{"id":183,"date":"2014-11-19T03:43:47","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T03:43:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/franchlife.com\/?p=183"},"modified":"2014-11-22T04:03:34","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T04:03:34","slug":"be-in-the-arena-with-wild-hogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/?p=183","title":{"rendered":"In the Arena with Wild Hogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

That isn\u2019t a metaphor. \u00a0It’s real life.\u00a0 It’s called the\u00a0World Champion Wild Hog Festival. \u00a0(By the way,\u00a0I don\u2019t think anyone travels from across the globe to wrestle a hog in a small Texas town, so \u201cworld\u201d may be overstating it just a bit). \u00a0My husband somehow learned about this competition and it quickly became a dream of his that had to be\u00a0accomplished. \u00a0You can’t live on a franch unless you have a belt buckle with a wild hog on it. \u00a0This competition is where a hog is set loose in an arena, then you and a partner chase it, catch it, get it in a burlap sack, and pull it across the finish line as fast as possible. \u00a0Yes, seriously. \u00a0And these\u00a0hogs are feral and mean, with the\u00a0heavy division hogs weighing in at 85 pounds minimum. \u00a0My husband was intent on convincing one of his university colleagues to join him on this\u00a0quest. \u00a0But, it’s a\u00a0pretty sophisticated crowd, and\u00a0I couldn’t imagine any of them risking their lives to wrestle a hog. \u00a0Not many have anything to do with farming or ranching\u00a0(even though my husband relentlessly tries to convince them to\u00a0live the franch life!). \u00a0So, instead, I planned a\u00a0quiet day on our franch. \u00a0It was looking like I’d finally\u00a0fulfill my dream of spending an afternoon together relaxing in our hammock\u00a0and finding shapes in the clouds, and then, not just one colleague, two of ’em were all-of-sudden willing. \u00a0Upon arrival at the event, the announcer was pleased to report an earlier contestant needing only stitches from an early morning hog gone wild.\u00a0 Worried,\u00a0I scolded his\u00a0colleagues, \u201cWe wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t said yes to being my husband’s partner! \u00a0If something happens to him, you are going to help me\u00a0raise our children.\u201d \u00a0But, there was no\u00a0turning back, I mean, we had driven two hours. \u00a0Well, it played out the way it does on the job\u00a0– my husband basically supervised his colleague\u00a0tackling the hog, then held the bag for him, and finally together dragged it across the finish line. \u00a0Unfortunately, they\u00a0didn’t win the coveted buckle, but they do\u00a0have a priceless story to tell. \u00a0Even though this one was definitely absurd to a once suburban girl,\u00a0my husband made yet another\u00a0franch dream come true. \u00a0Before you laugh at all this, remember Theodore Roosevelt’s lesson, \u201c\u2026it is not the critic who counts\u2026the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood\u2026” I don’t see why this can’t apply to an arena full of wild hogs. \u00a0Growing up on our franch, our\u00a0children not\u00a0only have the usual\u00a0childhood\u00a0ribbons and trophies on their shelves, they also have ones like\u00a0their\u00a0muddy \u201cI Caught A Hog\u201d ribbon from the junior scramble division. \u00a0I think my husband is most proud of\u00a0ones like that. \u00a0Honestly, I am too. \u00a0The wild hog festival for next year is on our calendar.<\/p>\n

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That isn\u2019t a metaphor. \u00a0It’s real life.\u00a0 It’s called the\u00a0World Champion Wild Hog Festival. \u00a0(By the way,\u00a0I don\u2019t think anyone travels from across the globe to wrestle a hog in a small Texas town, so \u201cworld\u201d may be overstating it just a bit). \u00a0My husband somehow learned about this competition and it quickly became a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":57,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions\/314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}