{"id":1948,"date":"2011-02-01T09:54:45","date_gmt":"2011-02-01T16:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=1948"},"modified":"2011-04-03T03:54:59","modified_gmt":"2011-04-03T10:54:59","slug":"to-be-continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=1948","title":{"rendered":"To be continued….."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>You’ve heard the news.\u00a0 Owning animals is proven to extend your life.\u00a0 Researchers speculate about oxytocin and cortisol interactions, companionship, and responsibility.\u00a0 Which just means they’re missing the big picture.\u00a0 Obviously, people live longer because they are determined to live to see the day that the dog doesn’t manage to get into the trash can overnight.\u00a0 Or to never wake up to cat poop next to the litter box instead of in it.\u00a0 And you have to live a long time to get that point.\u00a0 After all, any self-respecting dog or cat will not use up all their trash-eating, next-to-the-box pooping behavior in a month or two.\u00a0 No, siree.<\/p>\n

Pets know it’s much more effective to let\u00a0 their owners think that keeping the trash bag in the pantry is going to work.\u00a0 Just leave it be for a week or two.\u00a0 Enjoy the new self-cleaning litter box for a while.\u00a0 Just until it gets moved back to the bathroom instead of that dank corner in the basement.\u00a0 Then go crazy, furry friends!\u00a0 And while licking the butter wrapper on the couch or taking care of business on the bath mat, they can take pride in the fact that they’re enhancing the lives of their loved ones!\u00a0 Imagine the plots and ploys the owners will devise to get acquiescence.\u00a0 Brain cells firing, energy exerted, family meetings being held—it’s bonanza of health and social interaction.<\/p>\n

And farm animals like to kick it up a notch or two.\u00a0 Just because they can.\u00a0 Which is why I’ve spent quite a few days since December devising a way to keep the ponies out of the goat barn.\u00a0 Feeding them their hay in the front pasture was my first defense.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After all, why would they raid the goat’s hay roll when they receive their own hand-fed portion of hay twice a day?\u00a0 That’s like trading in room service for the buffet.\u00a0 But ponies being ponies, they decided they would accept room service and then head over to the buffet anyway.\u00a0 I admit, it was a weak defense.\u00a0 I’ve never actually had an animal turn down the chance to eat someone else’s food.\u00a0 But it was nice for the first couple weeks that it worked.<\/p>\n

The next step was closing the top door of the goat barn.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Occasionally the goats need to be confined (any work detail involving the wheelbarrow comes to mind as the goats are infamous wheelbarrow tippers) and the split allows me to close the bottom and keep goats in the barn, but leave the top open to allow chickens and ducks to move freely in and out.\u00a0 In this case, I just reversed the process—goats can go in and out, but no ponies.\u00a0 Unfortunately, ponies don’t have a problem with a little squat and scoot.\u00a0 Not that I’ve ever seen them get under the half door.\u00a0 But I have seen this in the goat barn next to the hay roll.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Let’s just say, no DNA testing necessary.<\/p>\n

The next step was a bright yellow chain.\u00a0 So bright, so cheery!\u00a0 So easy to hang with a few eye hooks and a little hand torque!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So easy to tear out of the barn wall by leaning all 500 pony pounds against it.\u00a0 I suppose it was a foregone conclusion.\u00a0 After all, the woman who boards her pony with us, took notice of the chain while visiting one day.\u00a0 She commented what great idea it was and I responded, “It works like a charm.”\u00a0 NEVER, NEVER say, “It works like a charm.”\u00a0 Murphy’s Law of Farming dictates that it will stop functioning immediately.\u00a0 Which is why I woke up\u00a0 the next morning to two ponies in the goat barn and my pretty yellow chain laying in the straw despondently.<\/p>\n

I’ll admit I rehung that chain 3 times before giving up on it.\u00a0 I was hoping it was just a battle of wills.\u00a0 Sooner or later one of us was going to get tired of dealing with that chain every day.\u00a0 Guess who got tired of it first?<\/p>\n

Luckily for me, I am well prepared for these types of animal vs. farmer contests.\u00a0 In addition to determination and creativity, I have a well organized and easily accessible assortment of hardware to manage any problem.\u00a0 As long as you consider “easily accessible” to mean gathering items from the backyard shed, the top cabinet over the television, the mud room, and the closet under the stairs.\u00a0 And as you can see, everything is neatly organized in various ziploc bags and a strawberry basket.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To think Craftsman wants $60 for one of those multi-drawer hardware chests.\u00a0 Please.<\/p>\n

Best of all, this Christmas I received a cordless drill to replace the one I burned out last summer.\u00a0 Oh, how I love a cordless drill!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The animals have run rampant since my last one died—-ripping doors off hinges, legs off of milk stands, and mineral feeders off the walls.\u00a0 I could hear them chuckling softly as I stomped off to the house claiming, “Just you wait!\u00a0 I’ll be right back with the drill to the fix that and then you’ll be sorry you messed with me!”\u00a0 They knew darn well I wasn’t coming back with 400 feet of extension cord and the electric drill that is so powerful it strips a screw head in .3 seconds.\u00a0 Instead, I would stay late after the evening milking using leftover twine from the hay bales to tie things back in place.\u00a0 Oh, the shame of it.<\/p>\n

So prepared with my new drill, a hinge, and a scrap piece of lumber, I strode out to the barn to put an end to the ponies’ mischievous behavior.\u00a0 I even got to use my yellow chain.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The concept behind this construction is that the wooden bar is too low to go under and the half door keeps them from going over.\u00a0 In addition, by leaning against the bar, they cannot push it out of the wall but will instead be leaning their body weight against the support of the very heavy, very solid door.\u00a0 For us to enter during feed times, all we have to do is unhook the chain and open the wooden bar.<\/p>\n

Just think of all the years I’ve added to my life just by trying to outsmart my critters.\u00a0 That’s not even counting what I’ll have to come up with next month when they figure this one out.\u00a0 To be continued….<\/p>\n

P.S.\u00a0 Now that I see the picture, the wooden bar looks a little crooked.\u00a0 It is not crooked.\u00a0 Must just be the angle of the camera while I took the picture.\u00a0 I can assure you I used a level and a measuring tape and a chalk rope and whatever else you see people use when they turn a 10 minute fix into an entire weekend project.\u00a0 Also, that wooden bar is not too long.\u00a0 It is the exact length I want it to be.\u00a0 It’s not just the size I found it and I was too lazy to get the circular saw to cut it down.\u00a0 C’mon, people I’m a professional.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’ve heard the news.\u00a0 Owning animals is proven to extend your life.\u00a0 Researchers speculate about oxytocin and cortisol interactions, companionship, and responsibility.\u00a0 Which just means they’re missing the big picture.\u00a0 Obviously, people live longer because they are determined to live to see the day that the dog doesn’t manage to get into the trash can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[107,39],"class_list":["post-1948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gate","tag-pony"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1948"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2075,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948\/revisions\/2075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}