On the road again (and again)

Having unloaded the trailer from Syracuse show last night and gotten the show animals back into their pens by 9:15 or so, yours truly was home for all of 10 hours before heading back onto the road earlier today to bring Cameron back to our partner’s farm (Emelise Alpacas) in NJ. Oh, woe is you Cameron: another farm, another set of females waiting for your charms. I have to say that I will really miss the big lug over the winter even if he can admittedly be a pain in the arse sometimes. Cameron (with honorable mention to his stable mate, Golden Sovereign) is one the few huacaya males we’ve ever owned that will actually lead you towards the barn where he knows the females to be, even when the barn in question is a half mile up a fairly steep hill. Can’t accuse the guy of not loving his job, that’s for sure. It certainly makes behavior testing less taxing on the human handler, though there is the small matter of staying on one’s feet sometimes if it’s rained out and conditions in the pastures are a bit slick. Thankfully no one is around these days with a camera (talking about Dr. Stephen Purdy and a now somewhat infamous video shot here about 10 years ago that I may never live down) to catch Ian as I go “running” after Cam — always attached by lead line — when he charges down the hill in the Arena paddocks after the chosen females have conveniently decided to graze the point furthest away from the barn.  At least the crazy bastard has the decency to then drag my sorry ass back up the hill as well.

Tomorrow will be a run of the so-called Freeport Packet that will bring Elite Legend back here for another two weeks of action as we continue to pass the reigning (3 years in a row) Futurity Herdsire of the Year back and forth with our friends at Tripping Gnome. Some weeks this time of year are just like that, you do what you need to do. Turns out that all those miles hauling critters to and from points near and far have added up too. Jen and I realized over the weekend as we were bopping around Syracuse that the vehicle we think of as the “new” farm truck (in truth it’s a 2008) is fast approaching 100K miles on its odometer, in spite of the fact that it has gotten very limited regular use beyond the hauls to the 4 to 6 annual shows/auctions we’ve done over the past 4 to 5 years. Of course many of those events have involved 40+ hours of roundtrip drive time so I suppose that could be affecting the mileage just a tiny bit, no? Talking to most experienced professional haulers though, 100,000 miles is really just the beginning of middle age for a well maintained diesel engine, so the not-so-old truck should have many more years of happy hauling yet to go. Now if we could just get the cost of a full tank of diesel back south of $100 again, that hauling would be even happier! Where’s Miracle Max when you need him?