James

I usually wait until I am finished with a learning experience before giving feedback. I am happy with the course so far...but a very unusual thing happened today. I am in the middle of the USA on the banks of the Mississippi River and we are having a cold snap -6 degrees below zero right (F) right now. I went outside to check on and feed our large animals(horses,alpaca's)..I feed extra rations and check on the stalls etc to make sure everything is alright when it gets this cold. Well I had been doing the 10 minute a day quiet time with our labs...they are pretty laid back and they lay down ,fall asleep, yawn pretty quickly. They always are with me. Well I just stood there in the barn and tried to become present , tried to clear my mind as the instructor says to do. The horses have been with us a while and are pretty mellow ,they started yawning and quit eating and approached me. The labs laid down in the gangway of the barn by my feet and the horses just sort of all stood there. About that time ,I started thinking ,boy this is pretty wierd, the horse closest to me ,scout turned around and looked out of the barn,then he looked back at me twice. I thought that I had ruined it all by starting to think .....thats when I saw it. Now mind you it is snowing heavily right now and its blizzard conditions. at first I thought that it was one of the Alpaca's named" co-co" but on second glance ,it was a deer. Then I saw another ,and another and another .... (this time of year ,in our area deer do something called "yarding up" .... they form a large herd of loosely related relatives,this provides saftey during the winter). ALL the deer walked up to the barn area and all of them started laying down.I had been standing there about a half an hour ,the horses finished feeding and I walked away with the dogs to the house. At first I thought that maybe becouse of the bad weather the deer were really just bedding down for the night early. Then I thought about it,I have lived on this farm for 30 plus years and I am an avid outdoors person....I have never seen this before. Another thing,the labs are very calm but they ALWAYS bark at the deer...they didn't...I also walked right by where the deer started to lay down ... and I didn't see them?... I have never seen them this close to the barn...and why were they walking up toward the barn, looking right at me.... ...they had to know I was there...why didn't they run? Well it might all be because of the weather and maybe they were hungry or didn't see or smell me.....I doubt it, though...This whole experience kinda weirded me out....Is it possible that the whole herd of deer decided to just lay down at 3 pm in the afternoon ,out in the open ,during the biggest snow storm of the year? Well this course now really has my attention...it is a bit mind bogeling if the technique is that simple.. Well.I am going to "be persistent and patient" and see what happens. James "JD" Daniels , Rural West Central Illinois ,USA