At the last place we just moved from, we were working a dairy. Yeah, a cow dairy.
This dairy was a little different than a lot of other dairies though, because we were milking for their cream alone. So as the milk came pouring through the pipes, one person was required to stand at the other end and put the milk through the machine that would separate the cream from the skim. Eventually, this job went to me. And of course, Pippin came with me. The room was dark, and damp and the floor was perpetually wet. But Pippin put up with it pretty well, finding the warmest and driest places to sit and watch me. One thing he really liked about it though, was licking up all the milk that splattered on the floor. Yes, this was before his seizures.
There were dangers though. One in particular was the barrel of steaming hot water I used to keep the milk warm. I burned myself on more than one occasion, just by standing too near when the hose accidentally flipped out. But by the end of the milking, the water was not usually hot enough to burn anymore. At the end of every milking, I had to dump this water on the floor. The room was rather small, and the enormous gush of water created by the dump hit the wall on the other side and came swooshing back to me, and anyone else who happened to be standing in the wrong place.
The first time I brought Pippin with me in the cream room, he was sitting primly near the doorway into the other room. This room was often his haven from the damp floors, but it was colder and more lonely in there, so he usually stayed with me. I began to tip the barrel over but suddenly remembered Pippin. “Look out Pip!” I said warningly. He looked casually at me, glanced around to see where the danger was, saw none, and stayed where he was. “If you don’t move you’ll regret it!” I told him. He glanced at me again and looked away. I shrugged, “Suit yourself”, and dumped the barrel over. When he saw the monstrous wave of the terrible water coming racing towards him, his eyes bugged out and he gave a leap into the air, and a desperate race to the other door began. The water won, and as a result of not listening to me, he got his feet wet.
Never again did he ignore the cry of, “Look out Pip!”
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