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by chadd 637 days ago
what was it like owning a wild burro?
1 comments

She was mostly a pet, and was very gentle and easy to lead.

We also had horses. The burro was useful for training the horses to behave in a herd because she while she enjoyed being in the group she held herself outside of the horse’s hierarchy and would not be bullied

She was very adapt at wading into thorny blackberry bushes and eating only the ripest berries

>She was very adapt at wading into thorny blackberry bushes and eating only the ripest berries

That's a handy skill. Once you taste about-to-fall-off ripe ones, you can never go back.

How was she around dogs? Burros in AZ attack dogs. Had one harass our dog all night while camping, had to put the poor thing in the truck, it was terrified.
Our burro loved our dogs and would come up to them to exchange greetings. I think she was far more interested in them than the horses.

I suspect the burros you encountered had been themselves harassed by dogs in the past.

Maybe. I've lived with horses long enough to know that some of them are just assholes.
Yeah. I came home from spring break during college and the back pasture was filled with flowers so I got a chair and started reading a book, enjoying Arcadian nature.

Fucking colt snuck up on me from the back and bit me hard on the shoulder. When I jumped up to beat the shit out it the fucker did the old can't catch me nehhing business.

My quite short (~5') dressage champ younger sister had to punch way up when her horse was an asshole but I was very impressed to watch her discipline the horse.

I have hated horses all my life. My KLR650 is superior in every way.

Yeah, I dunno, I've seen a lot of burros and this was pretty far off the beaten path. It was a major surprise for us that this burro hated dogs. OTOH I've seen a lot of horses and dogs working together (hunting, say?) and never seen anything negative happen. Why would burros be any different? So maybe it had been harassed. Given it's aggressiveness (literally a few feet from us) it would be a really bad idea for a dog to screw with it.
Harassed by coyotes, maybe, so aggressive around anything that looks vaguely coyote-like?