To get someone's "goat" is to make them angry. Where in the world did that term come from? Best I can tell, its roots are in American slang from the early 1900s where goat somehow represented anger.
I see attempts at goat herding in the forums and comment sections of YouTube. Not to use too many animal terms but we used to call the practice of working to get someone's goat, bear baiting.
Goats and bears, oh my!
I am not sure what pleasures some people seem to derive after having sparked anger in another, but it seems to be a growing mission on the internet.
I can remember back to my misbegotten youth when some had made it their mission to piss off the grumpy old man down the street: setting fire to a bag of dog poop then ringing the doorbell, toilet papering the house on Halloween, having a load of gravel delivered to his driveway.
I once participated in the fun by egging his house.
But it turned out not to be so fun. The next morning, when I watched him hosing off the egg from the stucco siding of the house I noticed he looked quite sad. That look convinced me to end my short lived days of gathering goats.
Once you get a goat you might not want to keep it.
Maybe better not to get it in the first place.
