I’ve recently been obsessed with a home office reorganization which unearthed unusable pens, unfiled papers, and unframed photographs. The pens got tossed and the papers got filed, but the photos are still not framed, just moved to the big pink box in the guest room closet that doubles as my storage space.
Before closing the lid though, I studied the images, many, most, all of them snapshots of my animals in their younger years. My stroll down Memory Lane brought back the beginnings – of bringing home the big red beast and my palomino birthday present.
I was reminded of a rambunctious retriever who would, I was convinced, grow to be an ironic twist of his name, and I remembered barn kittens braving whole new worlds of horse hooves and hay bales.
I was struck, and honestly, a little saddened, by how, back in the day, we were markedly brighter eyed, fresher faced and shinier coated. And thinner.
We’re all maturing mostly gracefully. I don’t sling 50-pound feed sacks over my shoulder these days, but that works out with the current corporate trend of downsized kibble bags; and a bucket full of manure doesn’t go up and over the bunker wall as easily as it once did, but smaller loads in two trips get the job done with a few more steps for the Fitbit.
Rowdy, the pup who gleefully vaulted off the retaining wall and out of the hostas to run laps around the dog yard, now ambles in to, and out of the Explorer with the help of a foldup ramp, silencing the telltale “hrmmph” of sore joints when he lands on solid ground. But once we hit the trail, he’s all in on the reconnaissance mission, leaving little slack on the leash as he stops, looks, listens, and sniffs for creatures of interest, past and present.
Meanwhile, the new ramp routine allows me to mark off a minute or two of interval training, as I lift and bend, fold and unfold the fifteen pounds of cumbersome molded plastic.
Easy keepers Biskit and Chicago maintain their gelding figures with minimal effort, though the long stems of hay harvested early in the season now wreak a little havoc with their old intestines, so we wait for later cuttings and supplement with softer hay cubes.
Super senior Mace manages to show up first in line for Mess Hall opening, wobbling on a weakening hind end now aligned slightly left of the front. He’s taken to waiting on the rug at the tack room door or on his bed in the barn shop, having recently waved the white flag at the hayloft ladder, but the old brown tabby rarely misses one of his many mini meals.
Fennel, the freshest face on the farm and the only Four Sticks 4-legged not yet supplemented with some form of arthritis assistance, is getting older like the rest of us, having abandoned the grasshopper pursuits of his kittenhood for the grownup work of real rodent eradication, spending off-duty hours in Goldilocks fashion, lounging on whichever of the 3 hay stacks he finds Just Right.
We accept the realities of aging. We adapt, we adjust, we appreciate.
And we anticipate that someday, for real, “Rowdy” will be an ironic twist.
Yielding
From Four Sticks Farm 