Where is Their Joy
It doesn’t seem all that many years ago that my boys watched cartoons that took place on farms and spent hours playing with miniature farm and ranch sets loading plastic cattle and horses and pigs up in tiny rigs. .I’m Susan Allen on today’s American Rancher I’ll be back after the break with societal changes that that make me sad.... A county fair with handi-wipes and a hands off animal policy? Welcome to America today. When I observed Sally Suburb scrubbing little Johnny’s mitts with wet ones because he touched, horrors .. a baby lamb. I thought of all the cowboy kids I see every weekend at ropings happy as clams covered in dust, horse and yes.. cow poo, zipping around the arena on a 1000 lb plus animal lickity split. Meanwhile their six year old counterpart in the city is attempting to navigate a tiny bike with training wheels, protected with helmet, pads and a helicopter mommy anxiously hovering. When I grew up kids wanted to spend summers on a ranch, swimming in rivers, riding horses, bucking hay, returning in the fall tan and buff. The pale obese teens I watch leaving high school today can barely handle the weight of a back pack. The majority of their existence is spent in the dark, controlling a fantasy world with a joy stick but where is their joy! Whose to blame for creating this peculiar world my grandchildren will soon need to navigate? I would hazard to guess it is the same folks that want us to blame cows for global warming.