George and Rip

[worth1]

When I was around 12 or 13 years old I wanted a pet Brahman bull.
So my dad and I went to a place and we picked out a wee baby that was without a mother and needed raising.
It came home with me in the back of a 1965 Ford Country Sedan station wagon head in my lap.
I raised it from a wee calf and bottle fed it every day my new dog named Rip was with me at all times and they became great friends.
Rip also became great friends with the rest of the cattle.
He could lick a new born baby calf the second it hit the ground and the mother would help.
The cattle loved Rip.
If we had a mean cow George the bull would come up and knock it out of the way before it butted one of us.
He would also come up behind you and raise you off the ground with his head.
He was very nice and would not hurt you.
I also trained him from a baby to get used to me putting pressure on his back and in time I could get on him and ride him around.
When you scratched and petted him in time he would lay on his back hooves in the air and let you belly rub him.
When we put out meal and salt for the cattle Rip would go off looking for the cows and lead them back to the barn.
About 100 head of cattle would be following Rip to the barn.
I have no idea how they communicated with each other but they did.
Kids from school used to come out to see Rip and my pet bull George and pet them.
My mother made homemade bread and sometimes a whole loaf would go stale and she would throw it out.
Rip would go out in the field and bury it.
Months later you would see him pulling the thing out of the ground and eating it.
Rip also loved to pick green beans one at t a time from the vines and eat them too.
Watermelon in the summer was a favorite along with crunching ice cubes.
Rip would eat anything i would eat.
George would reach over the fence and eat the tea roses.
When George was a calf he had a halter on and I lead him into the kitchen to startle my mom with a wee calf moo.
One time some Big city teenagers were with me on the place and the cattle saw us and came running to us.
Stampede I exclaimed run for your lives.
They took off running and I just stood there.
The cattle showed up surrounded me for a petting and the kids came back and joined in.
Each and every cow and bull had to have a scratch and a petting.
They were always butting each other out of the way for their turn.
As far as I know we were the only people in the country that had cattle that would run to us not away from us.

[pondgardener]

Worth,
I am glad to see you start to add your stories of your early childhood. I wish I had your ability to recollect experiences from 50 years or more ago! Keep it up...

[TheDante]

Thanks for sharing your pet stories, worth… loving it!

Here´s my own ´Rip´ eating bush beans too!

A few years ago, I was checking through our bush beans plants and wondered about half eaten and teeth marks on the beans… lo and behold… turned out to be The Dante! Only he eats beans outta our 4 cats - all siblings!

www.facebook.com/karen.vater.549/videos ... 536867588/

or

[worth1]

Sweet baby.

[Rajun Gardener]

How did you upload that video, I'm curious. I'm glad it's working and it's HD on my end. [mention]TheDante[/mention]

[TheDante]

Hey Rob,

I put on my wisdom ingenious hat and uploaded the video onto my recently set up Facebook (it has its uses after all tho am kinda averse to them!) page. I couldn´t attach or copy and paste mp4 video… and also read so much about taking up bandwidth space on the forum… didn´t wanna be a pain…

soooooo Eureka! I just hope it still doesn´t take up bandwith space tho.. not sure.. am rather behind the ever-fast hard to catch up technology… do let me know if it does and if you are able to check?

btw... am soooooooooooooo amazed and impressed how you were able to set up our forum this quickly and efficiently despite the few bugs. You are clearly our angel and hero! Thank you Rob

[Rajun Gardener]

Thanks Karen!
It wasn't just me that made this happen and I have to say Thanks to everyone who took the ride to get here especially the Moderators. There were some late nights texting, emailing and working behind the scenes to get to this point. Hopefully it's on cruise control and we can all go back to being a normal user/poster.

[TheDante]

Thank you to all the hidden behind the scenes angels and heroes/heroines too, whomever you are