Farm Fresh Blog

Wednesday, October 20 2010

Many of you may recall Briar's first experience with electricity. It wasn't pretty. She cried. I cried. We were both hysterical. But that was last spring, when the ground was wet, and Briar was younger. (I'm not sure why I thought anything would change in a few months . . .)

But the sheep have overgrazed some areas and it's time to pen them up with the goats and the ponies while the pastures recover and the rye grass takes root. This worked well for about 45 minutes. Briar puttered around, checking out her digs while I went back to the house. Then I heard the screams.

It started in the distance, like the whine of a locomotive. As it grew closer, a large white freight train roared into sight. I was on the back porch with Ranger when he leaped the fence to go help Briar. At the same time, Briar was climbing out of the pasture - and raking her back along the hot wire strand. The screams reached a new octave, and the freight train launched into overdrive.

She passed Ranger like a jet taking off the runway as she leaped into the back yard. The other dogs and I watched in open-mouth disbelief as a 747 squeezed through the doggy door and into the house. I went inside to find a quivering mass of jelly hiding in the hallway. Ranger scurried in with me to make sure she was okay. Briar was definitely NOT okay.

An hour later she was still huddled on a sheep skin in my office. Oh well . . . like oil & water, I guess Briar and hotwire won't ever mix.

"But I don't WANNA go back in there!"

Posted by: forensicfarmgirl AT 01:36 pm | Permalink | 7 Comments | Email

Comments:

Poor little, I mean big, sweetie! I wish I could give her a big hug!

Posted by Lynn on 10/20/2010 - 04:24 PM

Poor,sweet Briar!!! I hope she gets over it, so she can go back to work. I'm glad you were home so you knew what happened. If it had happened when you were away, you might never have figured out what had her so spooked.

Posted by CeeCee on 10/20/2010 - 07:14 PM

Ah well at least you now have a fence trained LGD if she will ever go back out there, I feel for her. Was leaning on a wooden part of my now long defunct electric set up yacking to a neighbour when I moved in the wrong direction and was caught on my ample front end. !!! ouch.

Posted by Liz (Vic Aust.) on 10/21/2010 - 01:50 AM

That's the problem! She is terrified of going back in there! We've compromised by allowing her to guard them from the "outside" of that paddock! (what a silly dog!)

Posted by forensicfarmgirl on 10/21/2010 - 06:33 PM

Poor Briar - she is so big that it is easy to forget she is still really just a big puppy! Is she a year old yet? I bet if something got "inside" the paddock with her sheep, her instincts would kick in and she would risk the hotwire to protect her flock!

Posted by Janie on 10/22/2010 - 07:48 PM

It sounds as if she needs to be trained to hot wire. I would try putting a hot wire up with flagging strips on every section (white rags work very well) about a yard INSIDE OF a standard fenced area so that she would have a visual cue to learn. If you do 2 or 3 wires she will have less chance to break through. You do not want her to learn to bust through hot wires every time. Some folks also put about 6 inches of light chain dangling from the collar to increase the surety of the shock with any approach. It sounds mean but helping her to learn safety around shock fences is necessary. Best of luck to both of you.

Posted by CarolG. on 10/23/2010 - 12:13 PM

Unfortunately she has ALREADY learned to panic and run through hotwire. Fortunately there is just a small area in hotwire so we can work around it most of the time and it's not a big issue.

Posted by forensicfarmgirl on 10/24/2010 - 04:06 PM