I’m linking to Snopes, which has the pictures and story. Snopes says this is unconfirmed so far. I believe it’s true, having seen my own horse chase a Doberman Pinscher, with murderous intent, and damn near catch the terrified dog.
In brief, a mountain lion was stalking a mounted hunting party’s dogs. The mule took matters into its own hooves.
Sheesh-I could’ve told you that ETF.
I have mini-mule-aka Satan’s Spawn.
Half Shetland and half donkey.
Who ever came up with that breeding combo should’ve been shot out of a cannon.
One thing about the photos that I think is odd, is that in one of the photos you can see two dogs in the background. One of the dogs is sitting. If a huge battle is going on, it seems unlikely to me that a dog would sit down.
Mules, donkeys, horses et al are very strong animals with extremely powerful legs. Anything smaller than them can pretty easily fall into the dead category if their equine assailant got them down and started stomping.
The Snopes version doesn’t have quite the same text that accompanied the emailed version I’ve seen. Here’s the email text:
Don’t forget, these are hunting dogs, not household pets.
A friend at work showed me these pictures about two months ago and told me her friend actually took them while he was hunting.
I wonder if she was tricked, or maybe she could tell Snopes a thing or two.
I don’t doubt that a mule or horse could kill an cougar. I still wonder about the photos, though. They just seem like some very calm dogs to me. Were the photos in the original email cropped in as tight? That seemed odd too. Also, they are rather good pictures. Maybe this can be explained away by the statement that the photos were taken well into the fight.
The email I got had exactly the same pictures, but with the order slightly different from Snopes. In the email, the order was:
Cougar picked up by tail
Mule kneeling;
Cougar picked up by scruff of neck (one dog visible in background)
Mule stomping (both dogs visible)
The dog may be sitting, but how can you tell how tense it was? Also, it appears from the story that the mule was defending the dogs, which it is likely to have frequently associated with in its work as a hunter’s mount. Equines are inclined to include other species – humans too – in their personal herd when they spend a lot of time with them, and they’ll attack menaces to their herd.
Several of my horse-owning friends have commented on these pics, and we’re all in no doubt that a mule could and would do this. One friend, who raises Welsh ponies, wrote this:
Another friend commented:
While I have no doubt that a mule can kill a cougar, I think the pics are staged and that the cougar was dead when the pictures were taken. My younger brother hunts cougars (which I disagree with, but that’s beside the point here) and has hounds. He says that it’s next to impossible to get them away from a kill, so I have my doubts that these dogs would be so calm and detached rather than in the midst of battle.
I know for a fact a mule (or pony, in my case) can kill a cougar. My riding instructor used to have a POA named Lady. Lady once had a foal. Lady killed a moutain lion that attempted to attack her foal.
But considering that the mule doesn’t look smacked around in the least (and it’s described as a ‘battle’, rather than 'its neck was snapped on the first blow, when the mule stomped on it), I have to question the veracity of these photos.
Darn, I meant to answer this, to wit:
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
The attitude… :eek:
Just another reason why you shouldn’t let your cats go outside…
I saw these pictures a few months ago, and I agree with you. Yes, I believe that a mule could do that, because one of our horses will go for things like that, but it’s the dogs’ attitudes that made me think it was staged (maybe right afterwards, when someone thought they should have a picture of it?)
I’ve hunted with hounds too, although not for lion, and those dogs are really into it. You have to tie them up to get them off even a dead animal. Young dogs don’t calm down until long after the killing is over, but I could see an older dog sitting there like that when his job was done, but not while the cat was still alive.