30 Day Blogging Challenge Day 9- Your worst fall
Well here we are at day number 9 in my 30-day blogging challenge! This is 9 days down, 21 more to go! By the time I am done with this challenge, you will all know so much more about me and my horses as well as my strengths, and my weaknesses. I wanted to offer a little more to you about myself, and thanks to me reading the incredible blog She Moved To Texas, I found her 30-day blogging challenge and decided to emulate what she had done. It’s interesting to note, she just recently changed the layout of her blog, and it is really nice! I loved the way she shared 30 days of looking into her life, so I wanted to do the same, with a few twists in some of the topics.
If you have any experience riding and working with horses, you will inevitably have a fall, no matter how hard you try not to.
Over my career with horses I have had a handful of falls, and injuries related to falls. Broken ribs, broken fingers, bruised tail bone,
The worst fall I have had was when I was 17 years old. I was at a gymkhana, running barrels. I knew my horse very well, and I had owned him for about 2 years. He was a great little paint gelding that was very calm, and had a quiet personality.
I was very excited about this gymkhana, because this was the first time my mother was able to come and see me ride. I’m not sure if I was so focused on that that I forgot to check my cinch, but whatever the reason, I didn’t check my cinch, and going to the first barrel, my saddle rolled, and I went under my horse.
I remember the dirt in my mouth (that was awful) and thinking “holy crap, I bet there is horse poop in my mouth!” And spitting it out. And I stood up briefly, felt dizzy, and then looked at my hand. There was a bunch of flesh dangling from my thumb, and I lost it, started screaming and fell back down.
Thankfully my mother did not arrive to see me fall under my horse. She didn’t get there until after they had me in the back of an ambulance wrapping up my hand. Sadly, that was the last time my mom ever came to watch me at a horse show.
That is possible why she has such an aversion to horses too. Sometimes when we don’t see an accident happen, but hear about it we picture the worst case scenario of how it happens. This can make the instance much worse than it really was.
And something else that happened that day was I actually ended up with a head injury from that fall.
Once of the adults that was in the riding group I was in swore my horse’s front hoof nearly came down on the back of my head, but he scrambled and stepped on my hand instead. He said I was so lucky, that fall could have been so much worse.
And as a teenager, I never wore a helmet. I was a western rider, and my friends didn’t wear a helmet, so there was no way I was going to wear one. I was very lucky that day. Stupid luck, but I was lucky.
After that incident, I did get a helmet as a gift from my mom, and I did where it, most of the time.
But probably one of the hardest things about this fall was getting back on after it happened. Even though my horse didn’t buck, or spook to cause my fall, it was still difficult to get back on, and get back into my riding routine. But the next day, even with my hand bandaged up after going to the emergency room, I did get back on. And every subsequent fall I have had, I back on the horse. It is scary, but after a fall you have to get back on.
The experience of falling off your horse is unsettling in my opinion, but when it does happen it’s important to replay the even and figure out what you can d0 different next time to prevent it from happening again. After this fall, I always recheck my girth (cinch) before I climb up on my horse.
Maybe now because I know better, or just out of habit, I always wear a helmet when I ride, and even most times when I am lunging my horses. Maybe I have finally realized that my head is pretty important, or I don’t like thinking about what could happen if I fall off again. I got incredibly lucky once, and I am not willing to tempt fate and see if I can be that lucky again.
