Horseshoes, Cowsocks & Duckfeet

by Baxter Black

  It all started with that call from the worried cowman. My veterinary specialty of cow psychology had gained popularity since my article appeared. It was titled “Paranoia in Dairy Cows” (Doctor, somebody’s always tryin’ to take something from me!).

  I let the heifer get comfortable on the straw.

  “Now, Miss Lay . . .”

  “Call me Char.”

  “Char, tell me why you feel uncomfortable with your new calf.”

  “It reminds me of my past.”

  “How did you and your mother get along?”

  “Same as any cow-calf pair, I guess, although she was pretty high in the peckin’ order. It put a lot of pressure on me to achieve.

  “Like at the branding. I had to be first! Unfortunately, they let the local banker and the vet rope first. Took forever.

  “I remember when I got my horns. A lot of other heifers hadn’t started growing horns yet. They were jealous. It wasn’t my fault the bull calves thought I was attractive.

  “But everything turned sour when they ear tagged me! Yellow! Can you believe it? Yellow! I’ve never been so embarrassed!

  “Then I got a 104 temperature! I felt so left out. I was hospitalized, intravenous injections and everything!

  “Finally last spring I met this bull. We made plans. He had a future, had cute rounds, too! I was blind to what was going on around me. I didn’t believe the rumors that he’d been seen with other heifers. Then it was too late!

  “I had a tough gestation, morning sickness, strange cravings for mint silage and bonemeal. Then I had little Bully.

  “I don’t know, I guess I’m depressed. Is this all there is to life . . . eat grass, have a calf?”

  “Char,” I said, “you’re a cow. You’ve got to accept it. You’ll never run in the Kentucky Derby or hunt pheasant. You’ll never dance on stage or sing like Reba. Be satisfied with the bovine things you do well.”

  She looked at me and nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right, Doctor.” And she left.

  As I reflected on Char and my unique veterinary specialty, I realized how lucky I was to have a job that was so satisfying and so easy.

  Yup, the world would be a kinder, gentler place if everyone had the IQ of a cow.

  Ah, dog stories. There are books full of them.

  MAN’S BEST FRIEND

  Talk about relationships: man’s best friend, Canis domesticus, Guardius dedicado, Barkus protectivus, Lickus plateus, patient listener, uncomplaining companion, eager helper, and therapist substitute.

  Have you ever noticed when you leave and come back, it doesn’t matter if you’ve been gone for five minutes or five days, your dog is so glad to see you? Can you think of a single human being that is that glad to see you!

  Say you’re going to run into town. You jump in the pickup, but you’ve forgotten the car keys, so you race back in the house. The dog licks your hand, and your spouse says, “I thought you left.”

  Granted, there are times when Canis domesticus becomes Canis estupido. Like when you visit a strange farm with your dog in the back of the truck. You are met by a pack of uncivil ruckus-makers surrounding your pickup and barking your arrival to everyone within half a mile.

  Your well-mannered beast suddenly forgets that he has been to obedience home school. Forgets all the long patient hours you and he spent together learning to sit, stay, heel, sic ’em, and “away to me.” He becomes Goofy, King of the Jungle, engaged in a barking battle when, without warning, his brain comes loose! He leaps from the back of the pickup into the pack of howling farm dogs, and they all disappear around the barn.

  But in spite of these semiregular appearances of “good dog dot dom,” there are tender moments: like when you’ve had some assault on your heart or your pride or your satisfied status quo. You walk down by the creek or out to the haystack just to be alone to deal with this new reality.

  Accompanying you, as always if you let him, is Old Faithful. Head in your lap, paw on your knee, ready to agree to anything you say, ready to soak up a tear or a curse or a sigh. Guardian of your most secret thoughts. Friend without strings, as true as a mother’s love, as faithful as Siamese twins, and all for the price of a scratch behind the ear.

  People who work outdoors, which includes most agricultural folks, are on a first-name basis with the weather. March, by any other name, would still smell like mud.

  MARCH MADNESS

  March is the castor oil of months. The collected drippings of winter’s oil change. The epic flush of the accumulated compaction of salted streets, sanded roads, gravelly snow, and frozen manure. It is the longest month of the year when you calculate in the miserable factor. March is not a month to expect a kind word from.

