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Brave driver!

The dog I manhandled was smaller than that one. Probably half the weight. Prey drive adrenaline makes a muscle ball of a dog be like a greased pig.

I do agree that some people should not own a high drive animal.

No amount of preaching about training is going to make some people do training. Just like no amount of preaching about not breeding is going to make some people not breed (their pets that are not breeding quality, I am not against responsible breeding).

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I personally feel that I could have grabbed that dog, but I doubt that particular owner could have. I also have abnormally sticky hands in situations where an animal is trying to get away (thank you, skittish dog and sister’s pitbull’s hatred of cats), so that could be a factor in my looking at the video seeing opportunity after opportunity to grab him by the waist, collar, chest, whatever, and then not letting that body part back on the ground to gain traction. My sister’s pit is nearing 100lbs, and I had his entire front end at my chest height when he almost snagged a stray cat - I grabbed him by the collar and lifted straight up. I didn’t give a damn if he was choking at that moment. His adrenaline made him chase, mine gave me extra strength to disable him.

Sucks for all involved, for sure. I wonder if the owner recognizes that the horse did nothing wrong.

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IMO, pepper spray would be only marginallly better than a firearm. Pepper spray is generally considered not to be a lethal weapon but getting a clear shot into the eyes/mouth of a moving target (the dog) without getting it into the eyes and mouths of surrounding animals (the horse, the people) would be a challenge. I wouldn’t have wanted to see the driver of the horse get incapacitated by pepper spray in the middle of that very scary incident.

That horse is a saint is all I gotta say.

Once the dog’s brain has checked out, I’m not so sure any recall or ‘leave it’ would have had any effect at all.

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Maybe at 100 yards, but with the owner standing literally right there, a trained dog would have some response to a leave it or recall at point blank range.

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Here I would have to disagree. If the dog’s brain is checked out and gone, aka non-responsive to anything, nothing will probably have any impact
 in this case, the dog was repeated kicked, very hard a times, by the horse with still little to no effect. I don’t believe that dog heard anything much less felt anything.

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True it probably wouldn’t but

a dog whose owner has consistently done training work is more than likely a responsible dog owner and the situation would not have happened in the first place. The whole an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure thing.
And I know that I’m preaching to the choir here on this board as far as animal responsibility for sure

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This yes
 getting control of the dog before the brain checked out would have made a tremendous difference. One the brain was gone, pretty much obvious that nothing made a difference including what ended up be a series of fatal kicks by the horse.

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I can’t bring myself to watch the video, even though it’s been shared among my driver friends.

I help out occasionally with commercial Christmas light tours if my friend who owns a company needs a last minute driver. I’m pretty experienced, but I don’t do it “professionally”.

I see so much stupid shit, you wouldn’t believe. One of the streets we go down is a residential street that has inches to spare if you’re four wide (cars on each side parked, two way traffic in the middle). I try to stay as far to the right as possible as we’re a slow moving vehicle and cars can go around us.

Most people are smart enough when they’re passing to roll up their windows so ole Fido in the backseat can lose his mind without causing a scene. This past year, a car ROLLED DOWN THEIR BACK WINDOW and the dog was literally lunging at my horse, inches away and barking as the driver and passenger laughed about how “excited” he was.

Some people are too stupid to own animals.

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“or a firearm”
(Until I figure out how to multiquote)

Neither.
My choice would be a Supersoaker loaded with ammonia.
You wouldn’t need to hit the attacking animal. Shooting on its body or anywhere near it, fumes should be enough to discourage an attack.

As a Driver, this was a horrific video to watch.
This happened in a public park.
Saint of a horse for not bolting - even The Most Expert Driver would not have been able to stop a runaway.
Horse out of control with carriage attached is a lethal combination to bystanders as well as passengers.
Bless the horseowner who was hurt so badly trying to prevent injury to her horse & the passengers.
Great job by the Mom keeping her children calm as possible.

I believe there is a GoFundMe for the horseowner

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I’m on a desktop so for me to multi-quote


Quote from the first reply you want to quote from (select text, use the light grey Quote box)
 type your verbiage as you wish
 then go back to the second (or third or ?) reply you want to quote, select the text you want to quote, should see the light grey ‘Quote’ box and press that :wink:

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Ohhhh man that made me homicidal (caninicidal?). That poor horse, her lips were shredded :sob:

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This post is giving me anxiety. I boarded at a small private barn a few years ago and when I moved in the barn owner had this German Shepherd puppy. Well, all was well until the puppy got older and the idiot barn owner was not training the dog or giving it adequate exercise. So the now larger “puppy” found this game of jumping over the fence and chasing the horses. At first the puppy was little I was thinking the horses would surely kill it but the chasing escalated quickly. The dog eventually bit my mare all the way up by her stifle but thank god didn’t cause any permanent damage.

