By ELLEN BANNER The Seattle Times

MAPLE VALLEY, Wash. — After buying a farm in 2001, Barbara Jamison went to a nearby feed store and saw two goats that someone had left there tied to a post. She brought them home, found them to be enchanting animals and fell in love.

She decided to go to an auction to get more and realized that the goats, although tame and friendly, were not being sold as pets. They were sold for human consumption.

For Jamison, it was heartbreaking.

"I'd always been a dog person,” Jamison said, “but the goats trumped that."

Barbara Jamison, founder of Puget Sound Goat Rescue (PSGR) in Maple Valley, Wa., snuggles with some of her goat friends Tuesday, May 7, 2019. Over one hundred goats are currently housed at the rescue. PSGR has been rescuing, rehabilitating and rehoming goats since 2001. Over 200 goats are adopted every year. (Ellen M. Banner/The Seattle Times via AP)AP

Not long after, Jamison founded Puget Sound Goat Rescue, which has adopted out several thousand goats since.

Soon, she was bringing goats home from the auction and things progressed. Jamison started going to slaughterhouses, then more auctions, dairies, breeders and another slaughterhouse. "I couldn't just leave this one behind," she says. Before she knew it, she had a lot of goats.

“Most will bond with horses, sheep or cows, but their ideal is to be with another of their own kind. They like to snuggle at night. They need their goat buddies.”

She also started working with animal control on abuse and neglect cases, or adopting animals whose owners could no longer care for them.

Baby goats are fed breakfast by volunteers at Puget Sound Goat Rescue (PSGR) in Maple Valley, Wa, Tuesday, May 7, 2019. Over one hundred goats are currently housed at the rescue. PSGR has been rescuing, rehabilitating and rehoming goats since 2001. Over 200 goats are adopted every year. (Ellen M. Banner/The Seattle Times via AP)AP

In the beginning, Jamison was funding the sanctuary entirely through the salary from her job and didn’t have very many volunteers. She obtained nonprofit status in 2015 and now has 70 volunteers to help her tend to 116 goats.

Because the nonprofit is a rescue and not a sanctuary, it is not open to the public. But at the end of their shifts, after the feeding and cleaning stalls, volunteers always have time to cuddle, brush and just hang with the goats.

“An only goat is a lonely goat,” Jamison often says, “so please always adopt at least two.”