Defeat in a Spare Tire

I’m not good at admitting defeat.

Most ranchers aren’t.

But I admitted defeat the other day.

I have a few late calves in my upper corral. For one reason or another, they don’t have mothers so I am nursing them along on good feed, hoping they grow into a paycheck.

My brother, Roger, and I were reinforcing the corral, preparing to wean the rest of the calves in a couple of weeks.

“It looks like you have a sick calf?” Roger asked.

Sure enough, a calf that had been contentedly munching at the manger at 7 a.m. was now standing with a puffy left side, breathing hard.

I walked up to the calf, hoping I wouldn’t be able to catch him. I pushed on his belly.

Hard as a rock.

“We better tube him,” I said, heading for the medicine cabinet, relieved that I knew where the tube and oil were.

Five minutes later, we walked behind the calf, encouraging him to meander toward the head-catch. I thought about stabbing his side to relieve the gas in his belly, but the flexible plastic tube would be less invasive and easier on the calf.

As I threaded the tube down the calf’s throat, I hit hard resistance. No wonder his tongue was blue.

I pushed the tube through, the calf backed out of the head-catch, turned his head and knelt down.

I opened my Leatherman and stabbed the calf’s bloated belly.

Gas spewed like a tire going bad on the gravel road to Swift Dam.

I waited for the calf to get up.

I whispered encouraging words to him, then turned to Roger.

“I think he’s still alive. We have to get him out of the chute,” I said.

Roger looked at me with a kind eye.

“Maybe, but he isn’t breathing.”

Oh.

The next day, defeat slapped me upside the head again.

I bought a spare tire.

I used to have a spare tire. It came with the truck.

It rode casually on the diamond plate flatbed.

The physics of a smooth surface and velocity made me nervous, but the tire was always right there every time I looked in the rearview mirror.

Still, the laws of physics dogged me. I moved the spare tire to the back seat. It almost filled the back seat of the pickup, but the dog still had a place to sit and I could slide the fencing tools on to the floorboards.

Then the perfect storm hit with a vengeance.

Friends came to visit, I started to talk and laugh and share stories, and I loaded everyone into the truck to build fence along some steep hillsides.

You can tell where this is going.

The spare tire and the dog rode on the flatbed.

Until they didn’t.

After joyriding down a dirt two-track as I related a particularly hilarious story – in my mind, at least – I glanced at the rearview mirror and spotted my dog trotting behind the truck. I felt bad for him, but no harm, no foul.

The spare tire was nowhere to be seen.

This all occurred last July.

I figured I would spot the spare tire laying in a coulee the next time I went that way.

I didn’t see it the first time I returned, nor the second time, nor the third time.

My faith dimmed.

But I had time. I had new tires on the pickup. The risk of a flat was minimal.

Last week, a front tire was low, not flat, but might go flat quickly if the rock or nail decided to adjust itself.

The tire shop will send a bill.