I went with my brother Allen and
cousin Nick to Panguitch to get the cows. I can vaguely remember riding to
Panguitch in the big truck (2 ton cattle truck that we used to use to haul our
cows) when I was a kid. I have never been involved in moving the cows to or
from Panguitch since I have reached adulthood. On this trip we were picking up
the calves so that we could wean them; one load would go straight to the
auction, the rest would go to Santa Clara. The cows would be left at Panguitch
for a little while longer. Most of the cows that were at Panguitch this year
had been there before, and they seemed to know what was going to happen. When
the trucks show up they know that there will be hay. We had loaded several
bales of hay; several of the cows came right up to the corral knowing that
there would be hay there. Most of them were too far out in the meadow to notice
that we were there. Allen had brought his horse, Monty, to gather the cows out
of the meadow and get them going toward the corral. Normally once they are
headed in the right direction they will see the hay and go right to it. Of
course this was not a normal day, so things did not go as planned.
Once Allen got the cows gathered
out in the meadow and had them started toward the corral we ran into a little
bit of a problem. There were several strays in the herd that were not familiar
with our little program and had other ideas about what was going to happen.
Cows are like any other livestock and have a tendency to follow the leader.
They are not as inclined to do this as sheep, but, when one cow takes off in a
certain direction, there are going to be others that will at least try to
follow. This is what happened, the strays decided that they did not want to go
to the corral and took off back out into the meadow. With only one horse, Nick and
I could not cover enough terrain on foot to head them off and get them going in
the right direction. The strays successfully led the entire herd back out into
the meadow, which caused a great deal of yelling from all of us and much
swearing from my brother and cousin.
The solution was to start over by
separating a majority of the strays out of the herd in the meadow and then
bring our cows up to the corral again. Once
again Allen brought the herd up the fence line toward the corral. Nick threw
some hay out where they could see it. This worked much better and without the
strays leading them astray, we were able to get them into the corral. Once the
cows were in the corral we could separate the cows and calves and be on our
way.
It is interesting to note the
effect that the strays had on the herd of cows, leading them away from the
corral and back out into the meadow. As I reflect back upon this effect, I
realized that our acquaintances can have an effect on us as well. We try to
teach our kids to pick good friends, friends who will have a positive influence
upon them instead of the opposite. There are far too many examples out there
where good people have been led astray by the influence of a friend. On the
flip side, there are also many examples of a friend having a positive influence
on others. I hope that I can be that positive influence; I also hope that I can
teach my kids to be a positive influence and lead their friends to do good and
not be led astray by their not so good acquaintances.
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