Southern Oregon couple and their goat star in Discovery’s ‘The Bond’

Cate and Chad Battles live in Southern Oregon in their Airstream trailer with their goat, Frankie. And when they take their house on the road for months at a time, Frankie goes too. A Discovery channel producer saw pictures on social media of them hiking with their goat in a national park and recruited the couple and their “kid,” for “The Bond,” which features people’s unique relationship with animals. We talk with Cate and Chad Battles about their experience on the show, the human-goat bond and their personal mission of “Keeping it light-hearted.”

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Cate and Chad Battles live in Grants Pass for most of the year in a multi-colored Airstream trailer. They also travel for weeks or for months at a time going to a succession of national parks and other beautiful places. It is an Instagramable van life with a twist. The Battles spend basically every moment with their pet goat, Frankie. That led them to be featured on a recent episode of the Discovery Plus series, “The Bond,” which is focused on the emotional connections that people have with animals. Chad and Cate Battles join us now to talk about their adventures and that bond. Welcome to Think Out Loud.

Cate Battles: Hi Dave, thanks for having us.

Chad Battles: Thank you so much.

Miller: Thanks for joining us. Cate, when did you first get interested in goats?

Cate Battles: Oh actually, I’ve got pictures back from when I was basically a toddler, at goat farms, so I’ve kind of always loved goats. They’ve always fascinated me and they’ve always kind of been my spirit animal. Frankie and I are so much alike in a lot of ways.

Miller: Frankie, is Frankie near you right now?

Cate Battles: She is not, she’s back at the farm right now. We’re currently at my art studio in downtown Grants Pass.

Miller: Chad, when you first met Cate, how much did you know about her love of goats and what that love would mean for your life?

Chad Battles: Well it came up in conversation occasionally, but I don’t think it was ever a forefront issue with us, until she showed up at the house with Frankie one afternoon.

Miller: That’s a bold move. Wait, so Cate, without telling Chad, your life partner, that you were bringing a new animal into the family, you just showed up one day?

Cate Battles: That’s not necessarily everything. You can’t really trust what this guy says…

Miller: That’s why we have both of you on.

Cate Battles: The day that Frankie came home, at that point we had three dogs. We lived in a house outside of Asheville, North Carolina and we used to own a bar on the river in Asheville. And the man that used to own the property always knew that I wanted goats. So one day, he gifted me Frankie, he just was like, I got you a goat, this is your gift. And he’s like, I always knew that you wanted goats. So that was the day that Frankie came home and that was in 2014, long before we traveled or had our Airstream. Frankie was a part of our lives for several years, first.

Miller: Was Frankie just a kid then?

Cate Battles: Yes, she was. She was just a kid and she’s still our kid, will always be our kid, even though she’s, she’s probably about 80 pounds now. She’s pretty hefty, but she will always be our kid and yeah, so we raised her and our neighbor had goats, so they would have play dates and she kind of grew up with dogs, and specifically our dog Maggie, who also traveled with us until she passed away when she got older. So yeah, so Frankie is, she’s kind of a part goat, part dog, part human.

Miller: What is a goat playdate like?

Cate Battles: Oh, goat play dates. So goats are hysterical to watch, we’ve got videos online of all of Frankie’s different friends, but basically, they chase, they chase each other around, they do a lot of jumping,

Chad Battles: Head butting.

Cate Battles: Head butting is also very popular. It’s really one of the most fun things to see. It’s great to witness.

Miller: Chad, was there, was there a point when you realized that you’d fallen for Frankie too, because it doesn’t seem like you grew up with your own, from the age of being a toddler, your own love for goats, but having watched the episode, you have a deep relationship with Frankie now, too. When did that happen?

Chad Battles: You’re right. Growing up, I had no experience with goats, but I would say from the moment Frankie returned from Tennessee with Cate, that she was immediately my spirit animal. Just, we just hit it off and I don’t know, I just fell for her like crazy and the rest was history.

Miller: You share a spirit animal now.

Chad Battles: Apparently, so.

Miller: How much attention does a goat need?

