It wasn’t hers. It belonged to someone else and she took it. The owner didn’t want to be reimbursed. They wanted their goat.
I’ve fostered probably 50-100 cats, and I’ve returned all but three kittens – and we had been in the market for kittens when we took the pregnant moms in those cases, so surely no one was surprised that we adopted some.
Oh, and that cat who belonged to the old lady is now mine, but we returned her. Then, two weeks later, the shelter said the lady decided she couldn’t care for it, and since we’d kept it for 4 months, during which time our own cat died of cancer, she wanted to offer it to use for adoption.
I know that foster-failure is a thing, but I don’t think I’m that unusual in returning the animals I foster. And some of them have actually been owned by a person who wanted them back.
Yeah, and reading some of the other comments, I guess I should read the article. There’s clearly more going on here.
Live pets are unique. Dead goats are fungible. If the owner wanted to slaughter it, the owner ought to accept some reasonable payment for it. Maybe the mod did everything wrong, but she’s not the only one who did stuff wrong.
I wrote that terribly, my meaning did not come across at all. I meant that often, the fosterers don’t return the animals, but I didn’t mean the majority of the time. I don’t know the percentage, but I think it is less than 10%.
I always suspected that the fostering agencies know damn well that people will bond with the animals and want to keep them. If the animal is in a good home it’s a win win win.
My friend fostered a preemie puppy during Covid. For some reason there was a rule against being able to keep your first foster so she had to give it up. It went directly to a family and not back to the agency.
Love this typo
Probably a good rule. It is tough to give up a kitten or pup you’ve had for 2-3 months. I imagine in a lot of cases a foster family fail the first time out and then they’re basically out of the foster program. I don’t know of an agency/group that has enough foster families.
you’re welcome. 
I figured it was a 4-H thing and on reading the article, it was. That’s what the 4-H does. When you read of some kid auctioning off his grand champion steer at the state fair for way above market price, it’s what they call a terminal auction.
I’ve never been a part of that program, but even so, I was aware of that aspect as a child. It would surprise me if the 4-H people hadn’t made that part clear to the family, both the parents and the girl.
If you raised the dog with the intention of eating it, yeah.
Anyway, it looks like the mom was late in trying to back out of the deal, but someone in the county who called in the police was a complete asshole. I’m sure he feels smug and satisfied to know that he’s traumatized a random child for “the principle”.
There is “right” and “righteous”. This is an example of dutiful adherence to the former without any latitude for the latter. Or, are you arguing there is just no possibility of any accommodation could have been made that would not result in traumatizing a 9 year old girl by killing the animal she had raised and become attached to?
Stranger
I wonder though, the article indicated the Mom had taken to social media before the police were called. I’m guessing her actions are what triggered the police call. She was painting the fair in a poor light from what I can see. So maybe their “over-reaction” wasn’t really that much of one.
Sure, the Mom had a lot of things she could have done before the goat was actually auctioned off. So many steps before she just took the goat like the thief in the night.
She may be an asshole, too. Doesn’t make the people who made sure sure sure that the goat was killed less assholes.
That’s fair.
I think this is a key passage from the article.
and that Shasta District Fair officials resorted to using police resources after noting that their handling of the dispute over Cedar had become “a negative experience for the fairgrounds as this has been all over Facebook and Instagram.”
Keep in mind this is in an article that seems to be written as favorable to the family.
I think I’ve said a couple of times already that I would have behaved differently but it still wasn’t the mom’s goat to take. People who were raised on farms (not I) have a different world view and to them it’s not much different than a bushel of corn. They really might not have fully understood. I think most farm kids are a little traumatized when their first favorite chicken becomes dinner but they quickly get over it.
My wife raised goats. But they didn’t eat them.
When it was time, the goats were sold to a farm. My wife knew they goats were being killed but at least she didn’t have to see it or eat them. Male kids especially go for slaughter. Goat farms are mostly females.
This was all part of a 4H program of some sort.
The empathetic thing, of course, would be for the fair to allow the girl to withdraw the goat and not bother her about it anymore. If the child is to learn a lesson about follow-through, then that’s the parent’s job and nobody else’s.
If the fair found they experienced some sort of harm due to being short on goats for the event, then a civil action might be reasonable. Sue to recover whatever they lost from not having enough goat barbecue.
But there’s no world where it makes sense to have the police raid her home with a warrant to confiscate the goat. And then (as I understand) they went to a location not on the warrant and took the goat.
By the way I understand that it’s not the State Senator (R) who was at fault. Apparently he was willing to let the matter slide, but the fair organizers weren’t having it.
If I’m reading this right, Shasta County sheriff’s deputies seized the goat in Sonoma County? Isn’t that outside their jurisdiction? And I agree that it’s slightly odd that they were willing to interfere in what appeared to be a contract dispute. Don’t police normally refuse to intervene when a squatter takes residence in someone’s home, arguing that it’s not for them to decide whether the squatter has the right to live there?
So the caretaker of the goat wanted to keep it. The mom offered to pay for it plus expenses. The person who bought the meat was fine with not getting it. But the owner insisted on taking the goat by force to kill it and deliver the meat to the guy who was fine with not getting it.
One of these parties seems way less reasonable than the others.
@puzzlegal I think your distinction about pets being unique and meat being fungible is right on the money. There’s no reason for not taking money as reimbursement for the meat.