Just figuring out electric fencing

This is a good time to mention that my father was always very precise. When he built things, he would draw his own plans out like an engineer and know how many nails and boards he needed. I truly admire someone’s ability to do that, but I just don’t have it.

While I appreciate his preciseness, he had no appreciation for my unique methods. When I am building something, the image in my head just can’t be put to paper. I’ve tried, but I just can’t do it.

I have built some wonderful things; including, a deck and staircase for my in-laws, but my inability to be precise creates a lot of expensive sawdust. Measure once, cut thrice.

After watching countless YouTube videos on electric fencing, I decided to order one for our homestead. This little wire would allow us to move the cows and sheep around the property with ease.

I bought enough wire and fence posts to fence in a few miles, mostly because I didn’t know what I was doing and figured a little more wouldn’t hurt. However, that’s exactly what it did.

I mean it, I swear to you that setting that fence up hurt. I was cramping up so bad and my muscles were twitching uncontrollably, that it felt like I was having seizures all day long.

I went inside and immediately started looking for that pamphlet of papers that came with it. The same papers my wife was nagging me about and the ones that I already discarded inside of the box because I was convinced that I could just figure it out.

When I finally found the instruction manual, I read it cover to cover. But it didn’t help. In fact, it said the first thing you must do is train the animal on the fence because it is just a psychological barrier. But how could I train them if I wasn’t trained? And who’s gonna train me?

I went back outside with the confidence that only pure stupidity and ignorance can bestow on an individual. I wore leather gloves and tried to use the plastic hooks to manipulate and hold the wire, in order to avoid touching it while carefully moving it around the fence posts with the precision and skill of a surgeon.

But in the end, I managed to get shocked again. This time it was bad. It was raining, I was standing in a puddle and my leather gloves were soaked. It felt like I was playing the adult version of the board game operation. Except it was my body that was buzzing and the voltage was a lot higher.

I was angry. I stormed inside the house and called the company and when I finally talked to someone, they calmly asked if the energizer was off.

Before I could answer the question, reality sank in. I became embarrassed and realized that I had to confess the truth; so I grasped ahold of what little pride I had left and quickly hung up. I didn’t have to confess that day.