  It has its own ides. But what ides are they? I can tell you: fungicide, blindside, cyanide, vilified, terrified, stupefied, snide, hide, lied, cried, died, back you up against the wall and leave you flat and down, afoot and weak, and chapped and squinty-eyed ides.

  In most of cow country, it is a month to survive. A hold-your-own month. A can’t-see-the-barn-from-the-house month. A soggy, windy, coughing, runny-nosed month.

  March is how you feel at the end of a three-day hunt in the Bob Marshall Wilderness without a razor, toothbrush, hot water, clean socks, or soap. “I haven’t combed my hair for a week. I’ve been sleeping in my clothes, and I smell like dirty sheets, smoke, and King Kong’s sneakers. I feel so, oh, I don’t know, so . . . March.”

  March is the interrogator at the Kremlin, “So, you thought winter was ohfur. . . . You foolish farmer . . . sure you luffed February, Valentine’s Day, sunny mornings, happy faces. But you forgot about me! Neffer again!” Then it whacks you with a three-foot snowfall that pulls down entire forests, melts in half a day flooding your pens—which are already saturated—and buries your tractor in a mudslide, blocking the road.

  Surely, you say, somebody likes March. Plumbers maybe. Everything is thawing out and breaking. Travel agents like March, selling cruises to the Bahamas to indentured sufferers from Grand Forks, Grand Junction, and Grand Rapids who have enough money to leave. And psychiatrists in Grand Forks, Grand Junction, and Grand Rapids would like March because they service those remaining sufferers who can’t afford to leave.

  March is like playing tug-of-war with a team of walruses. They don’t have to cheat to win. There is no way to beat March. So we just have to let it happen, and occasionally we’ll get lucky and it will let us win a hand. We should accept it graciously but never drop our guard. March is not to be trusted.

  There is nothing as fraught with impending complications as the comment “This will only take a minute.”

  SIMPLE PROJECTS

  I said, “Shorty, how’s yer day been goin’?”

  He looked at me suspiciously, like I’d been readin’ his mind, then answered, “Where do ya want me to start?”

  Shorty’s old cake-feedin’ pickup had broke down the night before. That meant transferring the cake feeder to his other pickup. “No big deal,” he told Maxine. He’d have it done in twenty minutes. It only required drilling four holes in the bed of the new truck to bolt on the feeder.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll start supper.”

  The feeder fit perfectly. “This is gonna be quicker ’n I thought,” he congratulated himself. With that, he fired up the drill and bored a hole through the side panel—into the gas tank!

  There must be a blank spot in our brain that allows us to forget how often we screw up the simplest project. And the simpler it seems, the longer, more complicated, and more frustrating it becomes.

  I laid out my fence line and dug postholes every eight feet. I reached the last hole next to the lane. My gate measured perfect across. About six inches down into that last hole, I hit a root the size of Mount Rushmore. Now the gate looks like a crooked picture frame.

  I’m regularly led, unsuspecting and confident, to slaughter. Ignorance of the task at hand probably is my greatest strength. What could be simpler than putting in a drip sprinkle
r, replacing a starter, wiring a tank heater, cutting your friend’s hair, building a feed box, running propane to the bunkhouse, or splicing fog lights onto the new pickup?

  I’ve been working on my old stock trailer. I bought four new “used” tires. Three lugs broke off the right rear wheel. It took four hours to replace ’em. I rewired the trailer, then backed the pickup close enough to plug it in and test it. It worked! I put up my tools, jumped in the pickup, and pulled away—jerking the wires out clean back to the axle.

  It took me all day to put plywood over the floor. I cut and measured, trimmed and fit it to precision. I secured it with ten pounds of drywall screws, then soaked it with linseed oil. It raised the floor three-quarters of an inch. Beautiful job! Now the tailgate won’t close. It lacks half an inch of clearance.

  CLOTHESHORSE

  I’m the kinda cowboy who gives Wranglers a bad name. It’s not that I don’t try on each pair before I buy them. You have to. You know the old saying about bulls: “There’s more variation within the same breed than there is between breeds.” Same for jeans: “There’s more variation within the same size than there is between sizes.”

