Confessions of a Horseshoer

Nicky, Miscellaneous Dumb Dogs, and Other Animals

162 Nicky, Miscellaneous Dumb Dogs, and Other Animals Nicky, My Regular Horseshoeing Dog For fourteen years, I had my wonderful Nicky, a Malamute -Husky-Wolf mix. I rescued her from a ranch in Sonoma County, California, where the owners had just loaded her up to take her to the pound for killing deer. “Ron will take her!” pleaded the tearful children. “Ron, you’ll take her, won’t you? Please take her!”What could I do? I took her. She was my closest friend for the next fourteen years. Nicky knew horses. She respected them, but was never fearful of them. I often used her to chase a horse in a field when I had trouble catching the damn thing. She would run the horse until it was winded and I could walk up to it. She was also my psychic bad-horse detector. After I had caught a new horse and tied it up,I would stand back and observe Nicky. If the horse was going to be well-behaved, Nicky would walk around it looking for hoof parings,and sometimes even walk under the horse. If the horse was likely to give me • Nicky, Miscellaneous Dumb Dogs • 163 trouble,Nicky would keep a cautious distance and stay at least six feet away. I never could figure out how she knew. One time I tied up an unfamiliar horse who stood there innocently. Everything looked all right to me, an easy job. Nicky kept her six-foot distance, but the horse didn’t look like a problem to me. I picked up a foot and all hell broke loose. Nicky was right. This had to happen a couple more times before I became a believer. I eventually reached the stage when I would refuse to shoe a horse if Nicky did not approve. I could never bring myself to tell the customer I would not shoe her horse because my dog didn’t like it. I just had to get really creative about my excuses. Nicky could also detect ghosts . . . I think. I’ve heard that dogs can do this. One time my oldest daughter and I were sitting on the steps of a small cabin in the woods where we lived on a 2700-acre ranch in Northern California. It was in the fall,and the ground was covered with scattered oak leaves from the trees. We were sitting quietly when we heard the heavy breathing of a running dog off to our left. The sound came toward us,eventually crossed in front of us,and continued off into the woods on our right. We could see nothing, but we turned our heads in unison to track the sound. Nothing disturbed the leaves. My daughter and I looked at each other, and asked simultaneously, “What was that?” We both recognized the sound as heavy breathing from a running dog. Later that evening, I took Nicky with me to the cabin where we quietly sat on the same steps. Suddenly, Nicky jumped up as if someone had hit her with a stick and ran with her tail between her legs to the house, about 200 yards away.I went after her,calmed her down,and took her back up 164 • Confessions of a Horseshoer • to the cabin. We sat quietly for a few minutes. She suddenly leaped up once again, tail between her legs, and raced home. All my commands to come back went unheeded. Nicky had never shown fear of anything before this day. We lived about 20 minutes from the nearest town, population 713, where six months later a local told me that an old prospector and his German Shepherd had lived (and died) near that same spot in the woods.The “ghost” dog. As Nicky grew older, I had to lift her in and out of the truck. Her horse-chasing days were over. I thought I had lost her one time when I had her chase a horse in a large, closed arena,and the horse ended up chasing her.She was in danger of being run over.After I got her out of there,I never had her do that again. Eventually, she could barely get up. She was suffering and seemed always in pain. I had to put her down. I took her to the vet’s and held her while she received the injection that was to end her life...