Category: Paddock Paradise

Arrival

not to be confused with the movie

Where were we… oh yes, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

A little additional context to round out the picture. On top of everything happening with Juniper and the new horse I was also working out a bunch of details to get our first ever cover crop planted this fall (there will be a post about that eventually) which involved coordinating with the county, and then another county because the first situation fell through at the last minute, and a neighbor with a tractor, and finding seed (where do you buy enough winter rye seed for 15 acres?!) etc. and I also had a doctors appointment and an MRI scheduled because my doctor and the neurologist she referred me to wanted to rule out MS as a possible cause for some things I have going on. Both of them thought it was pretty unlikely I have MS but both of them also thought it was likely enough that it should be officially checked on. I will also have a post on that, but I will not leave you in suspense on this one, I do not have MS, but at the time this was all happening I did not know that, I only knew that two doctors thought it was unlikely but still possible.

Back to the horse saga. Tuesday morning is lots of frantic phone calls to my normal vet plus my friend Sarah’s vet who has been treating Juniper, my neighbor, and my friend Hilary who was our back-up ride, trying to figure out when and where Juniper can get a dental but still be home when the new horse gets here. Luckily Sarah’s vet is able to squeeze Juniper in Wednesday morning and Hilary, who helped me bring Leeloo and Juniper home the first time, has a flexible day that day so she can go with me to pick up Juniper from Sarah’s house, bring her to the vet for her dental, hang out with us there while Juniper comes to from being sedated, and then bring Juniper back to my house.

It is at this point that I realize we will have to find a way to separate Juniper and Highlight (I still don’t love that name but I haven’t come up with anything else so Highlight she is) since Juniper will need some careful observation so we know exactly how much she is eating and drinking and to make sure her digestive system is operating correctly (i.e. she’s pooping). I also don’t want to put Juniper through the stress of meeting a new horse when she is clearly not feeling well. However, we are not at all set up for separate pastures. We have one shelter in the fenced in area, it has three bays, but it is one structure. We also only have two gates into the entire fenced in area. After some frantic brainstorming we opt to put up a temporary strand of electric fence coming out from one side of the gate and attaching to the wall of one of the shelter bays which is wood and therefore will not conduct the charge to the entire shelter. We’ll also need to block the tiny passage behind the shelter. This way I can use the gate by the shelters to get to Juniper and then I can walk up and around and use the gate by the house to get to Highlight. Except at the last minute it occurs to me to check in with the seller to see if Highlight has been on grass this summer and of course she has not been, so I can’t just let her out on the grass which is finally doing well with all the rain we got this fall. So now I need to block her off from the grass which means blocking her off from the gate. Then Sarah, who has been taking care of Juniper this summer and through her two colics, asks if I’m worried about Highlight bringing any illnesses home with her. I wasn’t, because she is coming from a very small private location and she passed a wellness exam, and every other horse in the trailer will also have passed a wellness exam, but there is still a tiny chance she could catch something and bring it home. If Juniper were healthy I wouldn’t worry at all, but Juniper is far from healthy right now and it’s just not worth the risk. So, we set up a second temporary set of electric fence on the other side of the gate so that there is a ten-foot space between them and they can’t make contact. I have now effectively created two separate paddocks with their own shelters and a 10-foot space between them. Yay. Neither of them has a gate or access point of any kind. Boo.

Doesn’t matter because I have no other choice as it is now 9 pm on Tuesday night and everyone’s coming home tomorrow!

Wednesday morning – arrival day!

Hilary and I drive separately in case the shipper makes better time than expected and/or the vet runs late. For once things go as planned and the vet sees us right on time. Juniper receives one of the quickest floats I’ve ever seen a horse get and he extracts two molars (photos if you’re curious) but we still need to wait for her to wake-up so she can safely handle the trailer ride. Once we feel she’s coherent enough to hold herself up we head for home, Highlight is scheduled to arrive in 45 minutes!

We settle Juniper into her new arrangement and wait for Highlight’s arrival. It is a little delayed but she is there within an hour and a half. It is in getting the two girls into their respective areas that I realize how much of an issue our gateless set-up will be. We set up the fence so there were plastic “grips” on the ends of the hot lines so we could unhook them from the shelter wall to go in and out, the problem is there is no other support structure for the lines so the moment we pull them off the wall they go slack for the entire length of the run and touch the ground, plus there is no place to actually put them so I have to somehow hold the lines in one hand while trying to get myself and various things (water, feed, hay, medicine, pitch-fork) from one side to the other. And of course the moment the lines go slack both girls try to go through to meet each other. This is not a feasible option for doing daily chores. That means I get to very gingerly climb through the fence every time I need to get to the other side and despite my very careful climbing I manage to shock myself at least once every time I do chores. Let me tell you the hot lines hurt, particularly when it’s your inner thigh that makes contact as you attempt to step over it, but the ground line, which under normal circumstances has no charge running through it so you can grab it like normal to hold it out of your way, you know with your entire hand gripping it, that fucking HURTS when you are touching it and then accidently hit a hot line with whatever random other body part you aren’t paying enough attention to (I have been trying to keep the language pg-13 on this blog for reasons I am not clear on, but this situation is without question an F-word situation, but I digress…). So at least once a day, if not multiple times a day, I manage to shock myself while doing chores. “Why don’t you just unplug the fence?” you ask. Well Highlight is a very personable, very sweet, and very smart horse, and she watches you. She watches me climb through the fence every day to feed her and give her hay and pick up poop, and then she tries to do the same thing even with the fence hot. So turning it off seems like a recipe for disaster. And it turns out I’m right, because even with the lines hot Highlight managed to pull one of the hot lines (the one I gingerly step over) off the permanent fence and right across the entrance to her shelter on the night it’s pouring rain. And the way the line fell it is in contact with another hot line so it still has a charge running through it so when I get home from my 12 hour work day and go to give Juniper her PM meds I find a soaking wet, unhappy, and scared Highlight. So I’m standing in the rain on the soaking wet ground pulling a still electrified line of fence out of her paddock muttering expletives with every grab because everything is super conductive in that moment. Then I have to convince Highlight that the shelter will not in fact attack her and she can go in it, and please go in your shelter and get out of the rain. And then, I have to fix it so she doesn’t try that stunt again and get in a worse situation. Did I mention I worked a 12-hour day and it was pouring rain. Good times.

After that I stop going through Highlights fence to feed her and just throw hay over the fence, and push her feed under the bottom line and use a rake to grab it back out. No picking up poop on her side until we work out another option, which is definitely having them together sooner than planned, but this set-up is not sustainable.

And that was our first week.

Where Did The Year Go

2022 – Year-End Recap

I was starting to write a “goals for next year” post and was feeling a bit disheartened by all the things I had wanted to get done this year but haven’t gotten to yet and decided that it would be good for my mental health to take some time to reflect on the many things we did accomplish this year.

Just the decision to bring Leeloo home without having the full barn setup that I had been dreaming of was a big deal. There were many conversations with many people, and a lot of thinking about goals for myself and for Leeloo, before we even got to the starting gate. That process was the main focus of these posts:

Then there was putting the fence up and electrifying it, which took the whole summer. I understand now why people are willing to pay an extra $30,000+ to have a fence installed. The entire fence process is detailed in these posts: (Fence Part 1, Fence Part 2, Fence Part 3, Fence Part 4, Fence Part 5, Fence Part 6, Fence Part 7, Fence Part 8) and I need to remind myself how much work that was or I start feeling like we should have gotten more done over the summer.

Getting the first two shelters, anchoring them, starting to build the third shelter, then deciding that building it just wasn’t going to happen, was also more work and stress than I imagined. It is obvious now that we never could have built them ourselves, we just don’t have those skills yet, but that wasn’t always easy for me to accept. I am very happy now that we opted to buy them already constructed and that for the third one we went with the company that anchors them for you. The drama around the shelters was discussed in these posts: Give Me Shelter – Part 1 and Part 2, Second Interlude, So Much to Do, Mish Mash, Know When to Fold Them,  Hayshed – Delivered.

Finding and installing the round pen wasn’t part of the original plan but I am so glad we have it! We haven’t gotten to use it for its intended purpose very often but, it was so very helpful when we brought the girls home and has been very handy many times since then; including helping to separate Leeloo and Juniper each morning during feeding time. Though we are currently having some issues with Juniper turning into a picky eater; if it isn’t one thing it’s another. We discuss the round pen in Gate Expectations and the Fifth Interlude.

HAY! I had been a little worried about getting decent hay for a price we could afford. One of my long-term goals is to have our own hay field and I still feel that way, finding quality hay has been a challenge particularly since we also need it delivered. Luckily we were able to find a variety of hay for this year, including several different people who would deliver, though the quality has been all over the place. The girls like the most expensive hay best (of course) but now that we finally have some hay nets and some haybox lids they at least can’t toss it all over the ground and waste it (I’m looking at you Leeloo).  Hay post – Fourth Interlude.

Then there was finding Juniper – I didn’t talk much about that process on the website but it took a while for us to find the right pony, even when her only job is to keep Leeloo company, well and be cute of course. Finding that next mare, who will be the cornerstone of whatever comes next for us, is going to take much, much longer (Looking For a Baby Maker) – but now we’re starting to get into future goals and that is for the next post.

The ultimate goal of all of this work was to bring Leeloo and Juniper (once we found her) home, which we did! I sometimes forget what an accomplishment that is – it is the culmination of decades of dreaming. Here are the posts about bringing them home and the fun that has been: Coming Home, First Two Weeks, Sugar is Evil, Copy Paste, She’s Lucky She’s Cute, First Real Snow, Work Harder Not Smarter, Winter Woe-nderland.

One of the things I feel the biggest sense of accomplishment about (now that it is over) was something that we hadn’t planned for at all; dealing with Juniper’s eye infection. That was a huge, huge deal, both in terms of time and money, and I am so very, very, happy we were able to heal it (First Two Weeks, The Joys of Medicating Ponies, Mish Mash, Copy Paste, Juniper Eye Update). There was a very real chance she could have lost that eye and we saved it!

Though we weren’t able to build any shelters, we did get several building projects done including the six hay boxes (First Two Weeks, Projects Galore, Hay Contained) and the three compost bays (How to Make Compost Bays). The lids for the hay boxes are so close to being all done and hopefully we’ll get a chance to finish installing them during this “warm” period.

We’re once again getting into future goals but taking time to look back over this year has done what I had hoped, reset my perspective on what we all accomplished in the last few months and made me feel better. We got a ton done, pushed ourselves way, WAY, out of our comfort zones, and, more often than not, accomplished what we set out to do (even if it almost always took longer and cost more than expected).

One other huge accomplishment that I haven’t written about was getting this website up and running. I have never done anything even remotely like this and every aspect of this website has been a learning experience and has been the cause of a lot of swearing and a lot of crying, mostly in the beginning – the website hasn’t made me cry in weeks. I am very happy with how it has turned out and am really proud of myself.

Looking forward to another year of adventures. And of course Leeloo will be there to help:

 

First Real Snow

At least the bugs are GOne

We had our first real snow of the year this week and we were definitely not prepared. The morning of the snowy day itself we opted to do all the feeding, both their breakfasts and their hay for the day, inside the shelter bays because Leeloo still does not have her winter coat and I didn’t want her to get too wet. Unfortunately, Juniper decided that morning that she didn’t want to eat any of her breakfast until she had some new hay and Leeloo of course wants nothing to do with hay until she has had her breakfast. Feeding them in the shelters however means I can’t actually separate them so this added even more of a challenge on a morning when I was already rushed because I had to be in to work by 9:15 AM and had to stop and get treats first and do all that driving in the snow. In the end Juniper didn’t get much of her actual breakfast and I felt guilty and more determined than ever to get that “barn” shed set up as soon as possible.

When we did chores that night we also discovered that the shelters themselves aren’t quite the wind and snow break we had hoped they would be.

I cleaned out as much of the snow from the left most shelter bay as I could but had to leave the deepest stuff on the edge.

The next day however was way worse. Our location is very windy. VERY WINDY. I never understood how windy a place could be until we moved here. Here are some pictures that hopefully help illustrate what it is like:

This is less than twenty-four hours later and there was no melting happening, only the wind.

All that snow just got blown everywhere – including giant drifts across our driveway that we just paid to have plowed out the night before (yay!).

This kind of shows the drifts as well as the new drift patterns created by the hay boxes that we hadn’t dealt with before. Winter is so much fun.

In addition to the drifts across the driveway we also had drifts on both sides of the gate to the shelters which meant I couldn’t open it enough to get the poop cart or, more importantly, the hay cart through. The wind was too ridiculous to even consider feeding them their breakfasts up front by the roundpen where we normally do so I can separate Juniper and Leeloo. Juniper once again wasn’t interested in her food and wanted hay but this time I was a bit smarter and dumped Leeloo’s food out on one of the mats in the farthest right shelter bay so it would take her longer to eat and then snuck out some fresh hay for Juniper to eat and then brought Juniper her breakfast, after she had a chance to eat some hay for a bit. This worked pretty well until Leeloo finished her breakfast and came to see what Juniper and I were up to, fortunately Juniper had eaten most of her breakfast by then so I said good enough and moved on to trying to clean poop out of the shelter bays when there was no cart to put it in. It didn’t go well.

This of course is why I want to have that middle shelter set up as a makeshift barn with a stall on either end; so I can bring both Leeloo and Juniper in someplace out of the elements and into separate areas. Then Juniper can have as much time as she needs to eat her hay and all of her breakfast and they can both be dry and out of the elements for a while. It will also be invaluable when the farrier comes out next time because I really don’t want to be standing out in the snow and the wind while he’s trimming. I also really need to figure out how to block off the “stall” ends of the barn shelter since the snow and wind demonstrated how easily they can make their way around the edges.

Nate was kind enough to shovel out the gate later that day so we can at least open it wide enough to get a cart in and out. Of course getting the hay cart through the snow and the various drifts within the paddock itself was another matter. We absolutely must find another solution to that because I’m not hauling that cart through two foot (or higher) drifts all winter! I’m thinking a sled? Or can I convert a wheeled cart to a sled cart by locking the wheels onto skis of some sort?! Any and all suggestions are welcome!

Also discovered that I really, really, need some actual winter boots:

She’s Lucky She’s Cute

The Tasty Bits Are On The Bottom

These last two weeks have been ludicrously busy and once again proved that I have one of the best spouses in the world.

Last week I had to attend the AMATYC conference in Toronto. The one that I needed the two presentations for; I did manage to get them both done, and not just on time but with two full days to spare! This meant I was gone from Wednesday afternoon to Sunday afternoon so Nate had to do all the chores. Of course that also happened to be the one week all year he had to work in-person for four days, including the only in-person Friday of the entire year. He had to get up ridiculously early to get it all done, but he managed and once again demonstrated how awesome and supportive he is.

I got home safely from the conference, despite delayed flights and hotel reservations that apparently didn’t count (when my friend and I finally got to the hotel at 1:00 AM Thursday we were informed that they didn’t have a room for us – we were not happy). I got two full days at home and then had to travel to Wisconsin to spend Thanksgiving with my family. I tried to do as much as I could before I abandoned Nate to the horses again so I spent Wednesday afternoon trying to pick up as much poop around the hay boxes as I could. Which of course is challenging when much of it is still frozen to the ground. I had also brought the hay cart out to fill said hay boxes and was reminded once again why trying to multitask with horses is never a good idea. I finished cleaning up around the one hay station and filling those hay boxes and pulled the poop cart over to the other hay station. As I walked back to get the hay cart Leeloo decided it would be great fun to push out the rest that was still is the cart and then knock it over for good measure.

Once Leeloo walked away Juniper had to see if there were any tasty hay crumbs left.

Apparently Leeloo agrees with Juniper that the tastiest bits are on the bottom.

Perhaps I just need more mentally stimulating enrichment activities for her – any ideas?

Projects Galore

Much Done, Much To Do

The weather the last few days has been perfect and we have taken full advantage. Sometimes I look at the never-ending to-do list and feel like no progress is being made, but today we’re going to stop and acknowledge the many small but important projects we did get done.

The mud-grids have been laid out along the roughest part of the track system where pulling the cart gets the hardest. We’ve had an insanely dry year so mud hasn’t been an issue, but I know it will be muddy this spring and this was in preparation for that. I’m also hoping it will be easier to have a set track to pull the cart through in the snow. We went with these mud grids because they don’t require any site prep and they can be moved to a new location pretty easily so when we do get the barn (I will get my barn!) and we set up the permanent track on the other side of the house these grids can be moved to a new location there.

Leeloo and Juniper helping with the mud grids

Path of less resistance 

We also put out some mats and mud-grids by the gates and under their water tank and put out two mats to feed them on. Juniper is an incredibly messy eater and Leeloo gets impatient sometimes at how slow she is eating and will paw her food dish over if I don’t hold it for her and I don’t always have time to hold it. Leeloo will at least eat up all her spilled food, Juniper mostly ignores hers; Leeloo will also eat Juniper’s spilled food if given the chance.

Leeloo and I have been at eight different boarding barns and I visited several others each time we moved and I have never, ever, seen a barn that didn’t have issues with mud so I’m hoping some of these steps will at least minimize the issues we have with mud when spring gets here.

We also got another four hay boxes (mostly) completed for a total of six! That means we have two complete hay stations for two horses. It is recommended that at every hay station there is one more hay box (or hay bag, or hay pile on the ground, etc.) than the number of horses you have so if someone (*cough* Leeloo *cough*) is pushing another horse around the horse at the bottom of the pecking order can always get to new hay pile to eat from. Since we currently have two horses that means three hay boxes per hay station. Still on the search for that third horse and I’d like to have a third hay station so another six hay boxes need to get made, but they are lower down the priority list. Here is Leeloo enjoying the newest hay box.

The hay-net lids for the hay boxes remain elusive. I thought I had a really good solution and got two lids made, but someone managed to break the lid within an hour so it is back to the drawing board for the lids. Getting the hay off the ground and into the boxes is a huge improvement in and of itself. Not only does it stop the wind from blowing it everywhere, having the hay in the boxes also stops them from walking through the hay piles and spreading it everywhere as well as using the hay piles as bathroom spots or as rolling/sleeping spots. Though I do respect Leeloo’s desire to nap somewhere other than directly on the ground, so we collect all the old hay from the previous week that they didn’t eat and create rolling/sleeping piles for them. Here is Leeloo making good use of her roll pile.

Though sometimes they decide that now that the hay that they have ignored for an entire week is in a new location it is suddenly tasty again – Juniper, that is the roll pile!

We also got the water tank cleaned and scrubbed one last time before winter, got the gate latch on the small gate fixed so hopefully I stop shocking myself (the latch would slide down and make contact with the Electrobraid sometimes and I didn’t always notice before I grabbed it) and we gave both Juniper and Leeloo a really good brushing.

Overall, it’s been a good few days.

Coming Home

Leeloo and Juniper Move in

Leeloo and Juniper officially moved-in to our new track system last Friday. It was not an easy transition for anyone. Okay mostly for Leeloo and I, Juniper settled in pretty quickly.

Leeloo’s former barn is within sight of our current house as mentioned in this post and I was, and still am, concerned that being so close may encourage something drastic on Leeloo’s part, like attempting (and failing) to jump or fight through the fence to go “home.” I was also concerned about the invariable herd dominance interactions that always happen whenever horses are introduced to one another. I have had some good experiences in the past with taking two horses that didn’t get along on a trailer ride together. The shared trauma of the trailer ride didn’t necessarily make them best friends, but they seemed to get along better afterwards. With those two things in mind, I decided to haul Leeloo with us to get Juniper so that she would feel like she had traveled some distance and would have a chance to spend time in the trailer with Juniper.

I talked out my introduction plans with Marin, the barn manager of Leeloo’s most recent barn since she knows Leeloo better than I do in terms of how she interacts with other horses. In addition to the trailering together idea I had also intended to put one of them in the round pen and leave the other on the outside so they could meet over the fence. Marin suggested putting them both in the round pen together so they had to interact and get used to each other but without corners so no one could get trapped. Also being able to observe their new home from a contained space could help them feel more secure as would putting something up to act as a wall of sorts for part of the round pen because there is no shelter of any kind in that area. I was skeptical because Leeloo is taller than the panels are, but we have a large piece of roofing rubber that we aren’t doing anything with that would work well as a “wall” and it couldn’t hurt – so we hung it up.

My friend Hilary was kind enough to trailer us and we met early Friday morning to get Leeloo loaded into the trailer. Leeloo loaded fine as always, but she doesn’t like staying in the trailer; when I leave, she wants to leave with me. Hilary kept her distracted from the other side of the window as I tied her and got the divider shut. Then we headed out to pick up Juniper. Leeloo was unhappy and pawing the entire trip and continued in a state of  distress the whole time we were picking up Juniper. I hoped having Juniper in the trailer would make her feel better, but she didn’t seem to notice.

Once we got to our house and unloaded I led Leeloo, Hilary led Juniper, and we walked all around the track. Then we put them both in the round pen together. We left Leeloo’s halter on in case we needed to get her out quickly and left Juniper’s grazing muzzle off so she would have all her resources to defend herself if needed, and to remove any additional stressor. The result was that Juniper immediately started gorging on the grass in the middle while Leeloo ran around the edge freaking out. Leeloo would occasionally roll, which was apparently a good sign because rolling, shaking out, and snorting, helps horses release stress hormones; so she was trying to calm herself down, it just wasn’t working. She would run around the edge of the round pen and then go in and herd Juniper around, making her run and switch directions. It was almost identical to what you see trainers do when they first work with a new horse in a round pen. I was too busy watching and stressing out myself to film it; but it was truly fascinating to watch. Eventually Leeloo stopped herding Juniper and let her eat while she paced for a while longer before finally giving up and huddling by that “wall” we had created on one side of the round pen.

After some time of calmness (on Leeloo’s part, Juniper was still busy eating) we decided to take them on another tour of the entire track system and then let them loose in it. I had assumed, since they seemed to have worked out all their issues in the round pen, that there wouldn’t be any more dominance interactions so I put Juniper’s grazing muzzle back on and let them go. However as soon as they were both loose Leeloo would chase after Juniper and Juniper would defended herself, though she always gave way. Eventually Leeloo managed to herd Juniper down to the shelter area and Juniper stood outside the shelter while Leeloo stood in one of the bays with her head in the corner. That is where Leeloo spent the rest of the day. At one point Juniper was over it and headed back up to the round pen area to eat and Leeloo chased after her and tried to herd her back to the shelter but Juniper held her ground and wouldn’t go back, at which point Leeloo gave up and she spent the rest of the daylight hours moping in the shelter while Juniper ate around the round pen.

Saturday morning I went to do chores (I have to do chores every day now – why did I think this was a good idea?!).  They were both separated but calling at each other. Leeloo however was shaking and still seemed very distressed and did not want to leave the shelter area. I walked over to where Juniper was and got her shut into the round pen so I could feed her breakfast. Juniper eats her breakfast very slowly because she gets to have her grazing muzzle off for that and the grass is far more tempting than her breakfast is. Once I had Juniper eating I went over to the shelter area to pick up poop and this time when I walked over to the round pen area Leeloo followed me, and proceeded to pace around the outside of the round pen. Once Juniper was finally done eating I put her grazing muzzle back on and opened the round pen gate. Juniper trotted out and then she and Leeloo acted like they hadn’t spent the whole day together yesterday, with squealing and kicking and being foolish, though no one was hurt. They quit sooner than they had the day before at least and then Leeloo went to pacing in and around the round pen. Eventually she stopped pacing and stayed in the round pen and hid behind the “wall” and just stared at Juniper, who ignored her. Leeloo creeped on Juniper like that for several hours.

Eventually Leeloo left the security of the round pen but she still stuck close to the “wall” just on the other side. Thank you, Marin, for that suggestion!! That “wall” was Leeloo’s refuge for the whole day. As the sun was setting Leeloo herded Juniper over to the shelter area and this time Juniper cooperated and went with her and they both hung out in the shelter, though in respective bays.

In the end I think the move-in plan worked as well as could be hoped. Up to this point Leeloo has always lived with at least other ten horses in, or immediately adjacent to, her paddock so I knew going to just one pony would be a huge change but I hadn’t realized how stressful it would be on her. Leeloo has moved a lot in her past. By the time she was six years old she had lived at seven different boarding facilities and we were moving to her eighth. However, she has been at this last barn for seven years. She had gone from moving, on average, every nine months to staying in one place for seven years.

In many ways I think Leeloo’s experience with this move echoes my own experience when we moved in 2019. All through college and grad school I moved almost every year and it was never a big deal, but then in 2006 we moved into our previous home and stayed there for 13 years. When we moved again in 2019 it was a much bigger shock for me; it was far more disruptive and caused significantly more emotional distress for me than any of the previous moves had. I think Leeloo felt the same about this move.

In addition to going from moving constantly to staying in one place for seven years, Leeloo had also grown up, and in the process became the single most dominant horse of a herd of close to thirty. Going from the unquestioned boss of thirty horses to the boss of one indifferent pony was a huge shock.

Luckily by Sunday morning Leeloo had calmed down enough to actually lay down for a few minutes. She didn’t stay down long, she was clearly trying to get comfortable and just couldn’t, but the fact that she was willing to try at all made me feel better. Then she and Juniper spent the day standing near each other but not engaging with each other. They looked like a couple who had been arguing about something stupid and were giving each other the silent treatment. But at least Leeloo wasn’t shaking or pacing anymore so I’m calling it a win.

We have horses at our house!

The Fence – Part 8 of 8

The Final Fence Post

I headed to LeVahn Brothers with a sample of what I was dealing with (hookup wire and irrigation tubing) and explained what happened (broken string, broken rope, stuck wires) and came home with some wire pulling lube and a better rope.

We were also back to a weekend so Nate could help. It went much faster with two people, one person operating the shop-vac on one end and the other handling the string on the other. We got the string through quickly and tied it to our new rope and got that all the way through. Then we tied the rope to the hookup wire, once again using the staggered approach, rope to ground hookup wire, then further down added the hot hookup wire. Then we lubed up the wire and Nate started pulling on one end while I pushed on the other. Slowly, but steadily, we made progress; though there was definitely a point where it became far more difficult, and it was about the same point where the rope had broken. We actually dug up the trench there to see if something had kinked the tube but from the outside it seemed find so we kept at it. Nate keeps pulling and I keep pushing. Then the rope breaks free from the hook-up wire. **** **** **** **** (This whole putting up a fence saga sure was stretching my vocabulary.)

Try, try, try, try again. Pull the string through, pull the rope through, attach that rope to that hookup wire like someone’s life depends on it; tape is cheap, use the whole roll! Nate pulls, I push, and slowly, so slowly, through it goes. We have the wire through the tube!

Now we need to connect the ground hookup wire to the ground rods and the hot hookup wire to the fence itself. I was smart enough to spray paint one roll of hookup wire blue so that we would know which was the ground line and which was the hot line. The next tricky part was getting one continuous line of hookup wire to connect all three ground rods to the energizer. The directions were very clear; it could not be three separate pieces of hookup wire, it had to be one continuous run of hookup wire. That meant we had to strip the insulation off the middle of the wire. That is not easy to do, and of course the video did not show that part; the wire was already conveniently stripped. Wire strippers are designed to cut the insulation and then you just pull it off the end, but when you are in the middle of the wire you can’t pull it off, you need to basically filet it off; very carefully, without hurting the wire, or yourself. We failed on both counts. The first effort was Nate’s. He did manage to get the insulation off, but not without damaging the wire, and in the end it snapped. **** That meant pulling more hookup wire through, though that turned out to be fine since we needed enough hookup wire to do all three of the hot lines of the fence anyway. The second effort was mine. Almost immediately I managed to stab myself in the finger, right through my work glove (picture if you like pictures of injuries). Luckily it was bleeding a lot so I was pretty sure the risk of infection was low; and somehow, despite having a white shirt on, I only got blood on my pants, the cardboard I was working on, the driveway, and the garage floor – my white shirt is still white! Nate had been using the string trimmer at the time with ear protection on so I hadn’t even tried to get his attention knowing he would be done fairly soon. As he’s opening the door to the mudroom he is asking “How did you spill red paint by your shoes?” Then he sees me with my hand in the air (trying to keep it above my heart to stop the bleeding long enough to wash it) and is like “Oooooohhhhhh, that’s not paint.”

We took a brief break but opted not to seek medical attention and went back out to finish this ****ing fence. I was far more careful this time and managed to get the insulation off without injuring myself or the interior wire! With that we attached the ground hookup wire to the ground rods and attached the hot hookup wire directly to the top line of ElectroBraid. Then we used a short piece of hookup wire to connect the top line of fence to the second from the bottom line of fence, and then another short piece to connect the second from the bottom line to the bottom line. Then another piece of hookup wire to attach the second from the top line of ElectroBraid to the closest ground rod (we opted for a hot/ground system because that was recommended in places where the ground freezes or when there are drought concerns.) Then we had to dig a trench under the fence to lay hookup wire below it to get electricity from one side of the gate to the other (I let Nate dig that trench, 115 feet of trench digging was enough for me – plus you know, the stab wound). One option for that is to just do a single piece of hookup wire that connects all three hot lines on one side to all three hot lines on the other, and then do a second hookup wire to connect the ground line on one side to the ground line on the other; however according to the internet (which is never wrong) the possible issue with that is if something goes wrong with one line of the fence it can affect all of them, whereas if you connect top to top, middle to middle, etc. and something goes wrong with one line, or you need to disconnect one of the lines for some reason, it won’t impact the other lines of fence. We decided to go with the top to top, middle to middle, etc. option. By this point I was an expert at getting wires through tubes and it was only a 12-foot tube to get under the gate and up on each side, so I managed that on my own all in one day!

Once everything was wired on the fence side, we had to get the hookup wires attached to the energizer which was in the garage. This involved drilling two small holes in the side of our garage which neither of us felt super comfortable doing, but we did it. Hopefully we didn’t mess anything up too badly; we used a LOT of silicone sealer.

We used a lot of silicone sealer, we are both paranoid about putting a hole in our wall. The bricks are holding up the end of the irrigation tubing which is folded over to prevent water from running down it. That also didn’t go as well as the directions implied. 

We still need to patch up the drywall on the inside but that is low on my priority list. Wondering why there is so much masking tape? That’s because we don’t know what we’re doing and it took a few tries to get the hookup wire through the wall.

We attached the hot hookup wire to the hot terminal and the ground hookup wire (thank goodness for the blue paint) to the ground terminal and plugged the energizer in. We officially have an electric fence!

I went around with the voltage tester and it seems like we have a decent charge all along the fence. There was some concern because of how far the various parts of the fence are from one another and the house is in between them, but according to the voltage tester everything seems to be working. Also, according to my hand, which got shocked when I went to fasten the gate. We really need better gate closures.

Gate Expectations

Went looking for gates and somehow bought a round pen

Though we got almost everything we needed for our fence from Bluebird fencing we did not get the actual gates. We also wanted to get something to temporarily close off part of one of the shelters so we could use it as a makeshift stall until the barn is built. However, it is temporary (I will get my barn!) and anything 12-feet long, at least 4-feet high, and strong enough to stand up to a horse is going to be expensive so I wanted to get something we could repurpose – something like a 12-foot round pen panel (also called a corral panel) or gate. This meant I was looking for gates for the current track system plus at least two 12-foot corral panels or gates for our temporary stalls.

The issue is that to be horse safe these are inherently large, heavy-duty, gates and therefore not something we can transport in either of our cars. It also means that if you find a place selling good products at decent prices, but they are outside of your state, the freight costs eat up any potential savings. I had been looking at the stores in our area that do sell them, Fleet Farm, Tractor Supply, and Runnings (haven’t been to it yet but I’ve heard good things). Unfortunately, they either don’t deliver, or delivery added an extra $100+ to each gate and their websites were not easy to search or use to compare products. That ridiculously long video from Cashmans also spends time talking about corral panels and he mentions the importance of construction and materials, he also mentions many places don’t say what gauge their metal is, so you have go by the weight of the gate or panel to guess. He was correct in this, except many of the sites I was searching didn’t disclose the weight information either – great. But I kept finding these smaller operations in other states selling quality gates and corral panels for cheaper than the big stores and I felt like there had to be one like that closer to me – and I found one!

Quick side-note, from the beginning of this farce project, I have been contemplating who will be keeping Leeloo company once she is home. During that contemplation it also occurred to me that whoever it is will be new to me and though some people are cool working with new animals out on a trail or in a field I am a cautious person by nature (there is a reason my current Wordle streak is 221 wins but my average guess length is 4.2) and prefer to work in an enclosed area. Ideally one not enclosed by a barrier that will shock me or said animal if we accidently make contact with it. After that first corner post took us an entire day to install I asked Nate how he would feel if we modified the original plan and put a round pen in the center of our track system instead of another electrified fence run. This would save us four corners and two end posts, so we would only have to do 12 more and not 18 more! He was open to the idea and became more open with every corner we installed. This meant as I was searching for gates, I was also kind of low-key searching for round pens as well.

Livestock Panels of MN is located only forty miles from me and sells gates and round pens – perfect! It is a side project for someone with a contact in Texas, every couple of months they get big shipments of corral panels and gates and then sell them out as single items or entire round pens. The best part is they deliver and they are close enough that the delivery fee is super reasonable! However, at that particular moment they only had 10-foot panels and 4-foot wide gates and wouldn’t be getting anything new for at least a month or two and I thought we would have Leeloo home before then – HA! But they did have a 60-foot round-pen package available and the price was really good; I bought it and they delivered it the next day!

We still need gates though….

Fence – Part 3 of ?

Yet Another Fence Post

We did get more efficient at installing the corner posts. If you continue watching that hour long video I mention in Fence – Part 2 there is another clip with more details and tips. Still rather unrealistic though; they show a single person installing a corner post by themselves like it’s no big deal. Getting the proper tools was probably the biggest help as was assembly-lining some of the steps in the shade of the garage. But it wouldn’t be us if there weren’t some snags.

All of the vertical posts and the diagonal brace posts need aluminum inserts that had to be screwed in place with set screws; after the first three corners we decided to do all of that at once in the garage, where it was cooler and less buggy. That was when we started discovering a few additional missing or faulty parts, first it was a missing nut, then two fused together washers, then a faulty insert. By then I was getting concerned and decided to go through every bag of parts to see if we were missing anything else. All total we were missing: one nut, seven set screws (one bag was missing every set screw!), and nine washers (another bag was missing every washer!), plus the faulty insert. I contacted Monica at Bluebird Fencing who was very apologetic and who immediately contacted Geotek and they were great about it and overnighted me every missing piece, and while we were at it we got a new hand-tool hub so we could actually use all four handles! My overall review of Geotek is that their customer service is amazing, but they seriously need to invest in a quality control process or person! They have answered every question we’ve had very quickly and have sent us every missing or malfunctioning part we have notified them of within a day or two, I just wish I hadn’t needed so many things replaced.

Did you see that “we have notified them of” bit? Two of the gate braces had their insert holes drilled facing the wrong way but we didn’t ask to replace them because they still function, we just had to dig a deeper hole to get the wrench down there to tighten the set screws. The other, bigger, issue we haven’t dealt with yet is that one of the horizontal braces has an endcap facing the wrong direction. One endcap needs to face up and the other needs to face down and instead this one is turned only half-way making it unusable. We’re hoping we can fix that ourselves but we haven’t tried yet.

In the end our best time was two and a half corners in a single day, not great, but much better than one a day. Practice helped of course, but so did relaxing the standard on how level the vertical posts needed to be (except the gate posts, we tried hard to get those level) and we stopped being so picky about where the braces ended up on the vertical posts. We made sure one always landed at the eighth hole, which is what the directions said, but we stopped caring if the second one was directly touching it. We did learn a lot and I have some tips for installing this type of corner system; I’m guessing some of this would apply to other types of corner systems as well.

Tips for installing the Geotek Common Sense Fence and Mule System:

  • Check EVERYTHING you get when you get it to make sure nothing is missing or faulty – literally every nut, bolt, washer, etc.
  • Have the proper tools! In this case we needed a needle nose vice grip, two wrenches and one of them absolutely must be a socket wrench (which is my new favorite tool ever), a tape measure, and a level (this wound up being optional for all but the gate posts – time will tell if that was a good choice).
  • Have at least two people, three is even better. If you have loamy soil and you buy longer bolts you might be able to do this by yourself, but if you are working with what they give you or you’re dealing with heavier soil, you need at least two people.
  • Pre-measure and mark the vertical posts for where ground level should be and mark where the target hole is for the diagonal braces.
  • If working with clay soil stop and water it occasionally if it gets too hard to work with; that helped a lot.
  • Stop partway through installing the augers and check for angles. For the vertical post try to get that auger straight down and for the diagonal ones stop intermittently and put the brace on and see where it is lining up with the vertical post. It is easier to correct as you go then after the auger is all the way in the ground.

For anyone interested in installing the Geotek Common Sense Fence and Mule System I did a voice over of that somewhat helpful video clip with our experience compared to the video.  You can watch it on our new Lantern Farm MN YouTube channel. Unfortunately, since both Nate and I had to actually be involved with the installing of our own corners we weren’t able to record our process, but I did take pictures:

Having the right tools makes all the difference!

Putting all the aluminum inserts in at one time sped things up, just make sure you put the metal braces on the diagonal posts first!

