Friday on the Ranch

Yesterday, Friday, January 25th, 2013, Mom went to town for groceries and clothes; she only got one skirt in clothing.  While she was gone, Dad took us kids out to move cattle.  They were located south of our house, but within riding distance, so we rode out to them.  Along with us, came our dogs, Belvadere and Tonzo.
  Before I tell you more, Dad helped (really he did it by himself) put a bridle on Paradise for the first time.  With that came the bit.  After sliding the bit into her mouth, she played with it with her tongue.  But soon later she was fine with the bit laying on top of her tongue in her mouth.  She turned quite well, too.
  Back to moving the heifers, which are female cattle who have not had calves.  We gathered up all the heifers and headed them north to their future home.  After we had gone a long ways and Paradise was going well, but then out of the blue, she started bucking!  I had no time to even think about what was happening when I hit the ground with my left side.
  I sat up real quick and tried as hard as possible to hold back the tears of pain.  My arm was aching from landing so hard, my tall-man finger on my left hand must have been bumped really bad, because it was tingling, and my left hip bone was hurting a little.  I was fine other than those few pains.
  My horse, Paradise, stood beside me grazing as though nothing had happened.  And so I have been bucked off yet again.  That makes 3 times of coming off of my horse.  I am just glad that she doesn't act like that all the time! 
  I got on her after sitting on the ground for a little bit, and we continued to move the heifers.  We pushed them to a gate on a hill north of our house.  Big J. with his horse, Bull's-eye, rode to our middle cattle guard, as we call it, and pushed 25 heifers to the herd we had just pushed to the gate on the hill.  I hope that makes sense. 
  After the two herds blended to one, we pushed them through the gate and tuned them west.  We pushed them in that direction for a while; through another gate and a ways after that.  We then followed a road which slightly turned to the north west and then to the north.  We pushed the cattle to and past a windmill and set of pens.  Then we turned them into a gate.  When all of them were through, we pushed them another few yards to the pasture that was their new home. 
  We then headed home to our house.  By then, it was getting chilly and we were ready to walk into our house and stand by the fire in the fire place.  We walked, trotted, and loped some bit of the way home.  And after putting the horses in the pasture and putting a log on the fire, we ended the outside work. 
  Mom got home after dark and we helped put up the groceries.  Then, Mom popped pop corn over the stove and we got glasses filled with ice and pop ready.  After we were all ready, we as a family went up stairs to our TV room and had our weekly Family Movie Night.  It ended a great day!  : )