  Maybe I’m just odd-shaped—hard to fit. They do make one style of Wranglers that have legs that fit tight around a shovel handle, which I appreciate. My calves are so puny, I have to tamp dirt in my boot tops to hold ’em on.

  But no matter how skinny they make the pant legs, the seat still bags. When I finally do get ’em on, I give the appearance of a swing set somebody tried to gift wrap.

  I’ve gotten picky about shirts. I want buttons, except on the collar, with flaps on the pocket. I kinda back myself into a corner with such outrageous preferences. I can walk into a western store with a shirt inventory large enough for the Chinese army, and the only shirts with my requirements are size 181⁄2-by-32, or they are the spittin’ image of a Denny’s restaurant uniform.

  Of course, style and good taste are not my primary considerations. It’s been said that my fashion statement is sort of a cross between Porter Wagoner and Dennis Rodman. I just don’t like stuff to fall outta my pocket.

  I do manage to wear good boots, which I save for good, but I buy bargains for my work boots. I got a great deal on some steel-toed Red Wings, size 9, on sale for fifty-five dollars. They’re tough; I been wearin’ ’em for two years. I’m tough, too. I normally wear a size 10.

  A good straw hat lasts a year. They’ve been goin’ up five dollars a year, every year. I can remember when they were nineteen dollars. Now they’re seventy-five. I’m pretty hard on my hats; they get kinda beat up. My first criteria for a new hat is whether it will come down over my ears and fit tight. Wouldn’t want it to blow off during an argument.

  I feel like I’m turnin’ into a shadow of Ace Reid’s cartoon character Jake. Kind of bent-over, narrow at the shoulders. Wide at the hip and big at the hat.

  I did some work for Wrangler a while back. They asked if they could pay me in product. I said, “Sure.” They sent me a box of Sears, Roebuck jeans.

  Large animal veterinary practice first and foremost involves restraint of the beast. Cowboys, ropes, squeeze chutes, shoeing stocks, corrals, fences, good gates, dogs, and all manner of medieval tools and methods have been called into play. Man has been handling these large creatures since their domestication right off the ark. We’re still at it.

  THE TRANQUILIZER GUN

  Except maybe in the opinion of a tiger trimmer in Tanganyika, the tranquilizer gun has not lived up to its potential. During its preliminary promotion, it was touted as the greatest invention since the rope. But, in the livestock business, it has never quite fulfilled its expectations. The biggest problem seems to be its predictably unpredictable results.

  Most large animal vets have tranquilizer guns. Some of my colleagues learned the fine art of using one. The rest of us have had it stuck away with our fleams and hog cholera vaccine since 1974. I suspect “operator error” had a lot to do with our failures.

  Dr. Green said he and Dr. Corley used it with success when they were gatherin’ wild cattle down in Mississippi. It gave them an advantage over better ropers in the area.

  Even a good roper has to get within throwin’ distance.

  The Outlaw family had eight cows and one uncatchable wanderin’ bull. The bull was part Braymer . . . the uncatchable part.

  Mr. Outlaw kept them in a scrubby pasture next to his neighbor. This neighbor practiced rotational grazing, and his pasture was lush. Mr. Outlaw’s bull spent most of his time at the neighbor’s. Since the bull managed to crawl back through and breed the eight cows every spring, Mr. Outlaw saw no reason to be concerned.

  When the threats became unbearable, Mr. Outlaw finally agreed to sell his wanderin’ bull. He called on Drs. Green and Corley to expedite the matter.

  Our boys arrived on the scene, chased the bull back onto the Outlaws’ property, and began to trail him through the brush. The bull took a breather in a clearin’, and our ballistic vets pulled down and nailed him with the tranquilizer dart. They got him roped and staggered to the open-top trailer, where they tied him in. The bull lay down and passed out.

  Mr. Outlaw was pleased: “I’m takin’ him over to Bryan Brothers. . . . Oughta get a pretty penny for him!”

  “Yup,” said Dr. Green. “But he’d be worth more if he walked outta the trailer, fer sure.”

