Dogs And Horses - Lessons Learned

Watching old cowboy movies, you would think that dogs and horses just naturally got along. But that is not always the case. And some of us have to learn it the hard way. To give you an example, my experiences with horses and dogs had almost always been pretty good. I had been lucky.

Living out in the country, it seems people just automatically thought if they dropped off dogs and puppies they didn't want or couldn't keep, someone else would take responsibility for them. So, I always had more than enough dogs around the place and for the most part, they were good dogs, but a few were real standouts.

Two of these really great dogs, were puppies, littermates, that someone had dropped off right down the road from us, along with a beautiful springer spaniel, who certainly looked like a pure bred. The puppies were solid black, but resembled a German Shepherd.

As they grew up, we still could not identify just what breed they looked like. My oldest son, decided the male was his. He eventually grew up to be around 110 pounds, with enough hair that stood out from his body to make him look even larger. His name was Wolf.

But my brother chose the female and called her Sheeba. Sheeba, on the other hand was sleek and slim, but still tipped the scales at around 75 to 80 pounds. It was Sheeba that taught me a lesson about dogs and horses.

One of my horses, a little Arab named Zarafadi, had injured his leg and it was not healing well. If left out at all, he would end up breaking open the gash, and the healing process would have to start all over again. He was about 4 years old and didn't like to lead a sedentary lifestyle, but we had no choice but to keep him confined and his only exercise was short little walks on a lead.

One Sunday morning, after about 6 weeks of confinement, Zar's injury was deemed good enough to let him out by himself in a large paddock. My brother had come over that morning and brought Sheeba, who had grown up to be an exceptionally good dog, always behaved, well trained and responded to commands.

The three of us, including Sheeba, were standing outside the stall door when I opened it up to let Zar out into his paddock. I knew he had a lot of pent up energy, but when I opened that door wide, he literally burst out at a run, bucking and kicking out.

I hadn't quite expected an explosion like that. Before we could say anything, Sheeba took off after him and ran right into one of those kicks. In a split second, she was already on the ground and we thought she was dead.

After hearing the sound of that horse's hoof ringing out against her skull, we had no reason to assume anything else, but that she was gone already.

Amazingly, she wasn't.

Carefully loading her up, we were off to the vet's. We arrived at his office a few minutes before he could get there and that whole time we really expected her to quit breathing, but she didn't, though we could see a large indentation where the hoof had hit her head.

Finally the vet arrived and his diagnosis was that part of her skull was crushed, which we had already assumed anyway and that there wasn't much we could do for the skull. But what about the damage to the brain?

We left her there, expecting a call telling us she had died, but thankfully we never got that call. Obviously, the injury to her brain had not been as extensive as we had at first thought.

After a few days, Keith took her home and nursed her back to health. After a while, none of us even noticed that her head was not as it once was. Occasionally other people did, but we were just glad to still have her.

Everywhere Keith went, Sheeba went as well, including to work. My brother's sign shop would not have been the same during those years without her. She lived a long and happy life after that incident with the horse, and Zar also lived for about 27 more years, without kicking any more dogs. He really had not kicked at her at all, she really had just run in the wrong place as he was exuberantly enjoying his freedom.

But it did teach me one lesson. And that was that you can't trust animals, or for that matter little children, to always react the way you expect them to, therefore you have to think for them in advance, to keep them safe.

We didn't think that Zar would be that excited or that Sheeba would race after him before we could even tell her not to, but I should have given that some thought before opening up that stall door. Since then, I have always tried to think of all the possibilities and prepare for them, especially in dealing with animals and small children. That isn't always possible, of course, but the only thing we can do is try.

For the most part, with thought and training, dogs and horses can live comfortably together on the same farm or stables, but it’s up to you to keep them both safe.

If you need a resource for information and products for your animals check out Dog Training at http://www.dogtraining.yourspecialpets.com and for more on the subject of Dog Training and Horses there is an article for you to read on Dogs Around Horses.