A Long, Long Week ....!

  The Dogs erupted and I was immediately wide awake. Peering out through the blind, I saw Pat there. Instinctively, automatically, I counted the Dogs, barking and milling around me. All there, of course. As they had been all night. The night after a day in which none had gone AWOL.  I relaxed. No trouble then.

 Walking out, smiling at my friend and neighbour, I must've greeted him and asked " 'Sup, mate? ". Expecting some small enquiry. 

 What I never, in a million years, expected was; " That bloody horse of yours has stampeded my cattle! Chased them through fences! ". That was when my world ground to a halt.

  " Ye'll have to get rid of her! ", he stated. The meaning obvious; If I can't fucking control the thing, I have no business keeping her here. Here where I allow her to reach There. And quite possibly wreck another mans livelihood. Recompense for which would, in turn, destroy me.

  As we strode up the track, his next angry utterance was; " If any of my cattle abort because of this, I'll have to hold you responsible! " Obviously.
 
" The ground's too wet anyway, " He continued. " Keep them off the field now. " The field in point being His acre. The one he allowed me to pasture 'my horses', Rosie and Donks on, as a favour.

  Trudging along through Pat's fields, even as I tracked the big, round hoof marks across his grass, saw the horse shit and the broken electric gates, I was still partly in denial. How in hell could Rosie possibly have got into his land?!

  Well, no matter. Because, as I rounded a hedge, there she was. Standing like a big, black and white monument to the gut wrenching truth. Fuck.

  And there she stood. Never twitched a muscle as I came up to her and clipped on a lead. Came with me, good as gold as I started leading her back home. My head bowed in turmoil and trying to calculate through my confusion. This could end up costing me Everything.

  Once or twice, she spurted forward a step or two. I knew Pat was behind us. Slapping her behind. Anger flared in me. I wanted to turn on him. Scream that, " Oh, yeah! Fucking taking it out on her's gonna solve Every fucking thing. Isn't it?! "

 But, of course, my anger's always been slower to rouse and much faster to abate. Anyway, I felt so sick to my own guts and had almost wondered how Pat hadn't landed one on me yet, let alone just slapping my horse. I let it go.

  Then I was alone with her. Still on Pat's ground. Noticing the torn away coil of wire that was one of his electric gates. Damage done. By my horse. But, those gates cost mere pounds. What could an aborted calf cost me?!

  I asked Hugh Logan, my Slaughterman / Butcher friend that same question, hours later. He thought about it for a moment. " £500? £700. Depends ..... " He said. Casually informing me of the sentence for a Capital Crime in Cattle County.

 He also offered that such a cow might take up to three days to actually get round to aborting. That I should just forget about it. That, should any decide to do so, I'd " Just have to make some arrangement with Pat' ". Like, what? Give me time to sell my fucking cottage?!

 And it all started there. That day. One of the worst weeks of my life. I brought a new gate back from town. Pat' wasn't there, so I handed it to Mary. I was still too strung out to even register or read the look on his wifes face. God knows what mine must've looked like. Drawn? Gray? I expect so.


 Mid week I was in Hugh's shop again. Had I seen Pat? No. I'd been hoping to run into him, on the track. Find out what was what. But, I hadn't met him yet. At least nor had he come to my place, counting out how many calves I owed.

  Hugh pursed his lips at this. To his way of thinking, Pat's way of thinking would be more like, " Lovely; The guys horse causes me untold potential damage. And where is he? No turning up to enquire. Just stays away down in his own spot. "

  But, I know better how we function. I only go to Pat's home on otherwise unavoidable business. We just meet on the track. We don't bother each other. That's why I'd been pacing around my own corner for days now. Enduring nightmares by night. Palpitations by day. Quietly, and privately, becoming nervously unravelled.

  Then, this evening, as I fed the horses ~ tied to their stalls, behind closed, locked and barricaded gates. Under High Security which I won't rest till I've made higher ~ I heard Pat's Quad. More than that, I heard it up by my front gate. Here we go ......

  Feeling suddenly exhausted, I walked up through my compound and looked over the gate. To see Pat's head moving along behind the hedge of his top field. He was on his quad, doing something in there.

  I went out and stood by the gate to that field. Waited as he returned on his circuit and dismounted. As he approached I croaked out, in a hollow voice; " Alright, Pat'? How'd ye cattle make out? "

 I was ready for anything. So I thought. Resigned to it. But, I wasn't ready for this:  " Hullo, Ditch. Naah, they're fine. Look; I'm sorry I went off at ye like that, last week ..... " Eh ....?!

  The rest is forgotten history. Pat apologised. I, flabbergasted, obviously Insisted that I was the one yet still apologising and so humbling myself in shit loads of contriteness. Pat' just waved it all aside.

 Next thing ye know, all I can think of to say, looking up at the sunny, blue sky, is; " Fucking gorgeous day, isn't it? " And, squinting into the sun himself, he dropped it: " T'is a grand day. Why don't ye let ye horses out on the field ....? "

 I blustered that they were in that pen and going to fucking well stay there till I'd sorted out how to contain Pegasus!

 " Oh, " he says, as if it's just a matter as inconsequential as how to how to lace a shoe, " Why don't ye just run an electric tape down along the bottom, where she got out? "
 And so I'm forgiven. Tutored in Stockmanship, by a man born to it. 'Shit Happens' ~ Forget it.


 And this is why, just about every day since I came here, I've harboured this tingling buzz of hope that maybe, if I'm really, really lucky? I may, today, find myself able to do one of these people a service. 

 To somehow take another small chip off the enormous and ongoing debt of pure kindness and forgiveness they've shown me, ever since I blundered into their lives and began blindly thrashing around, trying to master the art of living in Co. Leitrim.

  I fucking Love this place ~ and her people.