If the original agreement was that she surrender the goat at a specific time and place, she would have to honor her agreement. But as you mention, she could then have attended the auction and bid for the purchase of the goat. Yes I think you are correct that telling others why she wanted the goat would probably have resulted in folks refusing to bid for it and her bid would have won the day. This is so obvious an answer that I assume there are many more extenuating details not mentioned in the story as to why the simplest, most humane outcome didn’t prevail....
At least in the Midwest, ‘meat goats’ are a specific category. Usually some grocery chain pays many multiples of market price to finance scholarships or charity. Hard to believe some corporation would want the bad publicity of forcing someone to give up a pet. What corporation is doing this?
None of you obviously were ever in 4H or FFA yes the girl owned the goat,but once she enters the competition at the fair she agrees to the sale and slaughter of the goat.No differance if it was a chicken,rabbit,or cow.Regardless of who buys the animal,even if she buys it herself at the final sale,the animal is in fact slaughtered.Those are the rules of the competition.The animals are usually sold for hundreds and thousands of dollars.At Ohio State fair the record price for a stear was 225,000 dollars.Stop blaming the GOP candidate for the animals death,all he did was give a little girl a sizable amount of money.Fair Rules determin the animal must be killed.