| I saw a thing on the TV the other day where
they were interviewing people on the street asking them “What do women
want?”. Most of the interviewees answered stuff like “Diamonds”,
“...to marry a rich man...” - but strangely none of them included
“metal and wood fence posts, large rolls of electric hot tape, green metal gates, horse
shelters, galvanised horse feeders”, etc. I couldn't tell you where the
nearest jewelry shop is to my house, but can name eight feed/hardware
stores within a ten mile radius, together with their price for 7'
t-posts. Hmmm.
Anyway, this year, in the spirit of festiveness, Patrick was a sweetie and bought me my heart’s desire - a 12' x 12' metal pipe shelter for the horses. It was delivered earlier in the week, but seeing as Patrick was “indisposed”, we didn’t manage to erect it until today (and even then, pft had to come indoors and sit quietly afterwards. Actually, he didn’t sit quietly, he lay on the sofa and demanded hot dogs, orange juice, coffee and chocolate [the “Sofa Diet”] - but who was I to refuse?) . |
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pft ready to do battle. To avoid whacking his poorly leg, he bandaged some m/c body armour around his shin. |
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The virgin shelter area. This is about the only flat spot in the whole paddock, so it seemed like a good choice. |
| I took the horses out and stuck them on the high-tie on the front lawn while we did the tricky erecting parts - didn't want anything collapsing on them by mistake when it was balanced. Instead they managed to clamber up the bank in a naughty manner and tie knots in their lead ropes. Remember that scene in 101 Dalmations where the two dogs entangle their leads? That was them. | |
 Provo after being returned to the paddock. He doesn't look convinced by the spiffy new shelter. |
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But of course they were *very* helpful, because pft was *bound* to need a hand... |
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You can see how impressed Provo is, can't you? pft is trying to get the two roof panels lined up, which mostly involves whacking them with a rubber mallet. |
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Hmmm. |
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Pound it... |
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...and they will run. |
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Sometimes. |
 Compare this picture of
“before”
( taken only a few short weeks ago) and “after” :( |
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As one friend put it, “Goodbye grassy meadow, hello mud pit”. |
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Once the mud dries out nicely [if that ever happens], the idea is to fill the inside of the shelter with Cedar Rest, and, eventually, fence the area between the shelter over towards the green water bucket and the fence you can see opposite to make a “foul weather run”. Then I can also fill that with Cedar Rest and shut Their Orangenesses in there when the weather is digusting and thereby eliminate slop from our lives. Yay! This is my secret plan and involves the purchase of a very large number of bags of Cedar Rest, so it may not happen until next winter. We'll see. |
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One of the things I really like about the shelter set-up, is the gate in
the back can be opened and closed to make a variety of paddock + shelter
arrangements.
The three choices will be:
In its standard position, we'll keep the gate wide open against the panel wall, so that it is out of the way. Here the gate is shut, and the horses would be contained within their “Anti-Slop Run”. |
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Here, the gate is open against the green gate post to give access to the Middle Paddock (over the fence on the left... except I haven't fenced this one yet, so it doesn't quite work). |
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Mouse doesn't like anything to cut into her busy eating schedule. |
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The roof was the trickiest bit because it was so damn heavy. I was convinced we'd manage to drop it on one of our heads, but in fact it went up uneventfully. It is 8' high. |
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Of course, we all know that pft is clueless and would be completely unable to do anything without the help of certain “Know It Alls”. |
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Inspecting pft's work. Yes, this horse is really white, honest. |
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They like it! They like it! |
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So a few days later, I was the lucky winner who got to dig the two 2'6" deep holes for gate posts to reroute part of the fence alongside the new shelter. I thought “it won't take long - it's only a few feet of fencing”. <Sigh>. I'd forgotten that what takes the time is attaching the wire at either end... these two puny stretches of wire took ALL day. |
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But this reroute is much better and means we can now feed through the bars of the shelter and pat them pones without ever having to set foot inside the paddock (a definite plus when it is Slop City in there). |
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What we see now when we look out of our living room window. Yay! |
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Totally irrelevant, but this was me on Christmas Day, just before pft gave me a haircut. My hair doesn't grow super long - but this is the longest it has been in a while. Getting a haircut was about the only activity I managed on Christmas Day and it was a very fine thing. <grin> |
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| Turn your back for three seconds and look what they did to the poor oak trees! They are now safely wrapped in chicken wire to prevent further investigation with teeth. Thank goodness they hadn't ringed them, so I'm hoping the trees won't die. Bad ponies! | |
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Mousie n' me on the nice new horse-tie-er-upperer. I tied Provo to this yesterday and he immediately showed me a flaw in the design by getting his lead rope wrapped around the end I'm sitting on, and trussing himself up like a chicken in a manner that makes horses panic. So tomorrow - maybe - I'm going to cut the piece of wood leaning up against the end and chamfer each end and attach it to the sticky-out end, to make this impossible. Hopefully, because it's at an angle, they won't get the lead rope caught around it. And pigs might fly. |
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Mouse being a good girl on the horse-tie-er-upperer. |
