Surprised by horse?

[Moreveganice]

I was riding (walking) DHorse on a public bridleway on a racecourse. (And training area for race horses) A young dog came tearing round the corner and proceeded to bark and jump at DHorse’s tail. The owner appeared and was not able to recall the dog and complained that we had surprised him by appearing around the corner..

Fortunately DHorse neither kicked the dog or bolted ( either are possible) but was it reasonable to think he should anticipate horses being around in a location like this? If I can keep 600kg of flighty animal under control why is it so hard to do the same for a 5kg spaniel?

Because people can't be arsed to train their dogs! I don't think they realise that a horse could kill a small dog with 1 kick.

People can't be arsed to train their dogs, that's the problem.

I've been in a similar scenario to you - except this was an organised hack with six horses. The dog was tearing around underneath us - the owner was incredibly lucky the horses were used to dogs otherwise it would have been kicked in the head and killed.

My dog isn't bothered by horses but I'd always put him on the lead if we saw one.

Most do, but there's always a few idiots.
I guess some people don't know the difference between a footpath and a bridleway and what the very name of the latter implies! The dog might also have got into an accident with a cyclist - definitely need to have dogs 'under close control' on bridleways.

It's so hard because that dog owner is a bone headed twat.

This happened to me while I was riding my very grumpy kicky mare.

I jumped off and whacked the dog a few times with the whip. Owner was furious but better than being dead!