A Lesson I Learned At The Gate

As my cowboy and I have been spending time together outside working calves, I have pondered the amazing lessons that can be learned at the gate.

On our particular outfit, there are too many gates to count and a variety of them at that.

Why don’t these cowboys buy the same type of gate for every hole and just change the dimensions? But nooooo…. This gate has a flip latch. This gate needs tugged to the right. This gate needs lifted up A LOT before you can even open it. This one won’t open unless you jiggle the thing-a-ma-jigger twice. You get the idea… Then my cowboy yells in indiscriminate words, “O….. TH…. GA….” The wind is screaming, the dirt is flying, the calves are running and I have absolutely no idea what he said.

If you are looking for free marriage counseling just try working cows with your spouse. It may cure all that ails you OR significantly make matters worse. When the dust settles and you find that you are both still upright, then you’ll know you made it through the storm. The calves may not be in the correct pen, but our wedding vows are still intact.

The other day there was such an opportunity to put this counseling technique into practice. We had finished sorting our replacement heifers and were returning the sell calves to the correct pen. I had our littlest cowpoke in a carrier on my back and had gone ahead to open the gate. I knew where we were headed and was well ahead of the bunch of calves coming down the alley.

Then the unthinkable happened. The gate put up a fight. This gate was particularly high for me and with the weight of the little ‘poke I was not really able to see the latch assembly very well since it was on the offside of the gate.

I pushed. I pulled. I jumped on my tippy toes to try to see what was going on. As I saw the calves moving quickly toward me, I decided to grab hold and jack the handle over will all my might. Little did I realize the position of the keeper on the other side and successfully smashed the smithereens out of my pinky.

I pulled it out of the wreckage and it was immediately purple, fairly crooked and had a permanent indent in the nail. I swung the gate open and got out of the road. I was clearly holding my wounded limb and trying not to pass out from the pain, and my cowboy strolled up and asked what happened.

Without tell him what I thought of that particular gate, I showed him my tortured finger and he in the most caring of ways stated, “Are you okay?”

He followed it with, “That was a hard lesson to learn.”

*&$%^*$^% were my thoughts. Hard lesson? I’m six inches too short to see what in the world the off side of the gate looks like and I had a baby on my back while working cows with you…

The swelling was increasing very quickly and we had the opportunity to continue working on our marriage by allowing my cowboy to drill a hole in my fingernail to relieve the pressure. I was going to shove that hot needle where the sun didn’t shine, so we stopped working on that together for a bit. I called a friend for help and he politely obliged the most interesting of requests to come drill a hole in my nail.

As I walk around with a broken finger and a purple nail, I still find myself grateful that I had the opportunity to learn another lesson at the gate. He can open the gate himself next time…