There’s little doubt that your horse knows exactly when you are in a rush, and how to make life as
The 10 commandments of electric fencing
Oh electric fencing, so useful yet so infuriating. These 10 commandments may well sound familiar...
Oh electric fencing, so useful yet so infuriating. These 10 commandments may well sound familiar...
1. Do not covet thy neighbour’s electric fence, with its pristine posts and perfectly straight tape without a knot to be seen, for he shall soon learn.
2. However carefully thou coil the electric tape, thou shall find it in what is technically known as a “bugger’s muddle” when thou come to use it again.
3. Should ye try to build a fence with two strands of tape, however hard ye try, ye shall not achieve tautness in both strands. One shall forever sag.
4. However careful ye shall be in disconnecting the power supply, there shall come a time when ye will get a shock. And it will not be pleasant.
5. Thou shalt always forget the pain of coiling the tape and running it through thine hands, until those spiky metal bits inside make their presence felt.
6. Blessed is he whose post spikes do not somehow bend themselves at 90-degree angles while in the ground, so they can’t then be used anywhere else, for he is truly rare.
7. Whenever ye maketh an attempt to create a fence, the ground into which ye will try to stick thine posts will be in one of two conditions: too hard or too wet.
8. Do not be fooled by thy horse’s innocent face and the fact he pretends not to approach when thou disconnecteth thy battery to charge it. He himself will charge as soon as the power is off and thine back is turned. Straight through the fence.
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9. However many posts you have, and however long be your electric tape, you will have just too few of the former and just too short of the latter to make the fence thy desired length.
10. At some point in all horses’ lives will come the moment of realisation: that with a thick rug on, it matters not whether the fence is electrified as they can walk straight through it anyway. So all the above points are academic, anyway.
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