"Cause nothing is worse than a missing animal." Those words from my previous post couldn't ring more true. There truly is nothing more frightening then waking up and finding one of your livestock animals gone. Vanished nowhere to be seen. The other morning this scenario happened exactly to me. Farm Girl had just brought her horse, Chase, back home and was enjoying riding him out in the open pasture but at the end of the day we didn't have a stall or pen to lock him up in. Heck, the horse's pasture hasn't even been fenced yet.
But Farm Girl assured me that Chase was so fully trained to the electrical wire that he refused to cross any rope resembling it including twine. And she's right. I've seen it and used it to my advantage before Even if the rope or line were lying on the ground, Chase would refuse to cross it.
But that day, something didn't feel right. You know when your gut is trying to tell you something is wrong or impending? That was how I felt. Chase was new to the farm and surroundings and seemed awfully interested in the horses he could hear down the road at a neighbour's farm. I even noticed he was eating grass directly beneath the rope line, touching it several times. I told Farm Girl she should turn it on and give him a couple good shocks to refresh his memory just in case he had any crazy ideas of escaping.
She brushed me off declaring, "Mom, it's Chase!! He isn't going anywhere." And he didn't for the first two days that she kept him contained in the rope enclosure. Reason enough for Oldest to back up her sister and say, "When I got home late the other night, he was content and just grazing. You are being paranoid." Oh I am known to be overly cautious according to my kids. I worry too much they say. I say I have reason to be.
The girls left me that night with Chase in his rope enclosure to stay at their father's place for the weekend with reassurance everything would be fine. At 3:30 in the morning I woke to the sound of the Samson and Delilah barking their heads off frantically. I headed out in the dark only to find Delilah outside the sheep holding pen. That was unusual as she is not a jumper. Samson is however but I keep him tied to a tire to prevent him from doing so. Not sure how she escaped, I brought her into the house for the rest of the night to prevent any more escapes. I did not check on Chase. Or so much as glance in his direction. I completely forgot about his presence.
An hour later at 4:30 I was woken once again by Samson barking wildly. Wildlife is plentiful around here so I waited a bit to see if he scared whatever it was away, however when he failed to stop barking I got up and looked out my window. Dawn was just lighting the evening sky and I could see Sam barkng out toward the road, not the woods. That was when I glanced toward Chase's "pen" and noticed not only was it missing (the rope) but Chase as well.
Cussing profusely I grabbed a sweatshirt and coat and ran outside. It was light enough to see about a yard ahead of me but not in the distance. I squinted against the darkness nevertheless scanning the horizon and property. Chase is a dark horse and chances of spotting in the early dawn was next to impossible. I prayed I'd find him hanging out near the sheep pen where the miniature horses are kept but he wasn't there. He was nowhere to be seen. Gone. Vanished.
The downside to having such a large property is that he could be anywhere. I wondered if he could have headed into the woods or perhaps simply grazing along the property line. It was fenced along the western and eastern line of the property while the south side was semi-fenced. If he had gone in that direction, there was a very good chance he could have gotten cut up or injured in the fence. I stopped my train of thoughts and froze. The horse farm. He was so focused on it the night before. The grass in the pasture was tall as I plowed my way through it soaking the front of my pajama pants. I searched for the missing rope enclosure hoping it would lead a path to where he had gone. I didn't find any. I reached the far end of the pasture with no sign of Chase or the pen and hit the pavement and road and started walking toward the direction of the horse farm.
In the silence of the night, I heard calling. And then crying. The Boy had woken and found me missing as well as the horse and feared something horrible had happened. I knew I had to respond to him but had to reach the horse farm first to find my missing horse. It was still too dark but I reached the corner of their pasture and first quickly glanced to see if any fences were taken down. Then God there were not. I could make out some horses in the distance on the horizon but certainly couldn't identify whether one was my missing horse. Stupidly I did the only thing I could with a child screaming frantically in the distance, I called out Chase's name hoping he would come trotting up to me like an obedient dog.
Of course that produced no results so with the fear of my crying child waking the neighbours, I headed back home. When I was within earshot I called back to him, assuring him I was fine. He begged me to come back home and since there really wasn't anything more I could do until the sun fully rose, I obliged and headed for my laneway. That was when I saw the rope lying in the driveway, stretched out like a pointing finger toward the entranceway. At least I now knew he had not gone through any fences and made it safely off the property. Where to was still a mystery.
It was time to call FarmGirl. Just as I was waiting to leave her a message, a vehicle pulled into my farm. I knew why he was there. As he stepped outside his vehicle, I asked, "Did you inherit an extra horse this morning." He laughed (thanfully) and said, "Was wondering if he came from here. He's been hanging around my stallions pen. I worried one of my own horse's got loose." Yes, I knew exactly how he felt. He drove me and the Boy over to his farm to collect my horse. As I clipped his lead to his halter I automatically mumbled, "You naughty boy, Chase." The farmer and his wife who was also woken both laughed and said, "How appropriate is that name!"
I walked Chase home without incident and locked him up in the sheep's holding pen where he stayed all day long until Farm Girl arrived later that night with trailer to bring him back to her father's farm where a barn with plenty of empty horse stalls waited. Lesson learned: (1) Don't bring horse home until his pasture is ready. (2) Make sure all perimeter fencing is in place. (3) Add a laneway gate to prevent any more escapes.
