God, you know you really must love your animals when you can spent 2 days without complaint working on their 'play' area. In my case, it's an electric fence that encompasses approximately 6 or 7 acres for my horses to run & graze in. It's quite nice, really. In that little space, there is a small patch of trees that they can get shade from, and a small pond that they can drink or swim in (and they do), and a patch of sand that they love to roll in, too. But I'm getting off task.
Every winter, I try to keep them in the small paddock as much as possible, for several reasons. One being to keep them from breaking loose - a big deal when you consider that I was pregnant all winter, and didn't really need to be chasing a half dozen horses across the tundra.
The other, and probably more important reason, is to keep them from destroying the grass trying to hibernate below the snow & slop. THAT is the same reason I try to keep them off that pasture in the spring when the ground is soft, and the grass is not growing strongly yet.
However, our well failed about a week ago, and it was quickly getting to the point that I could NOT satiate their thirst from the tanker that the well man had left behind. I HAD to fix the fence from it's winter with the deer, and I had to fix it fast.
SO, I spent 2 days fixing shorts, repairing broken spots, and flagging like a mad woman so that mom's arabs, and my son's geriatric pony could see where the boundaries are.
Fat lot of good that did.
Mom's senile loopy ass 16 year old paint ran through my electric wire gate. The one that's been there for 2 years. Nice. That would have been irritating enough had the weanling arab & the geriatric pony didn't follow her out the damn thing.
Larry was putting the horses up at the time, and he did manage to get my big girls, Rosie, Bub & Sparky in before seeing that Champ (see geriatric Pony) had headed down the trail, then heard the barn door open, and made a break for the barn - through the still pulsating electric fence ... which he got caught up in, and could not break free from the snapping fence.
Larry switched off the fence, and Champ promptly RAN (no, really... he did) down the trail and into the field to the north of us. He was (easily) caught, but still.... now I have fence, and gate, and flagging to do all over.
I think poor Champ is blind or partially blind, so he will need to be kept mostly seperate from here on out. Cant' risk the old feller getting injured or caught up in the wire again. Poor old man.
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