Braidwood Rodeo - Ride 'em Cowboy!

On the weekend I attended the annual Braidwood Rodeo.  In my walk between two lives, city and country, I have had to adjust many of my city perceptions about certain aspects of country life. 

I understand so many people believe rodeos to be a cruel form of sport and entertainment; whereas country people look at the rodeo as a way to express and hone their stockmanship with horses and cattle; after careful consideration and attending a number of rodeos this is also the view I have adopted.  

The rodeo is a demonstration of all necessary skills used on stations, although I am certain there is not a situation where a station hand would need to ride a bull! The rodeo bulls toss those cowboys around like rag dolls, I figure it’s the bull’s due revenge for unnecessary human machoism.

Hello, just passing!

Most sports hold a degree of personal danger; being a participant in a rodeo would have to be the ultimate in physical danger that I can think of, why would anyone put themselves on the back of a 900 kg bull hell bent on grinding you into the dust! When those boys get bucked off they can’t choose how they’re going to land, mostly meeting the ground head-first or shoulder-first and trying to avoid stamping hooves.

Be gone flea on my back!

For those handsome young cowboy dudes punishing their bodies beyond normal endurance. I wonder if they think about how crippled their bods will be by the time they reach 40 years old. The song line comes to mind ‘Mama don’t let your sons grow up to be cowboys.’

Very nice stock indeed!

There's something quite manly about a guy in a cowboy shirt, jeans with a big belt buckle, and the cowboy hat...mmm, very easy on the eyes.

There are actually rodeo events for juniors aged under 8 to 15 years old!  Why would a mother allow her child under 8 years old to ride a bucking calf?  Is she totally mad, devoid of common sense?   

I present it to you this way, the answer to that is the same as why I allowed my son to have a peewee motorbike at 4 years of age or another mother allowing her young son to play rugby league; it is a lifestyle the parents are accustomed to.

Any child under 8 is held on by an adult and lifted off before they fall, so it isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I watched one little boy cry with disappointment because he didn’t get a long enough ride.

As a mother my heart was in my mouth for this little cowboy in the making. He was competing in the under 11 steer riding. I think he wrapped the rope around his hand and couldn't loosen it. Happy to report he was fine thanks to to bullfighers.

The Professional Australian Rodeo Association state amazingly low animal injury statistics, by law they have to record the slightest injury.  It is the competitors who are overwhelmingly the ones hurt. 

I overheard two bulls talking, they are thinking of forming a committee called Animals against cruelty to humans with little regard for their own safety or aacth for short.....

On the day there were five injuries in the arena, all of these had two legs, fortunately four of these were not seriously hurt.  This bronco rider ended his day with two compressed vertebrae in his back, he reckons 'after a bit of a rest he will be back bustin' broncs'. Not one four legger was hurt.

Rodeo livestock are respected as athletes just the same as the riders. A good rodeo horse is worth $10,000. Many of today’s rodeo stock providers have developed sophisticated breeding programs to allow them to breed horses and bulls specifically to buck. Many horses are utilised that already have an inclination to be incorrigible buckers therefore not able to be used in other situations and would have been sent for slaughter. 

Rick Wilson of Tumut Rodeo Contractors told me his horses do up to fifteen rodeos a year, and buck out for eight seconds at a time, no more than three times during the day; putting this into perspective that is less than 6 minutes a year. The bulls have a similar schedule. 

These animals are considered elite athletes, they’re very well looked after being fed the very best food everyday to keep them in peak physical condition, eventually retiring as pasture or stud animals.

The horse whisperer wranglers.

Barrel racing is a timed event. The goal is to circle three barrels in a cloverleaf pattern

without knocking over a barrel, then sprinting back to the start as fast as possible. The sport requires supreme agility of both horse and rider. 

These guys are the bullfighters. They are either paid handsomely to expose themselves to great danger or they are completely crazy. I'm opting for crazy! Their job is to distract the cranky bull from the human he just chucked unceremoniously into the sand by giving him an alternate target. They do a great job of keeping the competitors safe. 

Just sitting up here, safe and sound while the bullfighters distract the bull.

Team steer roping.

Bronco Riders.

Strapping up old injuries before participating in his event. 

Un-decorating the steer of its pretty pink ribbon. Wow, these girls have amazing riding skills!

Steer wrestling.

Such magnificent creatures, and yes, for once I do mean the horses!

Flower essence therapy for animals – bunk or real?

Summer brought scorching skies, long periods of no rain, crunchy brown grass and very nearly bitter disappointment in the wildflower department to Somerset farm until I came across this stunning Fringed Violet in our heath land. 

