Horse Antics - the Explorers

I went down to feed the ponies this morning, only to discover there were only two horses there to greet me! Jordan and Romeo were no where to be seen. There's just nothing like missing horses to give your morning that extra little jump start. Of course my initial thoughts were that our new fence had been faulty and both horses were drowned or at least hypothermic in the mostly thawed pond.

Since I had no phone with me, I dropped my stack of buckets and ran back to the house to get Dave. I jumped into the car and headed off for the road and that darn pond, when half way down I saw the little gate was standing open. I tied it shut, and again realized I didn't have my phone with me, so I went back up to the house. When I pulled in, I saw Romeo down in the Alfalfa field, and realized I hadn't ever looked behind the barn when I discovered them missing. Sure enough, I went back down and Jordan was cleaning out the top of the stack of buckets, while Romeo was digging into a fresh bale of hay. I took the rest of the buckets into the pasture and, finally catching on, the two way-ward boys came galloping back in. They both were incredibly thirsty, so I think they'd been out for quite awhile. (Course, they COULD have just walked back into pasture through the open gate to get a drink, had they been smart enough!) Somehow I wasn't too surprised which two got out and which two decided to stay put in pasture.

Oh, and the gate? Turns out that Dave fixed it - last Friday. Among other things he re-hung it higher and straighter, which made the hook closure too loose, so he shortened the chain a few links. During this he noticed that the bolt and nut that connected the chain was pretty loose so he tightened that up. Well, this morning the nut was gone altogether, and the chain lying on the ground. We had a heck of a wind storm yesterday, so we think it just shook itself loose. He's going to replace that nut with a locking nut today!