Description

The sun was beating down on me with its rays of light, and the annoying barks of multiple dogs blared in my ears during another Sunday of volunteering at Fox Lake Farms. An occasional breeze brushed my face, giving me a cool sensation despite the outside heat. While walking past the horse stalls to converse with the owners about what to do, the unmistakable odor of fresh manure found its way into my nose, causing a brief nauseating feeling. After obtaining my usual assignment, I returned to the horse stalls passing by a familiar cat whose fur was as black and night and had the eyes the color of emeralds. Gripping the worn, rough wooden handle of the manure-fork, I emptied out stalls in a timely manner, finishing in less than ten minutes. With my triceps and biceps screaming in pain, I put up the manure-fork. As I left, I pulled out my water bottle full of tea and took what was the sweetest and satisfying drink ever.

Comparison

While volunteering at Fox Lake Farms. I began to notice how the work I did was just like practicing music, but with more physical labor. Keeping in time and going at a steady pace to avoid messing up in music, can be like shoveling manure out of a stall. Rushing to finish and get the manure out quickly would lead to large amounts of unnecessary dirt being put in with the manure, like rushing notes would lead to others struggling to keep up and then messing up. Doing the same jobs is like practicing same measures in a music piece. Both can be annoying, challenging, or easy to do. Like practicing a tricky measure, doing some of the work required patience and effort to get through it. When it comes to giving the work, the owners are like conductors; telling people where to start working and helping them do their job right.

Cause and Effect

While volunteering at Fox Lake Farms hippotherapy center, I was asked to help corral some of the horses into a pen to let them have some exercise. Even though feeling slightly drained of energy from not having a decent breakfast, I was handed a striped rope object used to make a whip crack noise in the air to help lead the horses in the pen. I also had a groggy sensation from a bad night of sleep, and slightly annoyed by the fact that I had no prior knowledge of how to keep horses on track. After the brief demonstration of the rope object, some of the horses were trotting towards the pen, but some did not. As I unsuccessfully attempted to use the rope object, I began to see the outcomes of what might have been due to my attempts to lead the horses.  One of the horses ended up nearly ramming into me after many frantic swings to move it, before swerving back to the pen’s direction. Another horse unfortunately ignored the noise from my rope object and just ended up eating grass near me. However, one horse seemed to have heard my whipping, but went to a different path away from the pen.

Narrarative

               

During another warm day in March at the hippotherapy center Fox Lake Farms, I was getting ready to remove more horse poop after grabbing a worn out manure fork used to pick up poop through dirt. Nearly stepping in some wet dirt that may have been made with horse urine; I entered a stall ready to work. Quickly digging beneath dirt with various piles of poop on top, I threw the waste onto mats placed outside the stalls of one of the horses. In the middle of my poop removal job, one of the dogs that live at the farm decided to rest on top of a pile of poop near the stall door, which kept me from completing my job. After several minutes of trying to “negotiate” with the dog, he finally left, finally allowing me to finish removing most of the poop. After leaving the stall to put away the manure fork, I picked up a rake with a red, yellow, and white striped handle. Returning to the stall, I raked the dirt inside the stall in a pattern of diagonal lines as asked by the owners of the farm, and finished up my volunteering for the day and returned to my house smelling like horse butt.

Advocacy

Commitment to any cause is like a show of how passionate someone can be about that cause and what he or she may be willing to do to get a job done. Fox Lake Farms is just an example of how people who are committed to helping people, can come together. Shoveling poop, moving dirt, and grooming horses each day are just some of the jobs. Helping children and looking after animals that have been abused, such as dogs or cats, also makes up some of the jobs they have committed themselves to do. Even though to me some of the tasks were boring and seemed to have no point, I know that the owners of the farm know what is best for the farm and its animals, since they do the work each day. After just a couple hours of volunteering, my body was already aching. The thought of a finding these fairly easy jobs tiring saddens me. The idea of the owners doing these somewhat jobs each day for hours on end each day just to keep the farm running and in good shape, shows me how true commitment to a cause should be like.