Fringed Violet (Thysanotus tuberosus)

Sadly the flower only lasts one day; it won’t open when it is overcast or on wet days so I feel incredibly lucky to have found a few flowers.

While trying to find out what this flower was I discovered a lot of the Australian bush flowers I found blooming over spring and summer on our property are used in Essence Alchemy.  

I was so interested in using a resource freely available on our farm I researched this natural therapy.  

Each flower has an essence, a vibrational imprint or energy, so when we use a flower essence, we begin to resonate in harmony with the qualities of the flower. The essences have the power to heal emotions; like humans animals experience a range of emotions and the essences are safe to be given to our pets. Ok I’m on board so far. I love flowers; just having them around me lifts my mood so maybe there is something in this.

It seems quite easy to become a do-it-yourself maker of flower essences.  It is a simple matter of using pure spring water in a clear glass bowl, then to snip off enough flower heads to float over the entire surface of the water. 

Leave the bowl in direct sunlight for three hours. Ta-dah, the energy of the flower has now been transferred to the water. This water, minus blooms, is poured into a dark coloured glass bottle to the half way mark.  Now we use our best quality brandy to fill the remaining half of the bottle. The brandy is a preservative and an anchor to hold the essence vibrations in the water. This is called the Mother Essence, the concentrate.  The mother essence needs to be further diluted by putting 7 drops of it into a 30ml dark eyedropper bottle filled with 1/3 brandy (apple cider vinegar can replace the brandy, but hell, give me brandy! Its medicinal,.... isn't it?!) and 2/3 spring water. This is the strength you dose with.

Now I am really unsure what to make of this flower essence therapy. The essence water is so broken down with brandy and water I find it hard to imagine there is anything left of the flower vibration and whatever else the flower imparts to the water to be of benefit. For it to work those flowers must have an enormous vibrational energy or else it’s the brandy giving that amiable feeling!

Perhaps the power of belief comes into play, which no doubt goes a long way with a placebo effect but what I find interesting are the positive outcomes pet owners and even some vets and animal behaviour experts report after giving their animals flower essences.

Unlike humans, animals aren’t subject to the placebo effect, they would not have a clue the 7 drops of bottlebrush essence you slipped into their water while they weren’t looking will address their compulsive personality.  

So could it be a placebo effect on the owner really believing they are addressing an emotional or mental need of their fur babies and as animals pick up so much on the energy vibration of the humans around them, this ultimately brings about a change in the animal?

I am not ready to completely throw away the idea of flower essence therapy. It might really work and there is certainly no harm in a placebo effect if it brings about the desired outcome.

My chiropractor is also a herbalist, she stresses study is required to fully understand what each flower or combination of flower essences can achieve and how important it is to not treat as a blanket case but to work out why the dog, for example, is aggressive, is it fear, dominance or some other cause, then to treat with the appropriate essence, otherwise the outcome may fail expectations.

Marie Matthews in her book 'Animal healing with Australian bush essences' gives insights for various states of emotion and animal behaviour. From her suggestions my mind is running with what flower essence would suit or benefit each goat personality.

Slender Rice Flower for dominate bully girl Doe #104

Fringed Violet will help clear the trauma of doe #91 having her shoulder dislocated by doe #104

Isopogon  for my brown headed blonde Rosie to improve her focus and memory. Rosie may then remember if she sticks her head through the fence wire beside the star picket she will get stuck...again!

Native Iris for doeling #136 who had a massive cyst near her udder to boost her immune system with the healing process.

Damperia for the majority of the herd – they will co-operate at husbandry time!

She Oak energetically supports the ovaries helping fertility, definitely for the does before their date with the buck

I think I will give it a try. The flowers are free; the brandy is not; worst case I will drink the left over brandy! Its medicinal, remember.

Xanthe the baby goat.

Are our lives predestined for us and whatever happens does so for a reason?  Are some events just meant to be destiny?

These are my reflections as I think about Xanthe.

Some of you who followed my earlier blogs  Call the midwife - Hell, not her! and You've got to be kidding!  may have wondered how Xanthe my baby goat was fairing.

It has taken quite awhile for me to be able to write this and then sort through photos to accompany this post without dissolving into tears and putting it aside. 

I have to console myself with perhaps she just wasn’t meant to be, even though I had a darn good crack at keeping her on this earthly coil.

On that dark windy night of her birth if I hadn’t helped bring her into the world she would have died.

Within an hour of Xanthe’s birth hyperthermia tried its best to kill her.  As I frantically rubbed her in front of the heater I kept saying “Come on bubba you can do it, stay with me.”  And she did.

