Not kidding: Shuswap woman heartbroken after pet pygmy goat goes missing

Eugene the beloved pygmy goat has been missing from his home in the Shuswap for more than a week.

His owner, Jordie Ylisto, noticed he was missing after she came home from work last Thursday, Feb. 6, to discover he had escaped from his locked pen in Sicamous.

Ylisto says she had just gotten Eugene just three days earlier.

“I had a really good friend of mine who was going through an unfortunate situation ask me to take Eugene so I said ‘yep no problem’ and I went and picked him up on the Monday and brought him home and went to work on Thursday and he was gone,” Ylisto says.

Her family has cared for several animals including goats her entire life. Ylisto had Eugene inside of a pen, which was inside of another pen in the hay shed area of her farm.

“I thought I had locked him pretty good but he clearly found a way out and escaped,” she says, adding when she came home from work, she followed his tracks in the snow.

“He was wandering outside of the fence and that’s where you could see that someone pulled over and picked him up,” she says. “We walked around for hours but you can see in (the snow) where an eastbound car pulled over… there was a bunch of scuffle marks in the snow so it looks like they struggled to catch him.”

Eugene is a six-month-old pygmy goat and was wearing a collar when he went missing. Ylisto made a Facebook post shortly after she had discovered he was gone in hopes of someone returning him.

“I had just bathed him the night before. He is very well taken care of and loved,” she says. “He is totally tame."

Ylisto lives near the Husky gas station off Kerr Road in Sicamous, which is near the highway. She says if someone saw a goat while driving by, they may have felt it was the right thing to do by picking him up.

“I feel like he is probably scared and I don’t know what happened to him and I am honestly heartbroken,” she says.

Ylisto says she was so excited to get Eugene after going through a tough patch in her own life.

“I was just so happy to have him and it just got ruined. He was supposed to be a friend for my mini donkey, so I got a mini goat to hangout with him,” she says. “I honestly don’t know what to say about it, I am honestly heartbroken.”

Anyone with information on Eugene, the six month old pygmy goat, can contact Ylisto by sending her a message on Facebook. 

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