Aim For the Gaps

You will get what you focus on.

I came home from school feeling exceedingly depressed, life at school had not been good for a couple of weeks and I was desperately needing our summer holidays. I was near to tears and wanted a brain break so bad. My husband was home, he only works part time, so of course he got the load. Even debriefing gets heavy after awhile and often doesn’t solve anything so I finally said, “Lets go check the cows.” This is usually my happy spot and can cheer me up immensely.

He went out to get the Defender (side by side), I jumped on and we puttered off. As we slowly drive through the herds we talk about this calf or that calf. This one had been born with contracted tendons but is walking nearly normal by now, that one was a twin but is big and healthy.

There was one cow that kept following us and bawling, she somehow had an instinct about where to go for help. We started looking for her calf. We searched hard and eventually found a droopy looking calf tucked in behind a few willows. We got it up and, oh boy, it did not look well. Its abdomen was grossly extended and it was seriously dehydrated already.

To call the vet and get him to treat an animal is like pulling nails, our local vets are so overworked and they cover such a lot of territory, plus the stock trailer had a flat tire. When I did manage to contact the vet you could tell that he was stressed and ready to quit for the day.

This wasn’t what I had in mind when I was looking for a distraction at all!!

Long story short, the calf needed to be put down, it had an internal injury that couldn’t be repaired. My husband and I held our breath as we told our children that we lost another calf. A death in the herd always requires long looks at our management system and we have to work at not blaming each other when things go wrong.

We hashed things over, we got into each other’s hair and said opinionated things that later had us all backtracking and apologizing.

One day I decided to ask one of my cousins what kind of mortality rates they have in their calving operation. Do you know what she said? “We don’t keep track!” That was an eye opening moment for me. Why were we obsessing over every lost animal?

My father-in-law used to tell us, “If you have livestock you will also have deadstock.”

I told my boys about this and we all agreed that we should run a tight ship, but definitely take it in stride when an animal dies. Then my son told me a little story.

His employer was out in the mountains sledding with his brother’s-in-law. These guys live in the mountains so they had considerable skills with mountain sledding. When he asked for some tips they told him, “ The trick to mountain sledding is to aim for the gaps between the trees. If you are always watching the trees you will hit the trees. If you aim for the gaps you will be safe.”

Now to bring this around back to school, I will get the behaviour from my students that I am expecting. Am I keeping track of the wrongdoings? Then all I will see are the wrong doings. Am I excited over all the fun things we are learning and the many accomplishments that happen each day? The children will be happily and successfully engaged in their learning.