“The goat is on the elevator.” It’s not a text I’d imagined sending from the Washington Capitals’ practice facility in Arlington, but so far that week in May, I’d typed a lot of things I couldn’t have predicted.
In our Best of Washington section, we cite, as the number-one reason to love DC right now, the record-breaking play of hockey superstar Alex Ovechkin. Once we decided to feature Ovi on the cover, the idea came quickly—to photograph the NHL’s GOAT with an actual goat. But the logistics were murky. Would Ovechkin be available? Would he pose with livestock? Where would we get a goat?
Ultimately, Ovi became available on short notice—as is the nature of a professional athlete’s schedule. (Luckily, it wouldn’t be his first time holding a goat.) Late one evening, I put out a message on some online groups that I was an editor at Washingtonian and we were interested in photographing a goat in three days—could anyone help? By the next morning, I had more than 150 notifications: people with goats; people who knew people with goats; goat photos and goat videos. Realizing how many different types and sizes of the animal there are, the follow-up questions became more specific: “How big is the goat compared with, say, a dog?” “Is the goat comfortable being held?” “Will the goat wear a jersey?”
Eventually, we met Nimbus. Roughly the size of a Boston terrier, he loves to be held and regularly wears T-shirts. Three days later, Nimbus and his owner—who also owns GoatToBeZen, a goat farm that partners with area businesses to offer goat yoga—arrived at the photo shoot in the Caps practice complex via an express elevator. When we handed Nimbus to Ovi, the goat immediately took to him and nestled in.
This article appears in the July 2025 issue of Washingtonian.
Amy leads Washingtonian Weddings and writes Style Setters for Washingtonian. Prior to joining Washingtonian in March 2016, she was the editor of Capitol File magazine in DC and before that, editor of What’s Up? Weddings in Annapolis.
