By 8 AM, I had been thrown from a horse, and by 11 AM I was in Vegas Baby! That about sums it up. =-)
Okay, the trip to Vegas was for shopping, so it was not a thrilling time in the casinos blowing money, the deed to the house, and all of an underfunded retirement fund. But it was fun anyhow to just look around a couple of stores.
I got up at 5:30 to give Jordan a chance to have a sunrise ride on the horses. We took Patches, a charming rider, but ever hungry, and Precious, a lousy rider, and never hungry.
Jordan got Precious, who gave him no end of trouble for the time he was on her. She would not budge, then she did, but then she’d stop and back up while he was trying to go forward. Then she’d try to kick with one of her hind legs. Finally she started trying to give a little buck. I gave up watching her do this and told JJ to trade me horses. Now, I am not sure what possesses a man to trade his perfectly sound horse for one that is trying to say “hey, I am not going to go on this ride, no matter what you do, and by the way, I am five times your size, so you just try and do what you want about it.” But, I did.
Precious tried the same routine with me, however, she added rearing to the mix. The way to stop a horse from rearing is to pull its head all the way to the left or the right so she is planting her nose right at the stirrup. She can’t get her weight upwards from that position. So I did that whenever she started acting up because I did not want her to rear up on me as I have personally never been on a horse that is rearing up.
It worked a treat, and I was able to keep her on the ground. Pulling the reign and the horses head to the side is certainly the right thing to do so long as the rider catches her about to rear up! Finally, I missed one of her gestures, and up she went. I must have blinked, and I certainly don’t remember much about how she got herself up there, but somehow I seem to remember a flash of the ground underneath me. Perhaps that was because I hit it and it smashed into the backs of my eyeballs! Whatever the case, I landed on my back, then jumped up, grabbed the reign, and the riding whip to give her the obligatory “don’t do that” response. If anyone noticed the sky turning a darker shade of blue, that was me too. Amid all this, I could hear JJ keep asking, “are you all right?” So I turned quickly to him and said, “my back hasn’t felt better in years!” I had popped my entire spine when I hit the ground, and am thinking it is a cheap alternative to a professional chiropractor. I may be offering services, if not needing them first. Really, I realized straight away how lucky I was that I did not hit a rock or have the horse come over on me, or something worse. And that realization is what turned me back to Precious straight away to finish painting her blue with more language and the like.
The trick is not to beat the horse or abuse it all the while this stuff is happening, because the goal is a trained horse, not a problem horse. So after letting her know what’s what about her actions, I lead her along for a few yards, then got back on her. After that, I had very few problems with her, and she rode the trail about as well as could be expected from Patches.
As it turns out, the business people say about getting back in the saddle again is not about overcoming your fear of falling out, it is about teaching the horse that no matter what, you will be coming back for more, and that her endeavors to kick you off are, and will remain fruitless. It took actually getting knocked off for myself to finally learn what that expression really means!
As for our Jordan, he told me after that he really wished he had my camera for that, because “Precious looks so beautiful when she is reared up like that!” Cheers JJ!