My beautiful four-legged wood chewer finally put too much pressure on the fence and broke the top board. It’s not entirely her fault. This a section of fence where we often stand and pet them and show them off to friends. Horse treats are often dispersed here so they’ve gotten into the habit of leaning into the fence. Very cold weather is coming tonight (wind chill below zero) and this is just when our horses would decide to jump this section of fence and tour the neighborhood. Time for some fence-mending. Here’s what I learned about fence-mending today:

1. Horses are very curious creatures
2. Horses think almost anything can be food, including hammers, drills, nails (yikes!), fence wood and of course fingers
3. It’s hard to use a hammer when horse nostrils are 2 inches from the handle
4. Although fence-mending would be easier with two people, it would be much easier with three. Think rodeo clown.
5. If you need to step away to get another tool, you must remove all other tools, nails, screws and wood supplies from the area before leaving.

Fortunately, I had a spare fence board that was just the right length. This time I used screws instead of nails. Screws are less likely to walk out and injure the horses, in my opinion, and aren’t that much more expensive. I also decided to use part of the broken board as a center support. I’m seeing this center support idea in a lot of horse fencing and it makes sense to me. These are 10-foot sections and tend to bow eventually in the middle. The center section will help strengthen the center section, which is especially important on this particular section of horse fence in our pasture.

We’ve been fence-mending a few times now. Here are our other posts about mending fences:

More Fence Mending (2/07)
Mending Horse Fences – Update (5/07)