A Stitch in Time Keeps Snot out of your Ears

In rodeo, they joke that the “Big Man’s Event” is steer wrestling because the cowboy jumps off of his horse and “wrestles” a steer to the ground, which is really just catching the steer at 40mph, digging his boots into the dirt, slowing both to a halt, and laying the animal on his side.  Once the steer and the cowboy know what they’re doing, it is a sport of repetition, finesse, and it even looks a bit staged like a WWF wrestling match as opposed to Olympic freestyle wrestling.  

Though most contestants are well over 200 lbs or at least pushing it, that isn’t to say there aren’t plenty of 5’8,” 160-pounders getting the better of an animal five or six times his own weight.  It is all about technique.  On the other hand, even a 200 lb calf can pack a punch on a full grown adult during branding time.  Lack of technique.  Going without a plan.  No attention to process will have you down in a hurry.

A Stitch Here

Strategizing and problem-solving is taking that stitch in time to save nine.  Ben Franklin said it, but a string of mothers have been repeating it for two hundred years and are only reaching their daughters.  Sons that become great big steer wrestlers like to literally and figuratively grab the bull by the horns.  Being a woman in the masculine world of cattle-ranching, this machismo attitude of muscling square pegs into round holes (or cows around 180 degree turns, for those in the know), pushed me to the sidelines like a city-folk at the county fair.  

Watching male counterparts react to issues on the ranch is like watching the cowboy jump off of a horse at a high gallop.  They seem to have little intention after that other than the automated response he has always used.  If his no-plan plan doesn’t work, he can readjust using brawn, brain, and physical presence and usually get the job done.

Usually.  Unfortunately, not every chore is like a 4 second run.  When you work with animals that have minds and intentions of their own, sometimes the cowboys triple their times, break a barrier, and end up with torn shirts and snot in their ears.  There is a herd that won’t budge, a bull that won’t load, and cows on the highway after leaning on some rusty gate welds.  What to do now?  

Save Time There

Think.  No, not rhetorically.  Think about the situation.  Think of a new method.  What is the problem?  If he can’t fix it alone, how can he reasonably, with a team of two, solve it?  

There aren’t many steer wrestler women because she wouldn’t have time to assess why a steer hung a leg, but if she did, that steer probably would fall just right every time.  Women’s need to contemplate and brainstorm before execution might come from an evolutionary and even present desire to balance obligations and multi-task, making a plan so that as few obstacles as possible have opportunity to arise.  She knows how to start the wash, account for new dirties, allocate time for family, and have a crockpot roast done while still breeding heifers all afternoon.  Let a lady, a true and worthy one, out on the field, and she will consider if it is best to swing the herd clockwise or counter, this pen “in” or this pen “by,” leave a few or gather the herd as one all resulting in different and planned outcomes.  

Put a methodical woman with a speedy and strong man out on the ranch, and witness a perfect team.