Dog Dashes Out Of House With Carrot For Her Horse BFF

Nov 08, 2020

We all know that dogs are extremely intelligent. We have seen time and time again how dogs have rescued humans, hunted down criminals, and led disabled persons to safety. In this cute video from 2017, a dog's wit leads her to make a new friend, and we are sure that the horse is thankful for this interaction.

We all have that one friend who knows just what to do when we are feeling down. Oftentimes, it is intuitive. Good friends simply know when our spirits need lifting or we are having a rough time.

Apparently, this type of intuition extends to animals, too. This cute video of a dog racing outside to take a carrot treat to its horse best friend is possibly the cutest thing we have ever seen. Sensing that her friend's favorite treat is a carrot, this dog decides to take matters into its own paws and deliver a snack to the barnyard.

When it was time to feed the horse a snack, the dog would bolt straight into action to become the horse's friend and provider. As soon as Kevin Bolf shared the video on social media, it gained thousands of views, likes, and comments almost immediately. The video currently has nearly 70,000 likes.

At the beginning of the video, you can see a dog emerge from the house with a carrot in its mouth. She is on an important mission, as you can tell by the way she barges off the front porch and toward the pasture.

Running through the stables and out into the field, viewers are left in shock and question for a minute, as they try to decide what exactly this pup is up to.

You can tell as the dog approaches the horse that neither fear each other, which is not what we would expect. Slowly approaching her friend, it is almost like the horse is happy to see the dog. Neither one of them seem nervous at all.

Nudging a carrot towards the horse, the little dog seems very proud of its offering. The horse reaches out slowly, grasping at the carrot before taking an initial bite. Before we know it, the carrot is completely gone. The horse clearly appears to have enjoyed this little snack that this cute pup brought out to it.

Interestingly, new research has suggested that horses and dogs share a common language of play, according to National Geographic. Both animals have synchronous behavior and keep their mouths open when they play together. 

Remarkably, both animals can also rapidly mirror the expression of the other’s face, which is a behavior called rapid mimicry. This behavior is also seen in other animals, such as primates, meerkats and bears, but this is the first time that a play with facial mimicry is documented between different species. 

The idea for this study was sparked when a researcher saw a dog and a horse playing together and sought to find more videos where natural playfulness between a horse and a dog was observed without any human interference. Her study sheds light on an entirely new aspect of the relationships between dogs and horses.

Barbara Smuts, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Michigan, also told National Geographic, “It’s even more noteworthy given the large size difference between horses and dogs. The dog is vulnerable to injury by the horse, and the horse has a deeply ingrained tendency to fear animals who resemble wolves.”

Interestingly, dogs and horses share a relationship of a predator and prey from an evolutionary point of view, but thanks to centuries of domestication, this is no longer true. The video below certainly shows that dogs and horses share a loving bond together under the right circumstances. 

Lastly, another unique characteristic between dogs and horses connects them further: both can recognize facial expressions of their own species as well as humans. You may have already known or experienced that dogs and horses can “sense” what a human is feeling around them and act accordingly. This study is taking the first steps to definitively prove that this is true. 

As we continue to know more about animals today than we have ever known before, we are always surprised to learn that animals have deeper and more innate lives than we can see at first glance. 

For many of us who have spent our entire lives around animals, it is an already known and encountered fact that animals are deeply sensitive and intuitive creatures that make our lives infinitely better. When animals strive to make other species’ lives better as well, such as in this video, we can’t help but feel warm and fuzzy inside. 

Let us know if you enjoyed this video of a dog giving his friend horse a little treat. We sure did! Show it to your friends and loved ones.