Near Miss

Lately I have found that when I am around the horses my brain starts to become so relaxed that it goes off in to some la-la land and I am not even really paying attention to anything at all...which might not be such a good idea sometimes when moving around 1000 lb horses.

Today when I drove up I noticed that the electric wire was not across the top of the gate as usual.  I was kind of glad, just one less thing to deal with.

 Nevel was EVIL to Falcon- reached out and took a humongous bite out of him when I went to get him from the pasture.  Falcon looked stunned and ran away from me, so I ran Nevel off.  Bad behavior does NOT get rewarded with getting supper!

Nevel stood there with a "I didn't do NUTHIN" look on his face.  All of the horses were kind of nipping at each other and flattening their ears-BAD MOOD DAY I guess.

As I was leading Nevel out I saw the sun glint on a piece of wire on the ground AND the wire was moving!

"OH CRUD!!!"  I thought it was attached to him, but it wasn't.  He always yanks on me to get to his food, but not before I saw the wire move again and noticed that it was attached to Ziggy!  Ziggy is an endurance horse.

TUG TUG....aghhha NEVEL!!! STOP IT!

I grabbed his food pan and tied him to a tree and immediately called the barn owner about the problem.  The pasture is a good way down the lane from the barn.  ALAS she was out of town and asked me to see if I could get the wire off.

That was my plan, but I was looking for help...and didn't have B's # in my phone.  To make matters worse, Ziggy did not want to be caught and was dragging the wire around...this was a LONG piece of hot wire, maybe 20 feet or more.  I don't know, but my brain certainly wasn't in a relaxed state anymore.

After a few minutes I caught Ziggy and held him still pondering what to do next since every time I went towards his back foot he would pick it up and kick out somewhat.  Just then C came walking down the lane.  He had just received a text from T about the problem, but he had just been coming to get Ziggy for a hoof trimming...and didn't realize at first there was a potential emergency.

I held Ziggy while C easily got the wire off.  It was only wrapped around partially once, but looked tighter.  I did have wire cutters in my car had that not been the case.

It was indeed a near miss and could have been a much bigger problem for Ziggy and the other horses.
The gate wire was hooked over to the side fence, so we did not know where the wire had come from.  C went off for a walk around the pasture to look while Falcon and Nevel got their "grass walk."