Cate Battles: Goats need lots and lots of attention. Goats, because they’re so intelligent, they’re very inquisitive animals, they need a lot of enrichment, they need, they’re constantly wanting to learn new things and a lot of times what goats do to learn new things is by tasting them. So we have to be careful while she’s inside. That’s why we can never leave Frankie unattended inside. So, we spend most of our time outdoors, luckily. So…

Miller: Because she would just eat the couch or whatever?

Cate Battles: She’s more prone to paper products. We have to be, we’ve had to paint our wallpaper over a few different times. Only once or twice, right Chad?

Chad Battles: Never, ever, turn your back on a goat.

Cate Battles: Yeah.

Miller: Can you crate a goat like you would a dog, like some people put their dogs in crates if they have to go to work?

Chad Battles: No.

Cate Battles: No, no, no, no, no. We luckily, we live on a farm where it’s two acres, irrigated, lush pasture with blackberry bushes and a barn and all that. So we’re right in the Applegate Valley in southern Oregon. So it’s, it’s really the most ideal place a goat could ever dream of.

Miller: So while you’re at the studio she can frolic and munch?

Cate Battles: She could frolic and munch or she goes to a playdate. Either way, she really loves it here in southern Oregon.

Miller: I learned from the show that goats can die if they eat rhododendrons or azaleas, which seems really scary because those are not obscure bushes. I mean they’re all over in some places, they’re certainly all over in the Willamette Valley. You’re a little bit south of us, but what does that mean in terms of your traveling?

Chad Battles: We’re pretty lucky that here in southern Oregon, those plants are few and far between. But when we travel, we just really have to pay attention to our surroundings. Typically when we hike, she is off leash because she’s a herd animal. So she stays very close to us, but she does like to snack along the trail. So we have to really pay attention to what type of vegetation is around us and coming from western North Carolina where Mountain Laurel, Rhododendron is just prolific, it’s everywhere. So she got some good training and we got some good training in avoiding those types of things.

Cate Battles: The other thing that we have to do is every time we pull into a new campsite, because we don’t stay at campgrounds, we’re totally off grid when we travel, we’ve got a generator and solar, so we’re on public land like National Forest or BLM land, is when we pull in, we keep her on a leash, we inspect the campsite for toxic plants and also human trash that people have left behind because Frankie is like a moth to a light when it comes to the campfires. She will, she will see a campfire ring and she’ll go right to it because she knows that people leave trash there. So we always have to like, pick up cigarette butts and just clean the area, leave it better than you found it before letting her wander around and, and yeah.

Miller: If you’re just tuning in, we’re talking right now with Cate and Chad Battles from Grants Pass. They were featured on a recent episode of the Discovery Plus show “The Bond”. It’s focused on human relationships with animals, including a number of animals that are a lot scarier than a goat, like cheetahs and alligators, but this is about their relationship with their pet goat, Frankie. What is Frankie like as an adventure partner? You’re both very focused on getting out into the world wherever you are and going on long hikes and scrambling up rocks and going along a beach somewhere. What does Frankie like to do?

Cate Battles: Well, Frankie, I mean just being a goat, she loves finding the highest point to overlook her surroundings. So her favorite places to go are spots like the Oregon coast where you can climb on, climb on rocks and cliffs along the beach and kind of scope out the surroundings or the Alabama hills of the Eastern Sierra, she loves that spot, too. But she’s, goats are like I said, they’re very inquisitive, they love to explore and they’ve got great stamina when it comes to hiking. So she could go on 10 mile hikes with us, no problem and she loves it.

She loves seeing what’s around the corner.

Miller: How do people respond when you pull up to a rest stop or a national park somewhere and you open the door to your van and Frankie hops out?

Chad Battles: The number one question is, is that a goat?

Miller: We want to start with the basics.

Chad Battles: We hear that a thousand times.

Miller: Do you have a snappy answer or do you just say yes?

Cate Battles: It’s the elusive two-horn dog. You don’t see them too often. But yeah, so I think, between having a very vibrantly painted Airstream, that’s the first thing that people are, are pointing at and then, and then out of our car, there comes Frankie, so it’s like, whoa, but it’s really neat like when we travel like, we see all kinds of people that recognize our trailer. They follow our blog and they’re super excited to meet Frankie in person, not just on social media, but to see what she’s like in real life.

