Safe And Secure Fencing

Sandra had installed her fencing in good faith, on the advice of experts – yet in only weeks, one of her horses had been seriously injured. Would another kind of barrier have been any safer? It seems everyone’s got at least one fencing horror story”andra had installed her fencing in good faith, on the advice of experts – yet in only weeks, one of her horses had been seriously injured. Would another kind of barrier have been any”ndra had installed her fencing in good faith, on the advice of experts – yet in only weeks, one of her horses had bee”dra had installed her fencing in good faith, on the adv
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As I turned into the driveway to my friend’s barn one afternoon, our veterinarian’s truck was just pulling out. I waved at her in passing, but I was thinking, "uh-oh." Sure enough, when I peeked into the barn, there stood her most recent patient, still half-tranquilized and looking decidedly dejected in his stall. Poor Christopher, a gregarious three-year-old, Thoroughbred/Belgian cross gelding. He was bandaged from hoof to hock. Earlier that morning (as his owner Sandra told the tale), he’d had a tangle with the brand-new, high-tensile wire fence, snagging a hoof and eventually sitting down in the fence line while struggling to free himself. In the process, he’d sliced his hock in several places, almost to the bone. Now his leg was a maze of stitches, the edema was swelling the joint to tree-trunk proportions, and he was looking at a six-month recuperation period. And the fence was a mess, with blood spattered liberally in the snow beneath

The moral: just about any fence is safe…until it isn’t. This scenario has been repeated with just about any type of fencing you can imagine, although some have proved safer than others for horses.

Sandra had installed her fencing in good faith, on the advice of "experts" – yet in only weeks, one of her horses had been seriously injured. Would another kind of barrier have been any safer? It seems everyone’s got at least one fencing horror story to tell, and with all the different types of fence now available, sorting out the options can be a daunting task

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Written by:

Karen Briggs is the author of six books, including the recently updated Understanding Equine Nutrition as well as Understanding The Pony, both published by Eclipse Press. She’s written a few thousand articles on subjects ranging from guttural pouch infections to how to compost your manure. She is also a Canadian certified riding coach, an equine nutritionist, and works in media relations for the harness racing industry. She lives with her band of off-the-track Thoroughbreds on a farm near Guelph, Ontario, and dabbles in eventing.

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