A challenge my family faced, or more like I faced, was when our clippers quit working. I consider this a big problem, while others might think it’s not a big deal. I was touching up my lamb and I still had two others I had to shear. My dad was on a fire so he couldn’t help. My mom was in town and my grandma (my grandparents are my only neighbors while I live.) had to stay with my grandpa. So I was on my own for shearing my lambs for Sothern Fair. I was just finishing touching up his head when he decided he wanted to try and run away. I didn’t have his halter on. Shearing a lamb’s head with their halter on is hard that’s why I take it off. Anyway he was slipping from my grasp so I turned off the clippers and set them on the table. Only I didn;t set them fair enough away from the edge, my lamb stepped on the cord of the clippers and ended up yanking the clippers off of the table, I already had the halter on my lamb so I tried catching the clippers before they hit the cement.
Unfortunately they hit the ground, freaking out, I tried turning them on. Nothing. How was I gonna finish shearing? These were the bigger clippers that we used for the lamb’s body and parts of their head before we switched to a little set of clippers. Like I said earlier I was touching him up, I had already shorn him yesterday but there were parts I had missed. And I still had two more to shear! Now mangerly pancking I set the clipper back on the table so I can tie up the lamb so see what I can do. I tried seeing if maybe they had gotten unplugged, but everything was plugged in. I pulled out my phone and searched up what to do if your clippers aren’t working. I found nothing helpful. Packing even more, I sat down on the concrete, thinking about what I could do. I tried turning them on again with no luck.
I ended up crying there on the cold cement, I knew that any show equipment was expensive and that we don’t have enough money to buy more clippers. We got lucky with these. I was freaking out thinking mom was gonna be mad at me. I don’t know how long I sat there rocking back and forth screaming and crying but finally I decided to call my grandma, since I didn’t want to walk to her house, and leave my lamb ties where he was. I knew that all of my lambs were escape artists, they knew how to untie themselves and take off their halters.
So using the landline phone I had brought outside in case mom called me, I dialed my grandma’s house phone number. I told her what happened and it turned out somehow I blew a breaker, but the clippers still didn’t work, which caused me to cry again. Yes I know I’m crying a lot, but this was very stressful. After a while I tried my best using the little clippers to shear my lamb. When mom’s truck pulled up at the house, I freaked out again. She came to the back of the house where I had everything set up to wash and shear my lambs. I started to cry…again, telling her what happened and that I was sorry and that I should’ve tried harder to catch the clippers. While my grandma was patting my arm and telling me it would be ok, obviously it was NOT ok. Mom said that I probably just needed a break, and probably I needed to eat. She said that she would try and fix the clippers and then shear the lamb. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything but breakfast but that was like 6 in the morning. Now it was 3 in the afternoon.
After I got done eating I went back to my house, (I went to grandparents house because my grandma made pizza) mom couldn’t fix the clipper weather we would just have to wait until dad gets back so he could fix them, because one of my lambs did this last year and the clippers did the same thing, dad was able to fix them. Mom texted some of our show family, (Our friends who also show animals with us but are more like family than friends) someone had a set of clippers that we could use. Which was good cause even though my lamb’s wool hadn’t grown that much, we still needed to shear them. I suggested that we just leave it and show them anyway. Mom wanted to just not take the lambs, but I wanted to even though they needed to be shorn. We ended up getting them all sheared. Thanks to our friend who had a set of clippers, ok so the point of this really long story was mom was also freaking out about this so I suggested that we just not shear them because they looked ok enough to show at Sothern then when dad gets home which would be in time for county fair he could fix the clippers and when could shear them.
Shayly's School Work 