A taste for pain

Utah is curious. He's a dappled gray 3-year-old who likes to jut his big horse snout into anything and everything.

He is what we in Pittsburgh call "nebby."

Being an inquisitive youngster isn't a bad trait in and of itself, but when you couple it with the fact that Utah weighs in as much as a Harley Davidson and has roughly the same numbers, 0 to 30, he becomes a bit more than a handful to handle.

Utah would like, more than anything else, to go where the people go. He stands in the pasture above the backyard and stares as we come and go. It was only a matter of time before he dropped in for a visit.

I blame the deer, who regularly leap the fences. Mr. Nebby watched enough high jumping to determine he, at four times deer size, could also glide over the 5-foot barrier.

Not quite.

I discovered the hole in the fence line shortly after discovering the horse, standing in the front yard, eating the dahlias.

The good news is he's not skittish and rather likes me. Having no guilt or remorse, he was more than happy to point out the flower bed he'd discovered, and actually side-stepped a bit to make room for me to join him at the breakfast bar.

We had a talk on the way back to the stables.

"Electric fencing," I told him, "consists of a wire woven into nylon string connected to a 120-volt power outlet. You won't like it much."

All five horses watched as I attached the wire onto small plastic hangers screwed into existing fence posts. I turned on the juice and wondered whether the fence was, indeed, electrified.

There was only one way to find out.

Actually, there were two, but I, as usual, left my toolbox, containing the handy-dandy voltage detector, in the garage.

The horses had never seen a man jump straight into the air.

Four horses, having witnessed this event, went for a long and brisk walk until they were very, very far away. The fifth, Utah, being the youngest and having left his handy-dandy voltage detector in the garage, felt the need to lick the fence.

Just to see.

It was the first time I'd seen a horse jump straight into the air.

Then a strange thing happened. After shaking his head a time or two, Utah returned to lick it again.

He liked it.

The good news is he has not broken through the pasture fencing again, having found something he likes to lick more than dahlias. The bad news is we all realize this is not the intended reaction to an electric fence.

They're not supposed to like it.

Kind of reminds me of myself, that horse.