No Fair! Cries Family After Rules Exclude Pig
Rosie the pig can’t participate in this year’s fair for want of $2.50, a misplaced piece of paper and a rule some folks think is baloney.
Talk about ripple effect. The disappointment means Rosie’s owner, 12-year-old Lacie Hourlland, will have to sell her 4-H horse.
Her family of six, who live in a two-bedroom trailer on a dead-end dirt lane, can’t afford to feed the horse because they are saving for a house. Hourlland was counting on selling Rosie at the fair to buy winter feed for her 8-year-old Arabian gelding.
Practically everything has gone wrong for Hourlland lately.
This summer, Hourlland has had surgery for potentially cancerous cysts, had to drop out of the horse competition because of her six weeks of recovery and now has been booted from swine competition. (Last year she raised the North Idaho Fair’s grand champion hog, another Red Duroc sow named Red Baron.)
A rule is a rule, 4-H officials said. Hourlland’s entry form didn’t show up with the required $2.50 pen fee. She can’t participate.
It’s a sizeable headache to coordinate pens for the 400 plus competition animals. So giving the county fair notice that an animal needs a room is quite important, officials said.
“I understand and can certainly sympathize with Lacie and her mom,” said Jim Wilson, the Kootenai County Cooperative Extension agent who works with 4-H. “The only way to be fair and ethical is to maintain the same deadline” for everyone.
Other people missed the deadline and were turned away, Wilson said.
But when the sausage is separated from the casing, the Hourllands say this is a question of unfair penalties.
“My feeling is a child shouldn’t be penalized for a year’s worth of work for a missing piece of paper,” said Dina Hourlland, Lacie’s mother.
The Hourllands were told about the paperwork problem Tuesday night when they tried to deliver Rosie to the fair. Wilson gave them until Wednesday morning to produce some proof they had mailed the form and paid the fee, they said.
A frantic search yielded nothing.
Dina Hourlland is sure she mailed the form. She admits she may have forgotten to enclose the check because she was in the hospital recovering after being attacked by last year’s grand champion hog.
She was trying to water the 450-pound sow when it decided one of the piglets was threatened, charged and knocked Dina Hourlland over. “She crawled up on top of me, trying to go for my throat,” Dina Hourlland said. “I fed her my arm instead.”
Dina Hourlland also was pregnant, was expecting a visit from her mother-in-law - whom she had never met - and was worried about Lacie’s cysts.
None of these excuses convinced Wilson and other 4-H officials. Lacie Hourlland then asked if she could show Rosie at the fair without competing for prizes or participating in the animal auction.
No dice. “There was not enough pens,” Wilson said.
The Hourllands suspect that a misunderstanding last year - over whether they would keep their grand champion hog after the 4-H auction - prompted Wilson’s decision. “I felt it was a personal vendetta,” Dina Hourlland said.
Wilson said that’s old news and didn’t play in Rosie’s disqualification.
After all of this mucking about, the Hourllands say they only want the rule changed so another child doesn’t encounter the same problem. “I don’t want this man ousted,” Dina Hourlland said.
Instead she hopes parents will write to Wilson’s boss at the University of Idaho requesting a new rule or attend the annual fair assessment meeting to push for the change. That meeting is Thursday.
The rule probably cannot be changed, Wilson said, but he has an idea for making it better. He suggests having 4-H officials compare 4-H enrollment records with registration forms in mid-July and then notifying people who haven’t signed up.
As for Lacie Hourlland, she’s buried her anger and is helping clean barns and spruce up pigs at the fair anyway. She looks for her sows to rise again.
“I’m not going to let them keep me out,” she said.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo