Escape Artists and All Heck Breaks Loose

One day no excitement and the next all heck breaks loose! Those darn ponies do stir up the pot around here.

I moved the pony pasture to right in front of their pen. So the only thing I had to do in the morning was open the gate. I didn’t have to put halters on and lead them anywhere. I thought it was perfect. Except when I opened the gate Skippy was all riled up and kept charging the fence. I figured he’d settle down. He has in the past, although he doesn’t like that spot where I put him out to pasture.

I didn’t think much of it and went on to feed Maverick and headed in to work. At 2:30pm I got a phone call from Mike saying he was finally getting back to Madison after picking up the ponies. WHAT?!?!?!

It seems the ponies decided to make a break for it. Of course, you KNOW who the culprit was.. .guesses anyone? Darn brown and white pony.

Mike got a call from our farmer friend. Our farmer friend was out delivering mail when he stopped at a neighbor’s to drop off mail and they asked if he knew anyone that had horses. Ed knew right away to call Mike. That was at noon. It’s sad. We are THOSE people who always have loose horses running around.

Apparently a neighbor saw them running and was able to corner them and bring them back to their place. As they said, it was a rodeo earlier in the morning. They were out rounding up cattle and saw Tommy and Skippy running around. Unfortunately they were 4-5 miles away from Borderlands to the west. That meant those darn ponies crossed Hwy 19. Luckily it was during the middle of the morning when that road is normally deserted. I was completely sick! The neighbors had to corral the ponies and herd them back to their place. Luckily they had a herd dog that I think did most of the work.

So after Mike got the call, since he was in Madison, he went and got Dad. They flew down to Borderlands, hooked the truck up, and headed over to the neighbors. The ponies could have stayed but Mike and I both prefer to not leave our animals out where someone else has to deal with them.

So two and a half hours after that initial call, Dad and Mike are back to their normal routine. I’m seriously sick over it. Now what am I going to do with those darn ponies.

And today added to the excitement. We had a storm blow through last night and I’m sure that’s what caused most of the problems. I was running late anyway so was hurrying to go feed Maverick. I opened the door to the hay shed and low and behold who should be standing there munching on alfalfa but Queen.

Now how could a 30+ year old mare break out of 6ft high corral panels. I knew she couldn’t jump, she’s arthritic in almost every joint! I herded her away from the alfalfa and discovered that when I put the corral panels up that the one next to the red shed wasn’t really touching the ground. With all the wind, and possibly the mares bumping in to it all the time, the panel just swung open.

Luckily Queen didn’t take Babe with her. Nothing like having a loose BLIND HORSE running around! I was able to muscle around the now floppy corral panel and hopefully got it wedged back so that it won’t flop open again. I really need to get that alfalfa put away!

But once I get Queen back in the pen, and hear Babe on the other side of the pen, I turned around and there was yet another problem to be fixed!

The pen Maverick is in has a bunch of tin bolted to the fence as a wind break. One piece had already blown half way off a little while ago but Maverick wasn’t pushing on that fence. I guess because that piece was half off the other piece wasn’t protected. With all the wind we had, that piece flew off. Luckily it didn’t hit Maverick or even spook him for that matter.

What makes matters worse, Maverick is a fence pusher. He has no respect for fences. So I was surprised that he wasn’t in with the big herd. The only problem with him being in the big herd is that the big dry lot needs to have the fence repaired too! If he’s supervised an introduction would be fine but an unsupervised introduction would be terrible.

So there I was in my pjs and tinglies trying to muscle around this piece of tin IN THE MUD! Not to mention the tin is about 16 feet long by 4 feet wide. Ok, stop laughing. I’m sure I was a sight to see. I flopped the piece of tin up against the fence so that hopefully it’ll deter Maverick from pushing. But I don’t have much hope that it will. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that everything is as I left it this morning.

Least to say, the past 24 hours have NOT been dull. I guess next time I’ll knock on wood when I say there hasn’t been much exciting going on. I’m ready to go back to dullville at Borderlands.