I have been intending to give Cecil a bovine roommate for a couple years, but as his bovinaphobia just continues to get worse the time has finally arrived where I simply MUST do something about it. Last week I took him to the indoor arena where they often have cattle events on the weekends, and even though there were no cows, Cecil was just beside himself with terror at being able to SMELL them in the arena. I couldn't properly school him or train because he was so upset, and it ended up being kind of a wash of a trip. That prompted my trekking over to the neighbor's to ask if they had a loaner calf that could come live at our house for a few weeks. She had a bottle baby who needs twice daily hand-feeding, and he is only a very little bit bigger than Miles the border collie. So we got the bottle of milk, and he followed us through her pasture. I carried him across the creek, and then he followed us through my pasture to to the pen where Cecil and Garmin live. Both horses came rushing over to see who I had brought with me, was it a new pony or a new dog? My neighbor asked if my horses would be rough or kick the calf, and I said no, they would likely be afraid of it. Much to the horses' distress, it was not a dog or pony. As soon as he caught a whiff of that baby cow Cecil BOOKED IT to the other end of the small paddock and stood in the corner, trembling, head high and nostrils flared, heart pounding, snorting/honking at that calf. Cecil periodically shoved his chest into the fence, trying to assess the best escape route. He spent three hours in that corner this afternoon, shoving Garmin toward the calf to be the bait (you don't have to be the fastest horse in the herd, you just have to be faster than the slowest horse in the herd).
This evening I went out to feed everyone, and discovered the other horses had all recovered from their initial shock (more shocked because Cecil was upset, no one else is afraid of the cow). I pet the calf and discovered he likes his neck and ears scratched, Garmin came over to smell him up close and Cecil continued to snort/honk in his corner. After petting the calf my gloves smelled like him, and when I let Cecil sniff my glove he just LOST IT, taking a quick sniff and then bolting in a fast circle. I took my gloves off to halter him, and then put them back on to avoid rope burns, and led him out of his corner and nearer to the calf who was peacefully eating from a pile of hay. Cecil was pretty upset, but I treated the cow as no big deal, always careful to keep myself between the cow and Cecil (that way the horse-eating machine would get me first, and if not I could protect Cecil, and if not at least I wouldn't be run over by a stampeding thoroughbred). Cecil gradually walked nearer to the calf, lots of half-circles going at Cecil's pace, but eventually he stopped, stared at the cow, and he was close enough that if I had tried I could have touched the cow with one had and Cecil with the other. That was terribly brave of him, and so I led him away and took the halter off. He ran back to his corner, along the fence line as far away from the cow as he could possibly get. I need to go out later to bottle feed the calf, so I'm hoping that when Cecil sees me interacting with it and surviving twice a day that he'll decide the calf is not so dangerous after a couple weeks. The other benefit of having this bottle baby is that he is so small right now, but as he grows theoretically Cecil will get used to all sizes of cows. The calf will have to be banded in the next week or two (the neighbor will come do that) so I don't end up with a bull on my hands, but otherwise he's my loaner calf with which to desensitize. He looks a little confused for now, wondering why the horses don't want anything to do with him, but he's happy eating from whatever pile of hay he wants as the horses don't dare mess with him, either. More updates to come as Cecil progresses with flooding treatment of his bovinaphobia.
