To wit: Tobie loves cattle and wants to get to know everything about them. I hate cattle with the incandescence of a thousand suns.
And the most wonderful thing about cattle – from Tobie’s point of view – is that they leave him so many presents. Smelly, gooey, tasty presents. And he’s gotta catch’em all.
Could be worse, I suppose. Ghost liked to roll in the shit.
Okay, so two nights ago we had a herd overnight in the yard, then in the morning take its dear sweet time about moving away. I ended up rampaging out in the yard with a handgun to drive them away. (What I said about the pistol primarily being a noisemaker? Yeah.) Okay, that’s just Tuesday around here but the problem is that Tobie now wants to study every slightest nuance of every cow present: Every hoofprint and especially every dropping must be studied minutely – and in the case of droppings, at least sampled. He is aware that I hate it when he does this, it’s a dispute we’ve had off and on since he was a pup. He simply doesn’t see why I object to shit-eating: I mean, isn’t that what it’s for? And so every walkie turns into this cat-and-mouse game where he rushes ahead to the full extent of his walking lead and then goes full stealth mode to get at least one nibble in before I commence yelling at him.
And of course since cattle dislike soft sand as much as I do, we tend to use the same beaten paths. Cattle are as filthy in their eliminatory habits as goats and chickens; they just raise their tail and let fly when the urge strikes without even breaking stride, so now my favorite paths are just coated in the (literal) shit. I was out yesterday and this morning with a shovel getting it moved off to the side of my driveway and the paths immediately near the Lair. Sweartagod, people call dogs dirty but livestock makes dogs look fastidious as a Victorian dandy by comparison…
