I’ve got a mule deer hangin’ on my wall from northern New Mexico, so I could relate to Rafael’s story.

It helps to know a little about a lot of things. It gives you a broad perspective. It also allows you to make a fool of yourself in many different areas. In my column, readers may notice that I appear to have an opinion on almost everything in agriculture. It might impress some, but real authorities in certain areas can easily see how thin my expertise is spread. For instance, I worked in a sheep parasitology lab during ag school. I tell people casually that I helped work out the life cycles of Thysanosoma actinoides, Stephanofilaria tylisi and Elophora schneideri.

The road to increased horse abandonment and abuse is paved with good intentions. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has recently (June 2011) finished its report on the current status of horse welfare in the U.S., titled “Action Needed to Address Unintended Consequences from Cessation of Domestic Slaughter.” The GAO is the equivalent of the person who inspects the Boeing 737 you ride on, or the IRS going over your books, or the instant replay in football. It is as cold as a calculator.

I never claimed to be a cowman and I’ve got the scars to prove it! Frostbit fingers, baler twine blisters and an odd scrape in the side of my head where the hair won’t grow back from when my good ol’ horse slipped down on an ice slick on the calving lot. I went out off the front quarter, hung my left spur on the canvas medicine bag that was looped over the horn with parachute chord and lost a chunk of my ear when he drug me, unconscious, over the rusty metal feeder by the gate. My ear now looks like a chew toy!

I never claimed to be a cowman and I’ve got the scars to prove it! Frostbit fingers, baler twine blisters and an odd scrape in the side of my head where the hair won’t grow back from when my good ol’ horse slipped down on an ice slick on the calving lot. I went out off the front quarter, hung my left spur on the canvas medicine bag that was looped over the horn with parachute chord and lost a chunk of my ear when he drug me, unconscious, over the rusty metal feeder by the gate. My ear now looks like a chew toy!

Keith was driving me into Edmonton, Alberta, on Hwy 26 from the west. The large grain and cattle farms began to shatter into smaller pieces of property: 40 acres, 20 acres or 12 acres. The countryside was still green and well kept with fields of five horses or three cows. Usually it included a nice home with landscaping and a manicured entrance. “More farm ground is disappearing every year,” said Keith, noting the loss of big farmsteads. He was right, but it has been going on since the pilgrims set foot in Newfoundland; it is the inexorable roll of civilization.

Economists have a mythical figure called the misery index. It is the total of the unemployment rate added to the inflation rate. This summer in the U.S. it’s running about 13.0. The lower the better. In both the ’90s and ’00s it’s been as low as 7.

It came as a surprise to me that there is a brisk hedgehog business in the country. It shouldn’t have. Earlier entrepreneurial promoters had done well with Chia Pets, pet rocks, longhorn cattle, ostriches and Humvees. Hedgehogs (HH) are about the size of an orange with a pointy nose and spiny back. They bring to mind a cross between a pocket-porcupine and a scorpion fish.

Our regular goin’-to-the-pasture rig, a one-ton, four-wheel-drive ’97 GMC diesel with 256,439 miles, was in the shop. So we brought out the ol’ standby: a 1969 Ford F-250 ¾-ton four-speed with split rims and a manual choke. It has a B&W turnover gooseneck ball made during the Civil War, I think.

It came as a surprise to me that there is a brisk hedgehog business in the country. It shouldn’t have. Earlier entrepreneurial promoters had done well with Chia Pets, pet rocks, longhorn cattle, ostriches and Humvees. Hedgehogs (HH) are about the size of an orange with a pointy nose and spiny back. They bring to mind a cross between a pocket-porcupine and a scorpion fish.