The Dog Days Sprinkler Schedule
One August the herd learned my sprinkler timetable better than I did and began arriving for cooling right on the minute.
August in Hereford is the month the Panhandle remembers it is a griddle. A few years ago I rigged a line of sprinklers along the shaded fence to give the herd some relief, and I set a timer to run them in four cycles a day, each for fifteen minutes. I typed the schedule on a sheet and taped it up in the barn. The cows could not read it. I want that on the record, because what happened next looked a lot like reading.
By the second week they were queueing. At 10:58 each morning, forty cows would drift out of the shade and stand in a line like patrons outside a bank. When the first sprinkler hissed on, they stepped in single file, turned a half circle, and stepped out. I had a neighbor drive by to see it and he stopped the truck in the road. He said it looked like a car wash for people who had better manners than most car wash customers.
One afternoon I pulled up the National Weather Service forecast on my phone, saw a heat advisory, and bumped the timer to six cycles. The cows noticed within a day. At the old 2:00 slot they stood and waited with offended faces until the new 1:30 cycle ran, and then Dolores, the lead cow, gave me a long stare that I will call feedback. I added a sheet to the wall that said CHANGES TO SCHEDULE, which I read aloud each morning as a courtesy.
Now I run the sprinklers off a little clock I bought at the hardware store, and the herd has never missed a cycle. Visitors ask how I trained them. I say I did not. I only set the schedule and they enforced it. It is the first time in my life any group has been more punctual than I am, and I can tell you it is humbling to be outscheduled by forty Holsteins in a heat advisory. Keep a little farm humor on the radio and the heat is easier to take.