Smokey the magnificent!

Diary

Posted: Thursday 16 September, 2010

by Rosemary at 6:25pm in Equines 1 comment Comments closed

Smokey and I had an interesting experience with some dogs today. I took him out on longreins along the cycle track, as I did on Tuesday. Now on Tuesday, I met a nice lady who's a dog walker. She explained that she had a Great Dane that wasn't very good with horses and that she used the cycle track regularly. I said if I saw her van, I'd go the other way. I could hear the dog barking in the van as we were talking.

When we set off today, the van was at the end of the track. I could hear the dog barking so I thought I'd just go the way I'd gone before. A few hundred yards along the track, there's a couple of bends. As we went round the second one, we met the Great Dane coming the other way. It was black and the insides of its eyes were red - just as well I wasn't letting my imagination run wild, as it looked like demon dog.

Well, it came at Smokey, first at his face then round behind him where it was biting at his back legs. I was first trying to get a hand on it, then using the long lead rope (12ft with a leather snap) to drive it back. Then its 2 mates - a collie and a daschund joined in. The lassie had a couple of other dogs on leads so was pretty helpless.

Anyway, the point of this is not to get everyone wound up about the dogs but to tell everyone how magnificent my pony was. He didn't spook or even try to run - he double barrelled the Dane and struck at the collie with a forefoot (as well as eating the hedge - takes a lot to come between a Highland and his snack!). The dog's OK but will be sore tomorrow. We didn't panic - and once they'd gone on their way, we set off again - disregarding the combine harvester in the field on the other side of the railway and the ve..r..r..r..y long and rattley goods train that went past.

I know we were fortunate that it turned out positive - and it did - but Smokey was just magic - my little war horse!