goat just protesting up a storm. They could do nothing but stare for a few seconds- and then had to just laugh at the picture!

Goat was returned home and was secured in his new shed- or so we thought. That evening we were in the house and I happened to be on Facebook when all of a sudden the picture I used for this story popped up in a community message board asking if anyone was missing a goat. Guess who?? Goat had managed to work his way through the door of his new shed and was wandering his way to town! A passerby saw him and snapped this photo and posted it and people worked together to catch him. A neighbor thought they recognized him and got hold of the friends we had gotten Goat from and another neighbor caught him and kept him in his garage until we could get there and round him up. Goat was once again returned to his new home... now a community sensation, lol. He was once again secured in his shed- with a new and more secure gate.

My son now has a large pole buried in the ground with a heavy cable as an outside run for Goat (until we can put up a fenced yard for him in the spring), but what Goat really loves- as does the community- are the daily walks he gets on the rope. Just random walks in different directions, Goat is as well "leash" trained as any dog and the neighbors all love it as much as my son and Goat do! People will come up and pet him, give him carrots (his favorite treat) and talk to him... and Goat loves children and dogs. The accidental October goat has turned into quite a neighborhood sensation...

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About the Creator

Jennifer Sharp

Mom, grandma, avid rock picker and lapidarist/ jewelry maker. My life has taken many twists and turns that have led me down paths I never thought I would walk and the experiences have made me both stronger and more vulnerable...

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