Look, I’m an animal lover and what a nightmare for that little girl, but I don’t think that her parents did her any favors by not preparing her mentally for what was to come. The animals being sold at auction is part and parcel of the 4H experience, or many families will opt to have the animal slaughtered themselves. It sounds like they brought this goat to auction where it was sold and then tried to re-neg on the sale. If she bonded that closely to the animal they should have kept it on the property and not brought it to the 4H show. They almost tacitly admit this in offering to repay the income brought into 4H by the goat.<p>A number of years ago there was a dog being given up that my wife and I wanted to adopt off Craigslist. It was being given up by a family who - you guessed it - “didn’t have time for her”. This was in Weatherford TX which was over an hour from our place in Dallas. We got halfway there before the woman who placed the ad called us asking us to turn around, because her 8 year old daughter was having a breakdown after the realization that their dog was about to be rehomed.<p>Six months later they emailed us asking if we were still willing to take the dog, otherwise it was going to the shelter. At that point we had already taken on another. I hope it didn’t wind up in a kill shelter all because these parents couldn’t help their child deal with reality. This story reminded me of that.
How does America have such an abundance of police which behave in such an obviously morally corrupt manner?<p>In most nations the police makes at least a token effort to appear trustworthy for plausible deniability. From the states you get weekly reports that are so outlandishly bad that you almost can't believe it.<p>Really strange as a bystander.
I feel for this little girl - for losing her friend.<p>I think if more parents would explain to kids where meat comes from most would react like Indie-Rose - another little kid[0] - who said:<p>"I don't want to chop up animal people"<p>And there are so many more kids realizing on their own what they are eating. They don't want to eat Peppa the pig & friends and yet we (mostly) force them to eat them.<p>And there are so many more examples of these kids. They seem to instinctively understand what Einstein talked about in the last century [1] [2].<p>What do you think would happen if we show little kids the reality of slaughterhouses - they'd be traumatized for life and yet we feed them the products of those brutal and inhumane places.<p>One day we might end this barbarism - maybe a few more hundred years - as depicted in this optimistic future [3]<p>EDIT: Would be good to hear why you down vote this comment.<p>---<p>[0] <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3151959/Tearful-five-year-old-girl-s-vegetarian-mother-s-partner-insists-taste-good.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3151959/Tearful-f...</a><p>[1] "Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."<p>[2] "Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."<p>[3] The Dietary Requirements of a Star Fleet Officer - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS7NRtEJBcA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS7NRtEJBcA</a>
Completely unnecessary, a lot of adults had a chance to stop and think but they didn’t. How about we don’t hold 10-year old 4-H members to contracts (pretty sure they can’t anyway). Why are Sheriff deputies jumping on a case like this. Maybe the parents should not have let it get that far to be auctioned off, seems like they would have know before that their daughter considered it a pet.
There are multiple property right violations here and the body of law is not all that clear. 4-H violated the parent’s property rights to the goat by proceeding with the auction against their will. At this point it becomes unclear who the legitimate owner of the property is, it may still be the parents as auctions of stolen property don’t make ownership legitimate. I think making the buyer of the goat financially whole is a reasonable outcome here and police operating out of county and seizing property without due process is clearly not.<p>4-H doesn’t get to use its principles to force an auction upon unwilling sellers. If they had partial or full ownership of the goat this might be different but as long as the parents and child have bought the goat as part of raising it they can’t proceed with the auction against the wishes of that parent and child.
I mean, that's just the flip side of "cattle, not pets". But you really can't fault a little girl for not knowing all about the latest DevOps practices.
So the parents failed at providing the 4-H experience. Selling the livestock is a vital part of the program.<p>But this sounds like there was a contract that the parents were attempting to back out of…because the girl threw a tantrum. It’s ok to ask, but offering to pay the value of the goat doesn’t mean they have to accept the payment and void the contract.
Well that's just a terrible and unnecessary little story.<p>If I was the family, I guess I would have purchased a second goat and pretended it was the first, but why the hell do we have to employ cunning for something this mundane. This is a real vogon story.
Reminds me of VT agriculture college that upset the town residents when they learned the 2 scenic cows were planned to be slaughtered. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/01/college-oxen-slaughter/1676227/" rel="nofollow">https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/01/colleg...</a>
It's so frustrating! There are just some people who won't just step back and look at the big picture. An exception now and then won't hurt. Maybe they were on a power-trip, afraid of rocking the boat, or just mindlessly doing their job like a cog in a big machine.
Why didn't they just buy a new goat and hand it over to the sheriffs instead? Seems like the really obvious solution.<p>It wouldn't even have to be alive. Tell them it got hit by the lawnmower.<p>People just don't think these things through.