Gates Gates Gates, Close the Darn Gate!

Well how many of you have gotten up in the morning , poured a cuppa coffee and looked out the window and saw a herd of horses wandering around the yard? Well I have to say it has happened to me once or twice. Well ok, maybe a few more times than that but surely not more than a dozen or two? I try to be very careful about closing and locking the gates but something happens to me when I go into a horse pen. I get distracted by the soft noses and the big eyes and then I tend to look over the fence and see more soft noses and big eyes watching me so I walk over to them and forget that I left the gate unlocked. I have full intentions of going back the way I came in but somehow that never seems to happen! I blame it all on the morgans and their winning ways, I’m sure they do it on purpose just to get me in trouble!

Now mostly I can get away with this but in the last several years I have had one really smart morgan that has been watching me and discovered that after I come in the pen she could push the gate and it would open. Now Sadie has learned to be sneaky about this talent of hers and she usually waits until I am out of sight and then she opens the gate. I have also heard her testing the gates when I am not around and when I hear the chain rattle and have looked over I see her playing with it. Now it wouldn’t be so bad if Sadie just pushed the gate and walked through as then it would swing back and close but NO, she has to make sure she pushes it hard enough to swing open so her friends can come out and play as well!

Sadie is a sweet mare and is easy to catch and return to the pen and she never leaves the yard so it really isn’t a big deal to me. However hubby has a dim view of horses wandering around the yard and he always gets so testy about when he happens to be the one to discover the loose herd. For example I had gotten up early the other day (Feb 20, 2003) and had been enjoying the quiet early morning having my coffee and reading my email. About an hour later hubby got up and looked out the window and ruined the quiet morning yelling about all the horses being out and immediately throwing accusations at me about leaving the gate open!! Well really what proof did he have that it was me? Maybe the dug a hole and went under the fence or a tree fell on the fence and broke it, had he considered that? Could he even see the gate from the window? No he can’t, so he just assumed I left the gate open again (of course he was right but he might have given me the benefit of the doubt until we found the open gate) .

I calmly walk over to the kitchen window and saw a couple of big horses having a snooze in the straw pile in front of Boogie’s pen (turns out to be Sadie and CC). Another mare was beside Boogie’s pen and just relaxing (that would be Sailor). And I saw a couple of weanlings wandering around so I figured it must be Jack and Maggie. I could see the butt of one horse standing half in and half out of the barn as well. Now to me this was a scene of quiet beauty. The sun hadn’t come up yet but it was starting to lighten a bit. The snow was making the horses stand out (they are black horses after all). The horses looked content (I mean 2 of them were laying down for goodness sake!). I just didn’t understand why hubby couldn’t see the beauty of it?? He was continuing to bemoan the fact that he had just gotten up and hadn’t had any coffee yet and now he had to go out and catch them and it was -30!!. Well yes dear I recall from past “roundups” how much of a help you are. I mean he does stand in one of the driveways with his arms out so none of the wild running horses will go that way and I’m sure that really helps. Well without going into all the details lets just say that I went out by myself and led them in with just a rope around the neck and had them all back in the pen and was starting to do the morning chores before hubby came outside 10 minutes later (after having a cup of coffee)

Of course over the years I have sometime found them out back in our fields and then have to listen to hubby ranting about how we will never catch them and why did I have to leave the gate open (he really is stuck on that gate thing and is always bringing it up when they get out). I keep telling him all you have to do is grab a bucket of oats, rattle it and shout and presto all the horses coming running for the feed. You just open the gate and walk in the pen and start pouring out the oats and they will all come in, no problem. I know this works as I have done exactly that many times!

I remember one time Boogie and the gals were out in the wheat field in the late fall (this was after combining) and were just having fun hanging out. I drove the pickup out looking for them as when I had come out early that morning and saw no horses in the yard or in the pen so I figured I better drive around and see just where they went. I decided I shouldn’t bother waking up hubby as he worked really hard the day before combining and really should get the chance to sleep in (just being a considerate wife of course).

I headed out back first as I figured that would be the logical place for them to go and sure enough they were there. I drove up to Boogie, got out of the truck and put the halter and lunge line on him and starting driving the truck back to the yard with him outside the door. Of course his gals weren’t going to be left behind and they followed us back. I led him in the pen and they all followed him in. I shut the gate and parked the truck and pretended that nothing had happened. I got lucky that time and hubby never did find out about that particular incident.

I should also mention that I live on a farm in a very rural area and our road has very little traffic on it and most days if 4 or 5 cars go by that is a busy day. In the fall and spring the big machinery does go by but I figure if the horses are out on the road they would be able to get out of the way anyway as the tractors don’t go that fast anyway. We have 2 driveways into our yard and mostly the horses circle around going in one driveway and out the other and they do this a couple of times and then either settle down to eat the hay or just go visiting the horses in the other pens. I would rather they stayed in their pens but when they do manage to sneak out I know they are not going anywhere. I guess this is why I’m pretty calm about them getting out. In my experience they have only gone visiting the neighbors a couple of times and that was more than 10 years ago when I had fewer horses and they were all in the same pen. Now with horses in different pens they like to stay and visit here rather than leaving. So I have to ask what is the big deal?