Bugsy aka Houdini

Diary

Posted: Thursday 15 November, 2012

by Rosemary at 8:25pm in Equines 1 comment Comments closed

When we built the Paddock Paradise, we used two lines of electric wire to form the outside track. This worked fine keeping the ponies on the track but because we run sheep in the field, I felt that the bottom wire was taking a bit of a hammering as they pushed under it.

A couple of weeks ago, we took the top line off and moved the bottom line up to the mid-point between the two original lines. Now, I was pretty sure that it was too low for Bugsy to go under and too high for Smokey and Sheba to go over. Well, I was half right. The big ponies were fine, but Bugsy let himself onto the grass at will.

Not good for a potentially fat and laminitic Shetland. Whether he could get under it without touching it or whether he was prepared to take a shock in order to get at the grass, I don’t know. He wouldn’t do it when he was being watched – we all spent time watching him, watching us watching him.

So a week later, Dan and I went round the fence putting it back to the two original lines. Unfortunately, I had left the top line in a heap in the feed store, with the good intention of sorting in out but hadn’t. What a job untangling it!

Electric fence spaghetti!

Dan was an absolute star – I’d have ended up cutting it in frustration. Still, it got done but the half-hour job took closer to three hours.

The funny thing was Bugsy. When we started the job, he was following us round, getting a scratch and playing with the line. As we were half way up the second side of three, he suddenly realised what we were doing. I swear I saw him look at the two new strands, try to reach underneath and realise he was going to be shut out. Honestly, his face! He went off at a fast trot round the track, bucking and prancing. Needless to say, he didn’t come back to us for petting. The game’s up, Bug!