Miller: At this point, just by chance, you could be somewhere on some trail and people recognize Frankie from Instagram?

Cate Battles: Oh absolutely. Like all over the country, people recognize Frankie, so that’s pretty cool.

Miller: I have to say the Instagram view is of a kind of carefree life. You travel from beautiful place to beautiful place. You find a great place to stop at the end of the day. You lay out your blanket and chairs, you have a beer at sunset with Frankie, eating grass at your feet. How do you make this work financially?

Cate Battles: Well, we have to work our butts off. So while we’re here in Grants Pass, we have an art studio downtown on 6th Street. And while we travel, I have a mobile art studio, so that keeps us going and then we both write articles or blog posts for other publications. And I’m also a social media manager. So basically what we do is we found a way to work hard while we’re here at our home base. And then when we travel, we do, we still work, but it’s not as much. I mean it’s that we work, we work hard and play hard. So while we travel, we really really try to savor the moment in our, in our time away with Frankie. So yeah, I feel like anyone can achieve it. You don’t need a lot of money to live this lifestyle. You just have to find a way to make it work year round. And we live small. We don’t have hardly any belongings. We live in a 22 ft. space. We’ve got a five by seven or seven by ten storage unit and that’s all we have. We don’t need much, when you have nature and you’re just thankful for what you have.

Miller: At one point in the trip that you took, that was filmed for the episode of “The Bond,” you went to a, I forget the exact title, but in my mind it was a meet up of fellow goat lovers. I want to play a short clip from one of the people who was there, a true character known as ‘Mark, the Goat Guy, Warnke’. Here he is:

Mark Warnke: “Because they’re next level intelligent, they are a next level critter that we can interact with. And there’s an intentionality to it all, meaning it’s very old. Our connection to goats is very old and we have almost a genetic disposition towards them and them to us. And so in that spirit-based bond there’s just a connection that shows up that’s really special.” (Sounds of goats…)

Miller: Does that ring true to you, next level, intelligent and just an almost spiritual connection to this animal?

Cate Battles: Well, absolutely. I mean, a lot of people might not know this, they might assume dogs is the correct answer, but goats are the first domesticated animal on the planet, even before dogs. So, humans and goats go way back and they’re incredibly intelligent and inquisitive and I think that’s why humans connect so well to them and they’re very, very affectionate and they really bond with their people. So, yeah, I think Mark is absolutely right about that.

Miller: Do you have a next adventure planned right now?

Cate Battles: Our next adventure, I think we probably would like to go back to Washington and explore some places there in the National Forest that we haven’t really quite got to see as much. Frankie’s been to all parts of Washington, but it would be nice to check out that part. Also Texas, we haven’t been south to some of the state parks in Texas either. So I think there’s a lot of cool, cool canyons and natural places to explore there.

Miller: Cate and Chad Battle, thanks so much for joining us today. I appreciate it.

Chad Battles: Thanks for having us.

Cate Battles: Thank you!

Miller: That is Cate and Chad Battles. They live in an Airstream trailer with their goat, Frankie, and they were featured on Episode 3 of the show “The Bond ‘’ on Discovery Plus. Tomorrow on the show, President Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Program has been received ecstatically by some people, others have objected to the policy altogether. We want to hear from you. Will your student loans be reduced or eliminated and what difference will this make for you? You can leave us a voicemail right now at (503) 293-1983. Our production staff includes Elizabeth Castillo, Julie Sabatier, Rolie Hernandez, Senior Producer Allison Frost and Managing Producer Sheraz Sadiq. Nalin Silva engineers our show. Our Technical Director is Steven Kray and our Executive Producer is Sage Van Wing. Thanks very much for tuning in to Think Out Loud on OPB and KLCC. I’m Dave Miller, we’ll be back tomorrow.

Think Out Loud is supported by Steve and Jan Oliva, the Rose E. Tucker Charitable Trust, Ray and Marilyn Johnson and the Susan Hammer Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation.

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