Over the years, Hap has demonstrated a certain facility with opening latches, even the supposedly horse proof ones. He has learned to rattle them until they open. Taking him to overnight events was always a challenge as we had to decide whether we had to Hap-proof the accommodations.
However, he had never used his talent here at home until a few days ago, when I heard the dogs barking hysterically and I looked out to see that the horses were in the buffer zone between the horse field and the dog run. Most of my gates here depend on a simple mechanism that locks the chain links into place. Hap had bounced on the gate until it came loose.
This morning, I looked out and Rags and Hap were in the new field. I distinctly remembered shutting the gate between these two fields yesterday morning. I made a hopeful call to Jack but he denies opening the gate. It seems Hap generalized his success with the previous gate and decided to apply it to the other gate.
After I fed the horses this morning I took an inventory of all gates so I can determine which ones need to be reinforced with a chain and a heavy duty snap. The east gate looks good. The west gate which opens directly on the road is padlocked. I’ve chained and snapped the gate between the old field and the new. I definitely need to improve the fastening on the gate out of the new field as well as the gate between the horse field and the buffer zone.
Sigh.