Horses and Ponies have phobias as well as people!

By Linda Corby

Horses and Ponies have phobias as well as people!

Bambie the Shetland pony’s phobia and why people need guns against rouge dogs.

 I am going to tell you the real story of the Shetland pony Bambie’s phobia.  Bambie is a pony I rescued, I was given her because she suffered from horrendous Laminitus, and you can read all about her Laminitus here if you want to. : Click here

Bambie was a pretty little Shetland pony who love everyone and who loved everyone.  She came to me one mid spring day in 1975, hobbling and in obvious pain, the vet had said he didn’t think she would make it; however, she did under my watchful eye and a lot of love from us all.

I had fenced off an area of orchard right outside my farm style property right outside my kitchen door, were I could watch that she didn’t eat anything she shouldn’t, no apples left on the ground or in her reach!  It took months to get her right, but we did it.

What happened:

One mid summer night, well very early hours of the morning really, there was an awful commotion coming from the orchard, Bambie was literally screaming her head off, and I jumped out of bed and ran to my daughter’s bedroom window to see a rogue dog attacking Bambie in the orchard, trying to savage her!  I went mental screaming at it, but it took no notice at all, and I know this is going to sound awful but I ran back into my bedroom and grabbed my husband’s air riffle screaming at him to come and help, he also jumped out of bed and came back with me to our daughter’s bedroom, we threw all sorts of toys at this dog from the window, in fact anything we could find, but it was still trying to savagely bite Bambie’s hind legs. 
Left with no option I asked my husband to shoot a shot out of the window to try and scare this dog away, because I was afraid I might hit Bambie or the dog by accident.  My hubby did this for me but unfortunately the pellet actually hit the dog, which we didn’t know at the time, because the dog then took off. I all happened really quickly and we honestly didn’t have time to run through the house and get to Bambie in time to save her, so we had to take the action that we did.

Next:

Early morning came and the vet arrived to see if Bambie’s hind legs needed stitches or not, they did and as we stood with Bambie in the orchard the vet got a syringe out to give Bambie an injection before doing the stitches in her hind legs.  As the vet approached Bambie with the syringe in his hand, I was holding her head-collar, she suddenly went rigged and keeled right over on me, her legs rigid in the air, as she lay frozen on the ground at my feet, it was unbelievable, even the vet thought she had dropped dead on us initially.  However, it turned out that she wasn’t dead, just in a state of frozen fear at the sight the syringe. Bambie had a needle phobia, and no one could get near her with one or she would just keel over again.

How we got round Bambie’s phobia:

I took Bambie into a little lounge we had alongside our kitchen, Bambie loved the TV, especially cartoons, and she would often wonder into the house and watch them with the kids.  Anyway we put the Cartoons on for her and my hubby stood one side of her head while I stood the other, meanwhile my oldest daughter fed her with tit bits, and she didn’t even take any notice of the vet doing her stitches at all, like they say ‘What the eye doesn’t see!’

End result:

Bambie turned out fine, the rouge dog died, not because of the pellet in its rear, but because of the filthy state it was in as the pellet took a hair in with it and this caused an infection that the bad owner never even noticed!  The owner was Oh so proud of his dog, though it was a clever dog to keep escaping and going round behaving badly, and attacking other animals all over the place stupid man.   My poor hubby had his air riffle taken away from him, but in court the judge said it should be given back, he never did get it back though, which I felt was ludicrous under the circumstances.