04.15.08
Horses can be aggressive towards dogs
My Peaches puppy went with me snowshoeing in the woods. I had it easy compared to her, the snow and temps were just right to create snowballs on every hair on her lower body! The snow was pretty deep for her, but she never slowed down.
When we started out, we had to cross the horse pasture. My horses were off on the other side of the field, but were obviously pretty bored with all the snow cover so they came wandering over to see what was going on. Glendale the youngster arrived first, and immediately lunged at Peaches, whom they are not used to seeing within that particular pasture.
I had to shoo Glendale off by waving the snowshoes I was carrying in my hand, and holding poor terrified Peaches next to me. I got her leash on her so she couldn’t run off. She is used to the horses and around the barn she knows just how to avoid them, but in this strange area (outside of her invisible dog fence) she was really paranoid.
Peaches happy once we were out of the horse pasture!
By then Gilford was showing interest in chasing Peaches too, but he wasn’t as aggressive about it as Glendale. Momma mare could tell I wasn’t allowing it so she watched from a short distance. I had to walk the dog on her leash to the other side of the pasture and get her under the fence before releasing her. The horses followed us almost the whole way.
It was a little unnerving because I had not expected that to happen, and if Peaches had run away from me at the first lunge the boys would have chased her aggressively and she would not have known where to go. I have seen them lunge at strange dogs near the barn before, but I did not expect them to do this. I would guess there is some sort of protective instinct going on, they challenge another animal the same way they would challenge another horse… even though Peaches is no stranger to them. My lesson learned! (I didn’t get this incident on video because I was too busy trying to protect the dog from injury.)
Link to video of Peaches and snowshoeing in the woods…
We had a wonderful long tramp through the woods and coming back we took a route to avoid the horse pasture. Once back in the house, I had to give her a nice warm bath to melt off the snowballs, which were totally matted into her fur!