Me and some of the other boarders moved immediately after that accident but one boarder decided she’d wait and see if the attacking dog situation improved. Her horse got mauled 2 days later when the idiot barn owner left the dog unattended again. Her horse got it way worse than mine did and had to get stitches all over her face, neck and chest.

Idiot barn owner has still never paid vet bills and maintains that it was a mountain lion that did these attacks
 even though people witnessed the attack on my horse. Animal control wouldn’t do anything because it was on his property. I thought about going after him in small claims but ultimately it was not worth it. There’s no boarders left at his place because between me, the other boarders, and the vets, enough people found out about what happened but yea it is a terrifying situation when you get a dog like that. Things just escalate like crazy once they get a taste of going after livestock.

That video made me so sad and upset.

My first driving pony’s response to dogs was to bolt. He was absolutely terrified of them, and tended to lose his mind over non-threatening situations. There was an unsecured dog in our neighborhood that would follow my cart for miles, and although the dog never got near the pony and was never threatening, it made for some very, very tense drives. I would sing to my pony to get both of us to relax, but that only went so far. I never did find out who owned that dog.

My next driving pony (trained when the first one showed signs of needing to retire) was pretty unflappable, but just did not like dogs. The dog that used to follow me wasn’t around any more, but a neighbor had a border collie that ran loose all the time, and would run out in the road and try to herd us. The neighbor came out when I was yelling at the dog one day and said oh, he won’t hurt anyone. I said (similar to what shiloh said above), that’s fine if you want to own the first border collie in orbit. The pony was sure trying to get a good kick in.

Ignorant jerk dog owners!

I started carrying pepper spray, but mostly because I wanted to be able to spray the owners. I never got the opportunity.

Rebecca

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I would hesitate to use anything, like pepper spray or ammonia or a firearm, that could easily impact a bystander (human or animal.)

This type of situation really narrows down the options for disabling the attacker without harming or disabling the animal being attacked or the bystanders. Most non professionals are less than expert at aiming well in an emergency situation, whereas , if anyone can get close enough to the dog, as the gentleman with the spatula in the video did, a bonk to the head with a tire iron will stop the dog from attacking.

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I would also hesitate to use anything like pepper spray or ammonia or a firearm since I believe those things could pretty easily make a bad problem worse. As mentioned before, it would be so hard to get a clear shot on an attacking dog, and the risk of injuring or further aggravating a hitched horse under attack would be quite high. Unfortunately in a dog attack situation, there’s not a lot of good options to diffuse the situation aside from finding some way to restrain the dog.

The reason I liked the slip leash idea is that you would at least have a shot at containing the dog. It wouldn’t be easy, but it’s possible. With a slip leash, you initially make a large loop that gives you a greater chance of being able to get it around the dog’s head while allowing you to maintain at least some distance between your hand and the dog’s face. As soon as you find a way to get the dog’s head through the loop, you immediately snug it up and the dog could then be somewhat contained. Of course the dog could then turn on you, but you could at least drag it away from the horse and go from there. We used simple poly slip leashes to handle dogs when I worked at a vet clinic many years ago.

Might not work, definitely not a great solution, but a slip leash is better than nothing and safer than a firearm or pepper spray. It’s cheap and easy to throw in with a spares kit and emergency supplies, so it’s probably something I will plan on carrying.

Also not opposed to the tire iron! And as a bonus, a tire iron could also be used to deter aggressive humans. These days you never know what you’ll come across! I knew drivers that carried a gun on them, just in case.

I finally watched the video from the morbid educational standpoint of how to handle a horse in that sort of situation
I would say that a bystander with a tire iron could have made a difference. There were several times when the dog was a good distance from the horse.
One of the more disturbing things was that it seems pretty clear that the dog thought that this was wonderful fun and had all too good of an instinctual idea of where to bite to disable its prey. That last kick came only just in time to avoid even worse injury to the horse.
Very few of us carry tire irons these days though. Probably should. And a slip leash.

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I agree @B_and_B, the dog didn’t appear aggressive and was wagging its tail while attacking at times.

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A nine iron would do the job too and get you a little further away. That dog was enjoying it.

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How is an attacking dog not being aggressive? I’m sure I saw somewhere that wagging tails don’t always mean happy/playful and are not uncommon when dogs are fighting/attacking.

I’m sure the dog was enjoying itself, but I don’t think that means there was no aggression.




That media report said “the dog escaped its leash” - I didn’t see a leash hanging off the dog. The “escape” must have happened when the owner unsnapped it from the dog’s collar. :thinking:

I will admit that I was rooting for the horse to make a solid connection with a hoof, and I cheered when the dog got kicked under the cart.

I also feel sorry for the dog, but not the owners.

I have been attacked by a dog while riding (my horse finally managed to kick it in the head/jaw) and had a Great Dane want to play with my horse. I was afraid that one was going to start play biting before the owner finally managed to catch the dog.

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