What a fun day yesterday was. A group of us got together at a friends farm & we rode her horses in her new covered arena. Thrill of the day was riding her Friesian stallion.

This was so exciting for me because the last time I rode another friend's Friesian gelding, our horses spooked & I came off in the middle of the alfalfa field & got a compression fracture in my back. I had gotten back on & rode a little after that, not knowing I had fractured my back & IT HURT to post at the trot only 4 months ago. Yesterday, there was no pain & I could ride like I always have been able to ride.

Well, got home after riding & lunch together with my group of friends & was working in the yard.....had a couple of my eskies out in the yard with me & just as the sun was setting, there right next to my driveway was a young black angus cow, moowing at us. My neighbor has cows & at first glance, I thought the cow was actually on his side of the fence.....but NO, it was on MY side of the fence.

I went in to get my phone book to find the phone number for my neighbor.....came out with my phone book & cell phone & called....NO ONE HOME . I started walking toward the cow & of course, it went out into the street & headed for their farm. I was so nervous about it being on the road & getting hit by a car so I decided to try to herd it up their long driveway & up to the gate of the field it had escaped from. However, when I went to open the gate, it decided to head back to their driveway & down toward the street. I walked back down the driveway & herded it back up the driveway.

By that time it was dark & the cow was BLACK. I thought it might have gone back to the gate area again, but it wasn't there......just then, my neighbors came home & I greeted them with the fact that they had an escape artist for a cow. They drove to the fence area & the cow wasn't there & they drove back into the other part of their farm & the cow wasn't there either but they closed the gates to that area just it case & planned on finding it in the morning.

They offered me a ride home (about 1/2 mile walk) after all my exercise of chasing their cow & a dark street that I didn't really want to walk on at night since I had my dark riding cloths still on. As they were heading down the road toward my farm, there was the cow. It had slipped past me in the dark when I was herding it back up the driveway & I didn't see it turn around & go back down the driveway.

The neighbor who drove me home parked his truck with the flashers on at the driveway across from my farm where they are leasing the land for another herd of cattle & with the other truck, started herding the cow into the gates.....while I stood at my farm to keep him from heading back down to where he had escaped from. Got the cow safely through the gates & into one of the holding pens until they could take it back to the herd today.

I had been noticing how they herd the cattle using their truck. It was so funny watching them move the cattle from one field to the next, following their big red truck as the may was making this strange calling noise. I couldn't figure out if it was a machine making the noise or if it was their voice. I have been wanting to ask them about the call they use for a long time.....so took the opportunity.

One uses an actual horn type of thing to make the noise but this man was actually uses his voice to make the very LOUD call....along with feed that comes from the truck to get the whole herd of them to follow. It's quite a sight & so different from the way my great uncle took care of his cows way back in the dark ages when I was 8 years old & visiting their farm in Nebraska.

Ah, the joys of living in the country....no better exercise than riding beautiful horses & herding a cow.....life couldn't be better.