Rescued goat goes home with Mountie

The Mounties always get their nan.

RCMP Const. Matt Doane fielded an unusual call Sunday to help rescue a pregnant goat being chased by a black bear outside of Truro in Harmony,

Colchester County.

“The complainant called and said there was a goat on his front lawn and there was a bear chasing it,” Doane said Wednesday.

“So he scared the bear off. And he said, ‘I've got nowhere to put the goat and I think it's from down the road.' So we went to try and find where we thought the owner was … but we couldn't get ahold of anyone.”

The goat wasn't too pleased with the whole situation. And she wanted nothing to do with the folks who saved her from the bear.

“Every time they would get close to it, it would rear up and try to smack them.”

Doane and his family live on a seven-hectare farm.

“So I threw her in the back of my car with a blanket over the seat and drove her to the farm and she had some treats and stayed here for the night.”

He left his card at the home of the woman who owns the goat. “I said, ‘I stole your goat, call me at this number and you'll get her back

tomorrow.'”

The goat had been in a pen before the bear came along, he said.

“Somehow it got out. I don't know if the bear knocked it out or the wind blew open the door.”

The one-year-old goat's owner swung by the next day to pick it up.

“She was quite happy to see her owner,” Doane said. “She was much more friendly with them than she was with me.”

Doane, who is originally from Shelburne, was transferred to Nova Scotia in January from Alberta, where he and his wife ran a horse rescue on the side.

There they bought horses at auctions.

“We would find horses that are suitable for families. Like they've still got a life left in them. And we would bid against the meat buyers,” he said. “So they didn't go for meat and then we would rehome them afterwards.”

The goat isn't Doane's first strange animal call.

“I've rescued deer that were in the road before. I've rescued horses that got loose for a week — ended up tracking them down by myself and finding them in the west country out in Alberta. I've done a lot of animal calls, really. (The goat) is not the weirdest, but I had to take it home in my police car.”

The goat, named Marcy, rode in the back “so she could lay down and have a snooze.”

He put a blanket down for the goat. “She made a little bit of a mess, but it was easy to clean up.”

Now Doane's family wants their own goat. His three children — ranging in age from two to 11 — were kind of hoping to keep Marcy.

“We're going to get one some time,” he said. “We just got chickens and a duck so now they want a goat.”