Amazing Animal Stories Part two By Kristin Von Kreisler From The ...

kick the longhorns, as any horse would do. Justin could be thrown off his saddle where the
cattle’s hooves would quickly grind his bones into the pavement.
But Jill had underestimated Smokey. As the longhorns bumped and jostled him, he did
not fight back. Just as he remained calm when the wild turkey flew in his face, Smokey stood his
ground.
A steer rammed into Smokey and Justin, then tried to shove his way around them. The
steer slipped and fell, slamming his huge body into Smokey’s hindquarters. To avoid being
knocked down, Smokey lifted a leg and let the steer slide under him. But the longhorn, instead of
sliding through and moving on, shoved his body under Smokey’s belly, stood up and raised the
horse and Justin into the air.
Justin was so far off the pavement, being on top of both Smokey and the steer, that all he
could do was scream and kick and try to save himself. Yet once more Smokey stayed calm.
Without resisting, the horse rested on the steer, who was scrambling to regain his balance. But
the longhorn staggered and again crashed to the pavement.
Smokey did not go down with him. Still composed, the horse raised his back leg, stepped
over the steer’s body and kept moving. Slowly Smokey worked his way through the herd to the
side of the street. There he stopped and waited with Justin safe on his back, while the longhorns
passed.
After Smokey had protected him in such a crisis, Justin realized, more than ever, that the
horse truly was his best friend.
On Thin Ice
One February afternoon, Jim Gilchrist went for a walk with his Rottweiler, Tara, and his
golden retriever, Tiree. As they usually did in the winter, they trudged along the frozen shore of
Canada’s Lake Simcoe. For awhile, the walk was pleasant and invigorating. The dogs bounded
through the snow as nimbly as huskies.
But then more snow began to fall, and a freezing wind blustered across the lake. Gilchrist
decided to turn back toward home. To get there without having to slog through snow banks, he
called Tara and Tiree and led them four hundred yards offshore to walk on the lake’s ice. The
snow became a near-blizzard; and as Gilchrist plowed on, he could see only a short distance in
front of him. Snow clung to his eyelashes, blanketed his
shoulders and whitened the dogs’ coats.
As Gilchrist hurried along, his dogs ran off in different
directions to explore the ice. Suddenly, with a loud crack, the
ice gave away beneath him, and he slid into the lake. Fighting
panic, he grabbed the jagged edge that circled him and tried to
pull himself back out; but each time, pieces of ice broke off in
his hands, and he fell back in the water.
The ice, he realized, was not nearly strong enough to hold onto while he pulled his two
hundred pounds out of the lake. As he thrashed around to keep from sinking in his heavy, sodden
clothes, his mind raced with thoughts of death. He’d heard of snowmobile riders who’d fallen
through ice on that very lake and had died so quickly that rescuers found them at the bottom with
their hands still clenched around their handlebars. Gilchrist would die just as quickly. In such icy
water, he gave himself, at most, five minutes to live.