Steve Lundeberg

Nine days ago, I wrote about an upcoming Fences for Fido project in Lebanon.

That project took place Saturday, so I figured a follow-up was in order.

Despite rainy skies — which thankfully didn’t drop nearly as much water as it appeared they would — about 20 volunteers turned out to enclose the backyard of the Steele, a massive and extraordinarily powerful-looking pit bull.

An aside: I am not anti pit bull, but years ago, I did have two separate incidents with that type of dog while out running with my sheep dog mutts. Neither ended in injury, but both were sort of scary. In the years since, I have met pit bulls that acted just  like any other dog, but I’ve remained wary of pit bulls whose background I’m unsure of.

Thus, when Steele came close to me for the first time, my instinct was to get my hands ready to protect my groin.

Quickly, though, it became apparent that Steele was one of those dogs who more or less behaved like a golden retriever  in a pit bull’s body; in fact, the way he bounded around and rolled reminded me a lot of our golden retriever, Ruby.

Having lived my entire adult life in farm settings with many and varied animals around, I have built and rebuilt miles of the type of barrier we were erecting Saturday: Welded wire “utility fabric” fencing held up by wooden posts at the corners and steel T-posts in between. I can’t say I really enjoy putting up fencing, especially if the job is huge and I’m working on it alone, but by necessity I’ve become something of an expert.

Still, Saturday was my first time out with Fences for Fido, and my general policy is that when I’m the new guy somewhere, I mainly just keep my mouth shut and do as I’m told lest I come off as an obnoxious know-it-all.

So when the guy running the show explained to people that the fence wire should go on the outside of the posts, as opposed to on the inside, I didn’t tell him he had that wrong. You always want the wire on the inside — that way, if an animal pushes against the wire, he’s pushing it into the post, rather than away from it and thus stressing the wire and the clips used to attach it to the post.

Near the end of the day, though, FFF organizer and former Lebanon resident Kelly Peterson asked me a question regarding fence construction, so I used that as an opportunity to quietly explain the whole wire-on-the-inside thing. She agreed that the reasoning made sense and suggested they’d build future fences that way. The steel posts probably ought to have been driven in a bit deeper, too, and the wire stretched somewhat tighter, but still, by noon, Steele had himself a fence that a) enabled him to be off his chain and b) figured to keep him from exploring the neighborhood.

If you missed Saturday’s “build” but would like to help another time, the Portland-based group figures to be back in Linn County at least once if not twice in the coming weeks. So stay tuned here as well as in the regular paper for further details. Supporting Fences for Fido with a few hours of volunteer labor is well worth your time and effort.

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