Can I Switch from "it" to "he" or "she" when referring to an animal in a story? [closed]

Solution 1:

It is absolutely correct to make the change. At first, the narrator can't possibly refer to the sex of the animal while he or she still doesn't know it.

Later, once the sex and name were known, you could (conceivably) have the narrator refer to the animal in the neutral gender.

It would now connote a very specific meaning: the animal is still for some reason just an object to the narrator, not a creature about whom the narrator cares at all. But this could scarcely happen in a narrative where the name of the horse became known. It would create an absurd contradiction in the tone: the horse is named Braveheart (we now know him (it) but somehow still don't care about him/it. We don't love, pity, hate, feel ambivalent, wonder about him.) It's hard to imagine a story where the writer would want to convey these contradictory ideas.