Just about the time you thought you'd seen it all!

After all these years of riding, I thought I'd seen it all.  We've come across coyotes, bear, deer, rattling machinery on the road, drunk drivers, but never been shot at.  Atleast I think.

When riding around our nice quiet little country block, we were meandering down our gravel road, when I heard one of the dogs yelp and cower, then take off down the road.  A few seconds later, the dog at my feet yelped and took off.  They acted like they'd been pelted by a BB.  But I hadn't heard any gun shots.  Within taking a few more steps with my horse, he began to come totally unglued.  Straight up in the air, dancing like his legs were on fire.  After trying unsuccessully to calm him down, I had no choice but to bail.  The next time up I was afraid he was going right over backwards.  But even after I got off of him, he kept trying to bolt and/or run circles around me.  Finally I got him to stop, but he was dripping wet with sweat and still jumping up and down.  I kept looking down the road in either direction because I was looking for anything that could tell me what direction the supposed shots were coming from.  Then I began to notice that my horse was jumping and flinching in a rythmic fashion, too repetitive for anyone to be shooting like that.  Upon just a few seconds of quiet, I could hear it.  ZZt, ZZt, ZZt.  Looking over to the side of the road, I could see that we were directly above a big metal culvert.  The owner of the property had run his barb hotwire through that culvert over to the other side of the road for his beef cows.  Although it looked as though it had been run through a rubber tube, there must've been a rub or short somewhere that was allowing the current to come through.  Since the road was soaked with the snowmelt, the shock was being carried through the culvert, up through the road and to my dogs and horse.  I had rubber boots on and hadn't felt a thing!  I quickly led the horse about 15 yards down the road and we seemed to be beyond the strongest effects of the current, for I was able to get back on and continue the ride home on a very nervous and unconsolable gelding.  In his mind, someone was either pelting him with something or hitting him with something, and he was determined that every bush, tree, rock, passing vehicle, and so on, was out to get him.

I don't know what kind of a fencer that this guy has (his cows rarely get out), but I sure could use one of those late in the fall when our cows are out on pasture and the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence . . .