Escaping Horses

Its that time of year when the pasture starts looking a little weak and across the fence there is still lush green fall grass.  Its tempting and I can understand why the horses believe the grass truly is greener on the other side.  Golly has turned out to be the great escape artist.   For three days in a row I showed up to feed and found this...

Yup... this is Golly loose as can be and enjoying the green grass.  The perplexing thing was that the other two horses were still safely ensconced behind the fence.  If he knocked down a fence (and he does that occasionally with his bulldozer body), why didn't the other horses follow?

I wasn't too worried because I let him loose frequently and he never leaves the yard.   In fact, when he saw my truck drive up to the barn, he came trotting up to see what else I could offer his palate.

Since there are three individual paddocks, we shut off the one with the low fence that we thought he may be jumping.  Nope.. next day he was out again.  So began the fence walk.  I found a fence in the back where the lower line had come loose.  Sure enough on the other side were LOTS of footprints.  So many that I think he's been using this route longer than we thought and maybe even returning before we noticed.   He didn't actually knock down the fence but must have been ducking low underneath it somehow.    How sneaky!  Its hard to see in my awful photography the footprints but they are there.

 

So I fixed the fence and thought I had it.  Nope..... within an hour or two of putting him back in the pasture, he was out AGAIN!!   Well he had ruined the fun for everyone with his antics -- I closed off all the paddocks and confined them to just the sacrifice one.   This seemed to work.  When I showed up to feed all three horses were behind the fence!   I live about a half mile from the barn and as I pulled into my driveway after feeding, my cell phone rang to let me know all three horses were loose!  How could that be?   I was JUST there.  But yup.... the neighbor confirmed that there was a brown one, a black one and a white one running loose. 

I rushed back to find three horses running down the driveway towards another neighbor's horses.  Not mine though.   Yes... the right colors but not mine at all.  After gathering grain and leads to catch the fugitives, I collected them into my neighbors empty paddock and went knocking on doors to find the owners.

Seemed that breaking free was a problem not just in our yard.

I was still perplexed over one thing though.   If Golly was getting out and enjoying the lawn all day, how come there weren't piles of manure scattered around the lawn?   He's a big horse and well....   he has big piles.  I think we'd see them!

Today I found that my horse is either immensely neat or immensely sneaky.   When dumping the stall manure at the compost pile which is set into the woods, I found several piles of manure near but not in the compost pile.  That darn sneaky horse had been walking to the compost pile to hide the evidence of his droppings!  Not sure if I should be annoyed with him or impressed!

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