Gus Has Other Plans by Donna Minton Williams

Some animals are trained. Some have to be won.

Gus was a red show steer with a broad white face, sixteen hundred pounds of pure opinion, and he had other plans for every single one of RaeLynn's. He would not lead. He would not stand. He would plant those four white feet in the dirt and turn himself into a statue, and there was nothing a hundred pound girl could do to move him.

RaeLynn showed up anyway. Every morning before school, every evening after her shift, in the cold and the heat and the dark. She fed him and bathed him and walked him a thousand slow laps across the lot, and she sat on an upturned bucket doing her homework at his shoulder while he learned to stand still. Nobody clapped for any of it. There was no ribbon for a cold dark morning. Just a girl and a giant and one faithful day after another.

Then came the evening he gave in, and every bit of that quiet work came due at last. The proudest moment of the whole season did not even belong to RaeLynn. It belonged to her five year old brother, Lincoln, who led a sixteen hundred pound steer into a show ring on the end of a rope, gentle as a lamb, because his sister had spent a year making him that way.

Written for readers ages 8 to 11, Gus Has Other Plans is Book 3 in the 5 Daughters Ranch series, drawn from the real animals and real children author Donna Minton Williams loves. It is a story about showing up every single day, about earning trust the slow way, and about the hardest and bravest kind of love there is, the kind that gives its whole heart even knowing the goodbye is coming. The book includes a Guide for Teachers and Families with discussion questions, vocabulary, and a hands-on activity, making it a warm fit for the classroom or the family read aloud shelf.