A Lesson In Electricity

There goes that "skip" in my brain again. It all started with the horses leaning over the electric fence and getting into the corn on the other side of the fence. I purposely positioned the electric fence 1.5 feet inside the barbed wire fence so that the horses would not lean on the fence and 1) injure themselves, and 2) get into the corn.

My friend Barb took me down to visit my mom in Topeka. While we were there we got a message from her husband stating that the horses had broken the fence and were in the corn. They had knocked down the electric fence and were in between the electric fence and the barbed wire fence having a hey day with the corn!

When we got home we fixed the fence, but still no jolt. It had to be grounded out somewhere. So we repeatedly walked the fence line trying to find the problem. Still no solutions.

The next day I went back out to try and figure this thing out. I kept touching the electric fence only to feel a slight shock. I've given greater shocks with my finger sliding across a carpeted floor in stocking feet. Frustrated, I concluded that it had to be my fence charger that had gone bad. Not happy, as those things are expensive to replace. So I headed into town to buy another.

When I got home, I hooked it up turned it on, and still NOTHING! Fortunately, in the past few weeks the OPPD guys have been out replacing the electric poles down the roads by my house. I have befriended them and they were working out in front of my house yesterday. So I decided to ask them if perhaps when they replaced the transformer it might have effected the electricity to my garage. They said that it would not have any effect.

So I told them my woes about the stupid fence and one of them came over to check voltage, etc. Everything was as it should be. He spent over an hour helping me to hook the fence up, replace the ground rod, etc. I kept touching the fence, and still nothing.

I spent the entire day trying to figure out what the problem was and calling my buddy Sparky (who is an electrician) in Michigan. Finally at the end of the day, I thought I would try one more thing. Still, it wasn't working. The OPPD guys were parked in front of the front pasture and saw me and asked if I got it fixed. Defeated, I replied "No." I walked over to the front fence and touched it. Hanging onto it with still no reaction, I said, "See?" Well, the youngest guy of the OPPD team came over and grabbed the fence and recoiled his hand in a second. He looked at me and said, "Geez! Did you hear the pop????!!!!!" I looked back at him and started laughing and said, "You've got to be kidding me. What? Are you a puss?" Of course his co-workers thought this was pretty hysterical. And the young guy just stared at me in disbelief. I asked him if he really got shocked and he exclaimed "YES!!!!" I touched the fence and still got nothing.

Finally I looked down at my shoes and jokingly asked if it could be the big rubber crocks I had on. They laughed and said most likely not, but encouraged me to take the shoes off and then touch the fence. I kicked off my shoes just knowing that the young kid was some sort of sissy boy, and proceeded to touch the fence. The results were entirely unexpected. The jolt I got from the fence about knocked me on my butt and I dropped the "F" bomb in vocabulary.

The OPPD guys were rolling by this point. And all I could think was I called the poor kid a puss, not to mention how embarrassed I was to have spent all day trying to figure out the fence, when all along it was working but I couldn't tell because I had big, ugly, rubber shoes on!! I wasn't grounded so of course I wasn't going to get a shock! So yep, there goes that "skip" in my brain again.

So the good news is that my old charger works fine and I get to take the new one back to the store and get my money back! :-)