I have spent a ton of money taking lessons cutting or going down the fence where my trainer was frustrated and blue in the face from telling me to watch the cow.
Now your probably thinking duh that’s easy. What else would you be looking at? Well for me it’s not that easy. I like to think that I can multitask even though I’m reminded time and time again that I’m a horrible multitasker. I always want to look at my cow but also where my horses head is, where is the cone, where is the yelling coming from, where are the other cows, did my saddle horn move? It’s really pointless things, none of them are as important as where the cow is. If I’m watching my cow I’m prepared for my turn and don’t have to scramble for my horn which spoiler alert, it’s always in the same place. It doesn’t matter where the yelling is coming from just do what it’s telling you, don’t worry he can see what your doing wrong from wherever he is because it’s pretty easy to see a mile away. It doesn’t matter what my horses head is doing he’s just hustling to catch the cow while I wobble around looking at everything but the cow. The cone and the other cow’s are pretty irrelevant when you lose the cow your working.
You think this point would have been more ingrained in my head after I was lawn darted off my horse at Colliegent finals because I took my eye off the cow to see the cone on the other side of the arena and my horse took that as a cue to step infront of his cow and turn. They both did and I was left flying through the air and earned myself a very embarrassing walk of shame out of the arena and an even harder call to the trainer to tell him what I’d done.
Anyways fast forward to now. We have been doctoring some calves out in pasture and shuffling some pairs around. Now if I thought there was a lot to look at in the arena besides my cow the pasture has even more and when you loose one out there you really lose it. I was having a hard time keeping my cows because I was worried about all the uneven ground, all the other cows, and everything else. I was getting frustrated, my horse was pretty fed-up and my husband was pretty mad and then I heard a little voice in my head that said “watch the flipping cow!!!” When I finally focused solely on the cow and nothing else it was like magic. My horse didn’t trip from the uneven ground because I wasn’t stiffening up every time that I thought I saw a change in ground and throwing us both off balance. We didn’t have to worry about the other cows because when I was focused on just my cow the others pealed away and were no longer a problem.
It seems like such an easy problem to fix and it is but it’s hard to even know that you are doing it sometimes. I think that this same thing can happen with our goals. I have some really big goals and I like to come up with a plan on how to reach those goals but if your just following the path and not focused mainly on the end goal you can miss some big opportunities and get taken father from your goal then if you would just focus mainly on the big picture and take the opportunities and challenges that come up as they come with the goal as your main focus.
I know that’s going to be my main focus for this year. I’m going to keep focused on my big goals and take everything else as it comes. Oh, and I’m going to keep watching the flipping cow! I’m sure that Kyle and Terry are extremely glad that after 10 plus years I have finally had that lesson sink in.
I hope that this year you keep your eye on the cow!
Ranch Wife Ramblings 