I got home while it was still light today so I decided to send the horses outside for a bit. Spirit goes out first and was grumpy about the mud but decided he could live with it. I turned Prize out and she went off full speed through the pasture like normal – except that today for the first time in the five years that we’ve lived here she ran right through the back fence.

I kept my voice calm and called her. She had stopped and was looking back at me. I asked her why she ran through the fence. The look on her face clearly conveyed that she had no idea. I walked through the pasture, petting Spirit on the way who was ignoring Prize’s antics, and put a halter on her. She didn’t seem to break any wires. She just knocked them all off the insulators. So I gathered all the wires and stood on them and asked her to step over them so she’d be back in the pasture.

Here’s where the Murphy’s Law of Horses comes in. She can go through a standing fence with no problem but somehow when stepping over wires on the ground she did something so she ended up facing 180 degrees away from the direction she was heading with wires wrapped around all four feet. She really is a very good girl though. I told her to stand and dropped the lead rope so I could get to her feet. Then I picked up each foot in turn and unwrapped it. I put each foot down in a safe spot and told her not to move them until I was all done or she’d get tangled again. She didn’t move a muscle. Then I asked her to pivot away from the wires and then step her back feet away. No problems.

Through all this Spirit totally ignored us. I walked them both to the gate since now that the fence is down they can’t stay out. Prize gets put back in her stall and I go back outside to make Spirit come in. He wandered in and walked to her stall and pinned his ears at her. The message was clear, “It’s your fault that we had to come in!” I let them out in the arena for a while and he seemed to feel a bit better.