I haven't even had a chance to write a
post introducing our 3rd rescue pit bull, Karma. (I'' do
that soon.) She's a wonderful sweet puppy, and we adore her, but one
thing we found out...she doesn't like yaks.
 |
| Karma the instigator. *sigh* |
The yaks had been on walkabout for
about a month, so Karma had never met them. The coyotes were howling
one night and we saw SOMETHING flash past in the dark, approximately
coyote-sized, so we figure that was the impetus for them breaking
down one of the boards in their pen and hiking off to who-knows
where. We'd been searching for them everywhere, with no luck. The
other times they escaped we'd found them at the home of a nearby
rancher. This time they were seen near there but by the time someone
contacted us (we don't have phone at our place) and Quantum got up
there, the girls were off somewhere again.
The Return
Last week, while Quantum was in FL
dealing with his mom, the dogs were running about doing their usual
roughhousing when I heard one of them barking. I looked out and there
at the curve of the driveway and there they were. Amazingly they'd
found their way home.
They looked beautifully fit, if a bit
muddy. I leaped outside, called the dogs in and spent a half hour
coaxing the girls into the pen. The weren't the least bit interested
in hay. Not with all the gorgeous grass in the fields, but water
they wanted. Yeti was the first to follow my water bucket and Zoozoo
and baby Ferdie followed her. Yonkers wasn't impressed. She's wary of
most people, and even though she likes me more than most, her
affection for me is grudging at best. I let her roam around for a
while, knowing she wouldn't stray far from her herd, and eventually
she came right up to the gate. She was hoping the other girls would
come out and join her, but instead I talked her into going in with
them.
Things were okay for a couple of days,
although Ferdie found an escape route (she's a little Houdini) and
Yazoo managed to follow her. Another couple hours with the dogs
locked in the trailer and me wandering around trying to get them back
in the pen. And then an hour later they were standing by the gate,
asking to be let back in.
Round One
Then the trouble started. Zen and Bushi
had never bothered the yaks while they were in their pen, though Zen
was apt to flip out a bit when Ferdie got out. He's very concerned
about "everything in its place" and knows the yaks belong
inside their fence. It hadn't occurred to me that the addition of a
third dog would change the equation.
I was outside doing some cleanup when
Karma started barking at the yaks. I shushed her a few times.
Suddenly she dove under one of the fence rails and into the pen. The
yaks charged. Bushi, hearing her pack-mate in distress, ran in after
her. Zen raced back and forth outside the pen and then plunged into
the fray as well.
The yaks all clustered together. Bushi
and Karma ran right into the center of them, nipping their heels. Zen
ran in circles coming back and forth to snipe. I don't know how long
it lasted. Probably only 10 minutes or so. It felt like hours. One of
those times when life goes into slow-mo. Bushi got picked up by a set
of horns and tossed through the air. Karma and Bushi both were
trampled and pushed around. Then Bushi was hanging from a yak's ear
(so much going on that I couldn't tell which) as if she were an
earring. She managed to rip out BOTH Yonkers' and Yazoo's ear tags.
For myself, I was screaming for the
dogs to stop and to come to me. They're usually relatively obedient
but not with this massacre going on. I'm running around trying to
catch Zen as he darts in and out, and each time I almost had him, he
barrels into me and my glasses (one earpiece is broken) keep falling
off. I finally managed to grab Zen as he raced around. Threw him into
our trailer. That broke the fight up and after a harrowing few more
minutes, the other two left the pen.
Both Bushi and Karma were covered with
yak blood, but there wasn't a scratch on any of the three dogs. The
yaks were okay other than their ear tags.
As horrified as I was with the fight
itself, I can't help but be amazed with three dogs that were able to
stand up to three adult yaks (about 700 pounds each) and come out
relatively unscathed. I was sure that one of the dogs would end up
with broken bones, or worse a broken spine or something else
devastating and fatal. It was one of the scariest moments of my
entire adult life. And there was more to come.
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