A California woman has filed a federal lawsuit after police drove 500 miles with a warrant to seize and slaughter her 9-year-old daughter’s pet goat. "We should be very concerned when armed men come with a warrant to breach doorways to seize a 9-year-old's beloved pet," the family’s lawyer Vanessa Shakib said in a statement.


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Jessica Long had entered her daughter into the Shasta District Fair’s 4-H program, where her daughter was given a goat, Cedar. The program is designed to teach children about raising livestock for food and gives children a farm animal to care for before auctioning it off to be slaughtered.


According to Long, her daughter E “bonded” with Cedar, and "loved him as a family pet." So when the time came to auction him off for slaughter, E “sobbed in her pen with her goat.” Having already lost three grandparents that year, Long felt she couldn’t force E to let Cedar die. “I decided to break the rules and take the goat that night and deal with the consequences later.”



Long offered to pay Shasta their cut of the sale, as well as state senator Brian Dahle who had bought the goat for $902 dollars. Long also cited a California law that allows minors to back out of signed contracts within reason. While Dahle accepted her offer, the fair didn’t.


“Making an exception for you will only teach [our] youth that they do not have to abide by the rules,” District Fair Chief Executive, Melanie Silva wrote via email. B.J. Macfarlane, livestock manager of the Shasta District Fair & Event Center, threatened Long with the charge of felony grand theft.



The fair made good on its threats, and authorities obtained a warrant to search for the goat. That warrant gave police the power to “utilize breaching equipment to force open doorway(s), entry doors, exit doors, and locked containers,” all for a goat. Initially searching Long’s Napa county residence, police then drove 200 miles to her farm in Sonoma, a location where their warrant was no longer valid, and seized the goat. In total, detectives traveled 500 miles on their goat hunt.


Long’s lawsuit cites an “egregious waste of police resources,” as well as 4th and 14th Amendment due process violations. “Our lawsuit seeks to hold public officials accountable for violating the law, and enacting a personal vendetta against a little girl simply because she loved her goat,” Shakib said.



While Long and her daughter did technically breach their contract, this is not the kind of civil dispute that warrants legal action, especially not in the way it was implemented.


Children will almost always become attached to animals in their care, and it is shocking that a program like 4-H doesn’t have proper procedures in place to deal with an incident like this. What would you expect a 9-year-old’s reaction to be if you tried to kill its pet? Let a little girl have her goat.