Went round to my cousin Ian who has been complaining about his pig Dorothy escaping from his plot.

Up until now, he’d had the pig in a chain-link fence. She stayed in there when she wanted to, but only when she wanted to. The moment she got the urge to escape, she’d simply push underneath the fencing and would then be free.

I took with me a HotShock A15 plus some gash Insulators and wire. Attached the insulators to the wood stakes and threaded the wire thorough. Connected the Fence energiser and attached it to the battery. When we finished, we anxiously introduced Mrs. Pork Chop to her newly… um, “upgraded”… home.

Okay, so ideally she would have walked up to the fence, touched it with her snout, felt the jolt, and backed away- never to test it again.

But this is me we are talking about, and nothing ever goes by way of the “text book” Here’s how it played out: Once in her pen, the first thing she did was test out the new wire. But she didn’t just touch it. Nooooo. She decided that she would push behind it! That means she was immediately stuck between the hot wire and the chain-link fence. And of course she didn’t just stay there getting shocked. She took off and slammed right into the chain-link, tearing apart two fencing panels and making her escape! 

I was not going to give up and gave it one more try. Though she had broken the electric fence wire in several places, we twisted it back together and reconnected everything. This time we attached strips of kitchen foil smeared with peanut butter as bait and released the errant sow in the middle of the pen with food. Leaving her we watched from a distance to try and reduce the stress and excitement. After finishing the food she ambled up to a foil strip – licked and immediately backed off from a severe “thwack” to the tongue. As the shock was in front of her and not behind her in the first occasion she reacted differently. Rather than surge forward she retreated backwards away from the fence. Three days later and she is still within her abode and has not tested the fence again.