My Life Altering Experiences

Dangerous Riding

 

Dangerous Riding

There were many times that during the course of my riding and training of horses that I took many hard spills and falls. Some of these are more memorable than others.

            There was one day not too long after I had just moved Jade to her new barn that my father and I had built together. I was riding in my ‘arena’ which at the time, and still is; just a pasture that at the time hadn’t had the grass starting to grow in it. But we were riding along and everything was normal when Jade accidentally drifted into the electric fence. Being that she is a horse and getting zapped by the fence hurts, (it does, trust me, it’s knocked me on my ass a few times) she freaked out and bucked a few times and jumped sideways. I wasn’t expecting this and was unprepared for the sudden movement of her body beneath me.

            I hit the ground, and hard, but when I landed I landed right in front of her. She was moving forward to get away from the fence and she had no choice but to step on me because she couldn’t stop fast enough to not hit me. Except that she didn’t hit me. At the last second she pushed off the ground with one foot and somehow managed to leap over me and land on the other side. She landed and stumbled, nearly falling down and hitting the dirt herself. As soon as she regained her balance she spun around and walked over to me.

            I have no idea how she didn’t land on me but I got lucky. I was sitting up taking inventory of my various limbs when she started butting me with her nose and nickering, it was her way of asking if I was ok.

            A few years ago I was teaching Jade how to jump and I was just learning myself as well. It was just the two of us in the arena as well as my friend Taylor who was riding a horse named Bayu that we were training. We had one jump up in the middle of the arena and it was set at about a foot and a half. We had already gone over it a few times and I was getting ready to go over it again.

            I don’t really know what happened, I think we were out of sync with each other, I was still leaning too far forward when we landed and I kept going forward. But the next thing I knew I was hanging off her neck. My arms were wrapped around her neck right behind her ears and my legs were wrapped around her neck right in front of the saddle. I was upside down hanging off her neck like a sloth. She stopped, and I let go and landed on my feet. Then she turned to look at me and her expression said something along the lines of ‘how the hell did you end up there and why didn’t you stay on like you’re supposed to?”

            I couldn’t help but laugh at the absolute hilarity of the situation.

 

 

During one summer I had a riding lesson and I had been doing a lot of bareback riding (Riding without a saddle or pad) my horse just happens to be short enough to jump on from the ground. I still have to work at it a bit though, well this time I jumped up and landed on her back but I landed too far back and instead landed more on her hips. Somehow she took this as the signal to GO and while I was still across her back on my belly she took off at a dead run.

            What happened next was all pure instinct on my part. I managed to throw my right leg over her back and reach forward and wrap my hands in her mane. I pulled myself forward until I was sitting astride her like I should be and grabbed the reins. I pulled her around in a one rein stop and it was awesome. By the time we made it to a stop I noticed that in the background this entire time my trainer had been yelling instructions to me but I had been so focused on my horse that I never even heard her.

            It was one of the funnest things that has happened and I told her so. The first words that came out of my mouth were “Awesome!! Can we do that again??” she just gaped at me before she burst out laughing like crazy.