ZAP!

Ladies and gentlemen, we have hot wire. ;-)

A little bit, anyway. I wired the corral section of the fence today after a friend pounded in a couple t-posts for me (not something I normally have a problem with, just can't grasp the post pounder right now, at least not without significant pain) and started on the pasture insulators but have a looooong way to go. But the corral is done and the horses are both contained in there, which buys me a little time on the pastures (which is good, I'm pretty slow with one thumb). And I turned the corral section on.

The horses met the hot wire.

Shylah, the insatiably curious little dork that she is, walked straight up to it and stuck her nose on it. Galloping, bucking, and farting resulted. She tried it again on another section of fence, and this time made an audible grunt, followed by more galloping, bucking, and farting. My thumb laughed gleefully. I almost felt a tiny bit bad for a second, until I remembered my toils in the sun to fix all the top rails and sagging fence wire.

Gwen eventually wandered over, got about six inches from it, and backed up real fast. She obviously has some experience with this stuff!

So, the official update:
2856 total feet will be hot wired
144 feet currently hot
insulators up on additional 512 feet (not yet hot wired)

With such a short stretch of fence hot, and such a strong charger, I think it's packing a mighty punch right now. Oh and that charger box is loud!!! CLICK. CLICK. CLICK. Ugh. That is going to drive me nuts hearing it at night, I'll have to build some sort of box around it so try to muffle it some.

Thumb is doing better. Still swollen and bruised and it's going to be a while til I have full range of motion and no pain, but I keep it splinted most of the time and it's coming along.