If I hadn’t noticed the following morning she was temporarily birth blind her mother would have abandoned her resulting in her death.  

Surely that was three strikes destiny is out? 

Xanthe was 9 weeks old, robust and healthy when destiny, if that is what rules us, had another idea to take her from me.

Xanthe needed to learn to be a goat and socialise with the other kids and to become independent from me.  I would take her into the paddock for play dates with the other kids watching her fly up and down our dirt hill with joyous abandon and interacting with the other babies. 

Slowly I left her for longer periods, calling her back for her meals and for bed in the evening, although more often she would stand at the back gate and yell for me when it was getting toward meal time. 

One night after her bottle of milk she decided she wanted to sleep in the paddock with the other goats, refusing to come back to the house with me.    Well you can imagine my angst. I was out at the crack of dawn checking on her but she was fine.  It was a step in the right direction to independence for her.  

Xanthe loved cuddling up close to me after her bottles.

But she didn’t have a mother in the paddock to protect her.  I never dreamt she could be so badly hurt by one of the does.

Xanthe must have ventured too close to a doe, posing a threat in that doe's mind or she was simply in her way. I ask what kind of threat can a little baby possibly pose?  To me it is all so senseless and unfair.

The vet and animal chiropractor concurred Xanthe had been hooked by the back leg with a horn and thrown through the air. All the tendons and muscles in her leg were torn. There was nothing the vet could do. Xanthe was in terrible pain and going into shock. I had to say goodbye to her as I held her head gently and kissed her on the nose, she quietly slipped away as I told her I loved her. 

It helps to think of all my beloved pets who have died as bright shining stars, I can look up into the night sky and still feel they are with me.  There are also many 'Rainbow' poems and letters to express our heartfelt loss of a pet. This is one I modified, I am sure the original author, unknown, would not mind.

A letter from across The Rainbow Bridge

Hi Mum,

Now that I’ve been across The Rainbow Bridge for a couple of weeks, they said I should write a letter home.  Sorry mum, but I’m so busy ‘across the bridge’ that I haven’t thought of home much. They said it’s okay and that you would understand.  I hope you do. (I think you will.)

Remember that day when I was in a lot of pain and not feeling well and you were crying? I don’t remember much, but I do remember seeing and hearing you and feeling your touches and hugs....I remember hearing “I love you” and that one last command of “Go through”. I didn’t know what you meant, so I turned around and walked through the fog that was in front of me.  I saw the biggest bridge I’ve ever seen! And so many friends on the other side of it! They were all playing in a big beautiful paddock!  You were right to tell me to go there!

My feet kept moving forward, but my heart kept pulling me back.  Your touches became lighter and lighter and I wanted to come back and nudge your hands for more love, but I was overcome by this feeling of curiosity for the happy place over the bridge!  My feet started moving on their own, like a gentle breeze was moving them forward for me!  I can’t explain it, but I had no doubt that it was the right thing to do!

So I walked across that big bridge by myself. I looked for you, because you’re always by my side, walking with me, but this was different. Even though you weren’t there with me, I never felt alone! I actually felt like I had a huge cape of love wrapped around my body and the more I walked, the easier it was to breathe and my pain was gone. So I kept walking! And I would feel more warmth in the big hug, so I kept walking! I eventually made it over the bridge – I did it by myself mum! When I got there all of my new friends greeted me and helped me walk off the bridge ~ it was so cool!  They gave me a pair of wings and we all have Forever People to watch over ~ that’s YOU mum! You’re my Forever Person and I’m your Forever Goat! We had such a great life together and I do miss you a LOT, but please know that I am happy in my new home across The Bridge!

I’ll send you another Earth Angel so you won’t be alone.  Give your whole heart, like you gave it to me.  I’ll check in every so often to make sure they treasure your love ~  I always did!  When you miss me, think of a rainbow and know I’m on the other side of it, waiting to walk with you again.  I’ll always be in your heart. I love you mum!  Time for me to go play......

Here I am.....see me!!

Xanthe 11th October 2015 - 16th December 2015

It had been a difficult few months for me, not only did I lose Xanthe, my beautiful paddock buddy Otis finally succumbed to urinary calculi, which we had been battling for 5 years and Crusher my faithful farm cat was accidentally run over in front of me.

I came across a great article on Psych Central Grieving the loss of a pet, it certainly helped me sort through and understand my feelings. Healthy grieving is getting "through", not over, a loss. 