  “You bet, Doc. How long you reckon it’ll take this tranquilizer to wear off?”

  “Forty-five minutes to an hour.”

  “Great! I better git goin’!”

  That afternoon, they saw Mr. Outlaw back home at the coffee shop.

  “How’d it go?” Dr. Green asked.

  “Oh, fine, fine. Made a lotta money. Only had one problem. He was still down when I got there. I had to run him through the car wash twice to get him awake enough to sell!”

  Sometimes the difference between cowboy romance and cowboy reality is stark.

  CARHARTT COWBOY

  Mr. Moses remarked that the other day he’d received a catalog in the mail from a western-clothing outfit. He wasn’t sure who the outfit catered to, but the name “Long Island” seemed to stick in his mind.

  The photo on the front had burned an image into his brain. A male model stood in cowboy posture, a Clint Eastwood steely-eyed glare glinting from beneath the brim of his Zorro hat.

  It appeared that moths had eaten the collar off his shirt.

  He wore a duster that was sort of a cross between Jim Bridger’s old trapping coat and Santa Anna’s parade uniform.

  Mr. Moses guessed it weighed more than a wet hallway carpet.

  There was an odd collection of gold chains, buttons, military pins, silver boot toe tips, training spurs, and epaulets decorating his wardrobe. He looked like a Filipino cabbie just returned from a Rotary convention.

  Mr. Moses imagined himself dressed like the cowboy on the cover of the catalog, jangling out to feed the cows and break ice. Him hangin’ his giant rowel and jingle bob on the twine as he kicked a bale off the back of the flatbed. Being jerked flat into the muddy rut, cows tromping giant footprints on the tail of his coat, the dog running off with his pancake hat. Then rising sodden, and trudging off rattling and clanging like a Moroccan bride with a limp.

  “Shoot,” he said, “I couldn’t even walk up to a horse dressed like that.”

  Mr. Moses considers himself a Carhartt cowboy. For those of you who live in the tropics, Carhartts are warm, insulated canvas coveralls with more zippers than a Hell’s Angel’s loincloth.

  Carhartts, earflaps, and LaCrosse five-buckle overshoes. Real cowboy winter wear. Granted, it limits mobility. You’d have to get undressed to mount yer horse. You can’t hear much other than the diesel, but a cowboy can get the job done.

  Could be the cowboy on the catalog cover measures his time in the winter by the bottles of brandy he goes through, lacing his evening café au lait; or possibly by the edge of the sun rays on the floor of his glassed-in sunroom. Certainly it would not be b
y the amount of mud built up in the wheel wells of his Lexus.

  Mr. Moses has his own way of judging the length of winter. He says he keeps track by watchin’ the pile of ice that accumulates next to the stock tank.

  Spoken like a true Carhartt cowboy.

  COYOTE COWBOY OBSERVATIONS

  → There’s always time to pet your dog.

  → If a feller doesn’t trim his own horse’s feet, he’s got too many horses or not enough time.

  → Some people do what they’ve gotta do to live where they wanna live. Others live where they have to live to be what they want to be.

  → If the reader can’t understand what the poet is tryin’ to say, it’s not the reader’s fault.

  → Sometimes gentle pressure is better than jerkin’ as hard as you can. Kinda like pickin’ up a bull’s nose.

  → The consultant’s motto: You can’t have all your hands in one pocket.

  → People like David Duke and Louis Farrakhan are head and tail of the same bad penny.

  → I like a woman that smells like barbecue sauce.

  → Some say, “You are what you eat.” I say, “You are where you walk. Wipe your feet.”

  → I observed to a man in New York that I was surprised that they had so many cows and so much farming. He said, “Son, this is where it started.”

  → The only thing I can’t do in excess is moderation.

  → It’s hard bein’ a cowboy. If a man gets run over by a truck, he gets sympathy. If he gets run over by a horse, they laugh.

  → You know you had a bad weekend when you wake up Sunday morning and it’s Thanksgiving Day.

  → A bank examiner is someone who comes in after the battle and shoots the wounded.

  → If a person has an excuse to be less than he can be, he probably will.

  → Wine doesn’t give me a headache. Winos do.