09/09/2026
This!
The real secret doesn’t come with 2-day shipping…
this one’s gonna hurt. 😂
There’s a special kind of crazy that comes with showing livestock.
Every other weekend, we load up the kids, the sheep, and half the contents of our barn, drive a few hours, just to stand in front of a stranger to find out what they think of what we brought.
Then we load it all back up and spend the drive home dissecting everything that happened.
And I’ve decided there’s actually something worse than getting your ass kicked.
Almost winning.
Because when you’re getting your ass kicked, you know you’ve got work to do.
But when you’re close?
You start thinking you’ve got something to find.
You’re getting looked at. You’re competitive. Maybe the judge even tells you how close you were.
But somebody else keeps getting that coveted slap.
So you head home asking:
What are we missing?
And THAT can get expensive. 😂
Because “what are we missing?” rarely sends us home to walk the lamb.
It sends us shopping.
What are they feeding?
What supplements are they using?
What’s in that bucket?
Who did they buy that lamb from?
Hell, maybe we need a different lamb.
We research. We ask around. We watch what everyone else is doing. We add things to the cart.
Because it’s surprisingly easy to confuse buying something new with doing something more.
Ouch.
But surely we’re just one Amazon order away from greatness. 😂
Apparently, our response to getting beat isn’t always to work harder.
Sometimes we just… shop harder.
Then I saw this:
“The magic you’re looking for is in the work you’re avoiding.”
Well, crap.
That’s considerably less fun than adding something to the cart. 😂
Because the truth is…
we usually know.
We know which lamb hasn’t been walked enough.
We know we haven’t worked s**g like we said we would.
We know we should be practicing showmanship more than the night before we leave for a show.
We know.
We’d just really prefer the answer to be something we’re missing instead of something we’re not doing.
And that’s the uncomfortable part.
What if there isn’t some big secret?
What if the thing we’re missing isn’t coming in a jug, a bucket, or a box on the front porch?
What if…
we just need to walk the damn lamb?
Every day.
Work the s**g.
Practice showmanship.
Stick with the feeding program long enough to actually know if it’s working.
Do all those boring little things we already know we’re supposed to be doing.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Because that’s the thing about the basics.
They work. But only if we actually do them.
Of course genetics matter. Feed matters. Good products matter. A good animal matters. And learning from people who are better than us absolutely matters.
But none of it replaces the part nobody really wants to hear about.
The work.
The boring stuff.
The stuff nobody sees.
The stuff that doesn’t feel like it’s making much difference today.
Maybe that’s why we’re always looking for the secret.
Because we’d really like the magic to be something we can buy.
You can buy a better lamb.
You can buy better feed.
You can buy every damn product in the Sullivan’s trailer.
But you can’t buy the work.
Unfortunately…
that one doesn’t qualify for free two-day shipping. 😂
