Thursday 29 September 2011

The Musher Rebuts Bets Story...

Since I made Bet take a bath tonight that didn't involve candles and/or wine, she is no longer speaking to me. I therefore figured it was a good time to rebut her story about the encounter that we had on a training run last week.
(In case you haven't read it, Bet's version can be found here )

It really happened this way....

Richard and I were out on a training run each with a 16 dog team. Richard had 2 pretty good leaders up front - Bang and Bingo, but I had rookie leader Turtle and the very distractable Wifi.
During the summer a herd of about 40 cows and calves graze on the land next to us. I occasionally train in that area - with something like 640 acres to graze on I rarely run into them.
Of course this morning we choose to train on those trails and low and behold ran into the herd. I figured they would all scatter when they saw us coming, but one young cow opted to stand his ground. Richard snapped this picture as I was yelling insults at the stubborn hunk of walking steak suggesting he move on...


 He stalled for a bit, walked backwards a bit, and then fled for the trees. Incident over - or so I thought.

A minute later Richard called my name and pointed out one SERIOUSLY pissed off cow storming through the trees towards his team. In tow was the younger cow - I think he was pointing us out to his mom.
We called up both teams and BOOKED it outta there!!!

I picked a trail that I thought afforded us the least incident of running into the herd again, but low and behold, about a 1/2 mile later there they were again. We kicked the teams into high gear, but the cows were on a collision course for us. At this moment Wifi and Turtle's brains blew up, I ran up front to piece things back together, but that blocked the trail on Richard leaving him stranded with several thousands of pounds of unground hamburger headed towards him.

At that point he called upon his British '00' training and sprang into action. His first thought, of course, was of his dog team so he activated the electric fence force field feature on his Aston Martin ATV (well, you didn't think he drove a basic Honda ATV like I do, did you? Also remember that our 'Q' is named for the very clever 'Q' from the James Bond movies - the two of them spent all their spare time plotting and tinkering with that ATV last year).
With the team safe, Richard executed a few effective paralyzing martial arts moves on first approaching cow. The rest of the herd saw that and headed for the hills with tails tucked and eyes wide. 
Richard adjusted his bow tie, wiped a bit of cow sh&t off his Converse Jack Purcell ankle boots, took a sip of his 'shaken, not stirred' martini and we proceeded with the run.

I notice that the cows left for home last weekend. I don't think they got the message that Richard had gone home yet.

Well Bet?????


It is just as believable as your version......




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMG! I am now cleaning coffee off my computer screen. This was a SCREAM! Bet, what can you do to top this one?
Tammy
Silver Spring

Jack & Moo said...

Gosh you make it sound so exciting! (I still like Bet's cartoon, though.)

jack & moo

Anonymous said...

OMFD! (oh my freaking dog!) I would have crapped and fainted. I'm no good with confrontation! I'm totally sure Bet would have done what she said she did..