Blind goat missing from Alberta animal sanctuary found safe and sound

Flag of Alberta (Photo by User:Kooma – EMBLEMS OF ALBERTA ACT, Public Domain)

WETASKIWIN, Alta. — Volunteers with an animal sanctuary south of Edmonton are celebrating the safe return of a blind goat named Daisy who they believed had been abducted from their property earlier this week.

The Farm Animal Rescue and Rehoming Movement near Wetaskiwin had offered a $10,000 no-questions-asked reward for the return of the animal.

On Wednesday night, they posted the news on their Facebook page saying she had been found and is “unharmed as best we can tell.”

The group’s founder, Melissa Foley, said Daisy had been quickly reunited with her best buddy, a blind sheep named Merlin who had been distressed since the seven-month-old goat vanished.

Daisy ended up at the sanctuary after her eyes and tongue were eaten by crows shortly after she was born.

She disappeared Sunday night from the rescue group’s property about 10 minutes outside of town and since then members of the group had been searching the rural area, knocking on doors, and pleading online for help finding her.

“We were in touch with an animal communicator — somebody who was saying she could talk with Daisy, or whatever — so we were following up on that,” Foley explained Wednesday night.

“She said (Daisy) was a few kilometres down the road from us in a field. So while we were doing that our neighbour called us and said she found Daisy just 500 metres from where we actually were looking.”

Foley has no idea what actually happened, but suspects “it was probably just a couple of punks thinking that it was just going to be a really funny thing to do, maybe not realizing at the time that they were taking an animal like Daisy with very special needs.”

She believes her efforts at reaching out to students at the local schools, telling them about Daisy, had an impact.

Foley said Daisy seems just fine: “Whoever had her was taking care of her.”

Less than an hour after Daisy’s return, the group had received more than 500 messages of congratulations on their Facebook page. Foley said she’s not surprised at the huge outpouring of support her group has received online and in person.

“Anytime we’ve ever needed our community for anything, they’ve been there.”