Pre-marking ground level makes this step much easier – make sure you can see that mark from every side.

Our handles almost always hit the ground before we got the diagonal auger all the way in so we had to dig a small trench to finish.

We are way too low on our angle for the diagonal post. Getting that angle right is the hardest part of the process.

We needed to clamp the metal braces in order to get the bolt far enough through to also get the washer and nut on it.

We now officially have all the corners up and one end post for each of the two gates. We just need to find, purchase, and install gates; put up the Electrobraid; and then electrify it. How hard can that be?

Fence – Part 2 of ??

There is a general outline that appears to be true about installing any type of tension-based fence.

  1. Decide where the fence is going to go, in particular the location of all the corner, end-posts, and gates.
  2. Install the corners, end-posts, and gate posts.
  3. Put up a line or two of your fencing material and put a minimum amount of tension in it.
  4. Use your line of fencing material to determine where the in-line posts need to go and put them in.
  5. Put up the rest of the fencing material and tension it.
  6. Electrify it.

We finished step one and now need to do step two – install the corners, end-posts, and gate posts.

The directions that came with the fence system remind me of the directions that are in some of the not-so-great textbooks I’ve had to teach out of. They are written by people who know exactly what they are doing to other people who already know exactly what they are doing. They leave the details out, use technical vocabulary that is not defined, have limited visuals, and are super dense. I read and reread and reread the directions referencing and re-referencing the two diagrams they had and still felt like I had no clue how to do this, so I went searching for a video online. There has to be a video online somewhere– right?!  Apparently the answer is: sort-of.

There are a few other companies around the country that sell the Geotek Common Sense Fence and Mule System and one of them is Cashmans in Ohio. Before we purchased the fence I did search around to see if I could get a better price and though some of these places were cheaper, they were all farther away and because these components require freight shipping the additional shipping costs always offset any potential savings. If you are near Ohio Cashmans may be a good choice for you, but they were not for us. I say this because the ONLY video I could find about installing our fence system was part of a longer YouTube video Cashmans’s put out that contains what appears to be various parts of some 1990’s era, VHS quality, video.

I watched the whole video (which was over an hour) and then made Nate re-watch the pertinent parts with me before we went out to install our first corner. The video makes it appear VERY easy.

 

LIES! Or perhaps more accurately these are condition dependent truths and we do not have the required conditions and they skip over ALL the details.

Places where the video did not match our reality or left out some major details:

  • The four-handled hand-tool they use to install the augers that we received was not welded correctly so we could not get the fourth handle in it and were working with a three-handled hand-tool which meant instead of handing it off to each other we each had to take a side and spin around in a circle. If you are picturing something like the dizzy bat game you are not far off. We were a bit more graceful, but not by much.
  • They were clearly working in loamy soil and not the heavy clay we’re dealing with. Getting each of those augers in took forever and we often had to make use of the tip from the shelter anchors and water the hole, which of course meant delays as we let the water soak in.
  • If you want your post to be straight then the anchor needs to go in straight which is easier said than done when two people with different strength stats are trying to screw it in.
  • The diagonal brace needs to line up in just the right spot on the vertical post, which they don’t mention at all. That turned out to be one of our biggest challenges and led to one of our bigger arguments throughout this process. We were trying to get the angle right and we would get it in, put the diagonal brace on, and be way too high or way too low. Then we’d take it off, unscrew the auger, re-screw the auger and invariably over-correct. After what felt like the five millionth time of overcorrecting Nate was getting pretty frustrated and angry and in an effort to help I said “because the brace is so long a small change in angle at this end results in a large change at the other end” in what I felt was a calm and reasonable tone of voice – though apparently calm came off as condescending and Nate thought I was calling him an idiot. We got over that eventually and now “a small change on this end will result in a large change on the other end” is a recurring joke whenever the process gets frustrating and one of us is getting mad.
  • Securing the diagonal brace to the vertical brace is MUCH harder than they show. Even once you have the diagonal brace in the right spot the company either changed the brace clamps or switched to shorter bolts because we could not get the bolt through the brace clamp enough to fit the washer and the nut on without having to clamp the brace itself. Of course our vice grip was too wide and trying to fit it on the brace and leave room for the washer and space to turn the nut was an extreme challenge. There was a LOT of swearing for that very first corner and then another trip to LeVahn Brothers hardware (I truly love them!) to get a needle nose vice grip which worked much better.
  • Needing to have the vertical post level-ish, at the right height, and with the pre-drilled holes aimed the correct direction was also not mentioned at all and was also a challenge. Particularly because for almost every corner post the holes were not drilled in straight through the post but slightly off to one side or in some cases not straight down the length of the post. It wasn’t till an argument at the second corner that we realized this. Nate was on one side insisting it was aimed correctly and I was on the other side insisting he had lost his mind because they were not even remotely aimed correctly only to realize we were both correct because the holes don’t go through straight.
  • The video shows them doing the four-foot corners which don’t require a horizontal brace but the five-foot corners we have require a horizontal brace. Getting that to line up correctly with everything is also a challenge.
  • The insulators do not go in that easy! It probably has to do with the holes not being drilled straight through the posts so the angles are off just enough to make the bolts catch. In one case it took me over 45 minutes to put in a single insulator! 

But other than that – simple and easy. And they really aren’t going anywhere. It took us an entire day just to get that first corner in, after which Nate declared we’re just buying new fence once we get the barn built and we’re never moving this one.

 

Now we just need to do 18 more!