Otis 1st December 2007 - 22nd October 2015

Crusher Puss adopted us. She turned up at Easter 2006 and decided I was to be her new human. I think feeding her scotch fillet steak that first night sealed the deal. It became obvious she had been kicked a lot at her old home, she had such attitude until she learnt she could trust her new humans.  I have no idea how old she was, she was at least a few years old in 2006 and she was with us for 9 years. She loved curling up in my lap at any chance she got.  I am so glad she chose to live with me. 

 

Ring, Ring, why don’t you give me a call.

When we first bought the farm my mobile phone had very selective reception in ‘black spot for all technology land’.  There was one spot where if I was lucky I could hold the phone high in the air, pointing it in the general direction of  south/west, hope the wind was blowing in the right direction, stick my tongue out and balance on one leg then maybe, just maybe, I would have mobile service. Move a few centimetres from ‘that’ spot then all was lost, I may as well have been talking into a tin can attached to 3 metres of string.  Ten years on it is only a little better.

What if a snake bit one of us or we had an accident, my husband was hurt in the paddock or like,....um,  the quad rolled on top of me?   Our closest neighbours with a telephone aren’t  all that close. At least not close enough to run quickly to in high heels along a dirt road.  Finally we decided we needed a landline.

The conversation with the major telephone company went something like this –

Telephone company:  “It will be 6 to 10 weeks before work commences bringing the line down to you.”

Me:  “10 weeks?  We are in a rural area, it is a black spot for mobiles. In case of an emergency we have no communication, a phone is a lifeline.”

Telephone company:  “Do you or any immediate family member have a life threatening illness? That can speed up the delivery.”  

I could tell she was really trying to be helpful.

Me:  “So I have to be seriously ill? Thankfully not....But I would be if a brown snake got me.  Those brown snakes are lurking everywhere, just waiting to spring out at you, like drop bears in the trees but these guys are under bushes”

For once I had an operator in Australia instead of overseas. She got my sense of humour.

To the company’s credit as it was going to take over 6 weeks to be connected, a satellite phone was supplied for the interim with the calls at the standard landline rate. This was pretty cool; our voices were beamed thousands of kilometres up into space to be processed by the satellite then bounced back down to earth through a gateway! The gateway directs the call through the regular landline or the local cell phone service providers.  All this gateway stuff, I felt like I was in the middle of a star trek movie. “Beam me up Scotty; I need to speak to my mother.” 

We expected the line would be brought down the road to our front gate.  Wrong! They would only bring it to the closest boundary of our property from the junction box.  We were responsible on our property for any trenches needed to lay the line in, so instead of 150 meters from the front gate to the cottage, we now had a huge distance of just under one kilometer to trench.  With a quote in 2005 of $6 a meter for a trencher we decided to dig it ourselves with our old excavator, or more to the point, my son dug the trench; it kept him occupied for a number of weekends. 

He learnt how to use the ‘diggy thing’ and did a fantastic job.  All those levers would confuse me.  He did wear earmuffs after I took this photo and realised they were not anchored on his head!!

Once the cable had been laid by a contractor my son then filled the trench back in.

Finally when the telephone company connected the phone the contractor told me to expect difficulties with the line, especially when it rained or during stormy weather.  Instead of the line going into town by the shortest route to the exchange, the line goes way, way, way out the opposite direction to another small town then loops back into Braidwood. 

Sure enough when it rains I have problems. I then resort to standing in that ‘special spot’, on one leg, eyes crossed, poking my tongue out, hoping the wind is blowing in the correct direction to get service so I can ring the phone company on my mobile to report the line is down, but it is better than not having a phone.

Adorable baby goats

The midwife can now safely put away her rescue remedy, this calming elixir was used liberally ....for me not the goats.  The kid count for 2015 was 22; girls rule at 15. 

These are some of my favourite photos from the 2015 kidding.

Mumma said to follow my dreams, so I took a nap.

 Cover your eyez Xanthe, countz to 10 and wez hide, no peeking!

 Sooo soft, like a pillow

Wake up Prince Harry

Hey mister, you asleep?  You gots food for us?

Mumma you're not listening to me!

We worship the Egyptian Sun God Ra

Ooo just a little to the left, hmm that's the spot.

Come on just a little kiss, don't play so hard to get,

 you told me you loved me......

My kids are my everything

We fair Australian girls have to be sun safe.

  I is flying!  Redbull gived me wingz

 What do you mean I'm not a duck?

Mumma is stuck, oks on three pull.

Haz mai first kiss

It's too much, she hugs me all the time.     True but I think we should keep the human.

Did you guys grows wings?  I wants wings too!