Whenever I am having difficulty making a decision, I always do what any reasonable person would do. I grab a yellow legal pad and make two lists. One list is the good points, and the other is the bad. Here’s an example:

I Like Ranching Because:

* Cows are punched...  not a time clock.

* You meet some interesting people including veterinarians, neighbors, truck drivers and marriage counselors.

* Every year is a rebirth.

* Old things are respected, giving hope to all of us in our old age.

* There is no commute to work. You just wake up and there it is.

* Cows don’t talk a lot.

* Many humorous things happen on a ranch. Whether it is a banker attempting to open a tight gate or a calf attacking the flank of a cow, a day never passes without something funny happening.

* You never know when you’ll spot some form of wildlife. Thankfully most of the time it isn’t human.

* Ranching is never boring. If you get tired of building fence you can always change to digging post holes and stringing barbed wire.

* Dog food qualifies as a business expense.

* More time is spent in the saddle than the seat of a tractor.

* No necktie is required.

* Despite the best efforts of AT&T and Apple, there are no telephones on horses. (At least not on my horse).

* There hasn’t been a perfume invented that smells as good as early morning dew on sagebrush.

* A rancher can get plenty of daily exercise without having to join a fancy club or wear those skin-tight purple leotards. How embarrassing!

* The feeling you get inside when you are out checking cows in the pasture next to the road and a car goes by and the kids inside are waving furiously because they like cowboys and there you are pretending to be one.

* 90 percent of the time is spent with cows and 10 percent with people, which is just about right.

* Hanging out at the auction market qualifies as work.

* You get to spend a lot of time with two of God’s greatest creatures – your horse and your wife. Not necessarily in that order.

* Feeding cows is fun.

* You usually don’t have to pay a lot of income tax.

Things I Don’t Like About Ranching:

* Feeding cows for six months isn’t that much fun.

* You don’t get to pay a lot of income tax.

* Litter that blows on to the ranch thrown by passing motorists. Inside the fast-food bags are empty containers for chicken nuggets and other decomposed poultry products.

• The boss is never far away. But usually, she’ll feed you breakfast before she tells you everything she wants done that day.

* External parasites that sometimes pop up in the cattle business such as environmental lawyers, grubs and government bureaucrats.

* Media people who say things about us that aren’t true.

* Truck drivers who knock over your antique loading chute.

• Personally, I don’t care for landlords, calf scours, environmental impact reports, heavy panels, barbed wire, water gaps, trespassers, cockleburs or calves that have to die.

You can see my list of things I like about ranching is much longer than the list of things I don’t like about it.

I guess that means I’m doing what I ought to.

But I have to tell you, it doesn’t matter what the lists say – I’d be doing it anyway.