Took a tumble

So, riding lessons today for the first time in what feels like ages! Yay! There's been horse show after horse show, and the state fair, and on and on.

There was a benefit show today, but thankfully not all the horses went. So I got to ride my instructor's horse - Spot. He's an appaloosa, and a big, brown, beautiful spotless appaloosa. She had me wear spurs, which I've never done before.

We warmed up and did some circles and walked around, and started to trot. Did that a few times and once, he just kept going faster and faster. I couldn't get him to slow down. He wasn't listening to "whoa" very well. Finally I got him to stop and Jessi walked over and said "I think you might have had the spurs in him." Crap. I'd totally forgotten about them. I couldn't feel them, I knew my heels weren't on him but I couldn't feel the spurs. Okay, mistake realized. She helped me figure out positioning of my foot so the spurs weren't on him and I was super conscious of them being there after that. We trotted some more and all went fine. Spurs remained safely off his belly and we were doing great.

We rode a while and Jessi looked at me and said "You want to canter?" Woohoo! She tells me what to do, and how to get him to do it. "Drive the outside spur into him and kiss, just keep the spur there till he gets going." Spur again. Okay. I can do this.

We get to the long stretch of the ring, I'm mentally ready, know exactly what to do. I give him the reigns, give him a good kick and hold, and kiss. All hell breaks loose. He didn't go into a canter, he went into some horribly bouncy lope/trot/run thing. Because I've never cantered and had no idea what it was supposed to feel like, I'm thinking "Why would anyone want to do this?!" and I hang on. Sitting the trot is one thing, this was like trying to sit an earthquake. Jessi starts saying "pull him in" and I'm thinking "oh noo... this is just what Doc did." I remember the spurs, make sure that my heels are out of him, actually lost the stirrups in trying to be sure my heels weren't in him. I was trying not to pull too hard on his face because I didn't want him to run through it (ala Doc) and "WHOA" just was not working. We make it most-way around the ring and Jessi says "Bring him in here." She was standing in the middle with my 4 year-old on the old little horse. Surely he's not going to run into them and he'll stop. I guess that's what Jessi was thinking too.

So I turn him into the middle, and he heads straight for Sam's butt. The horse my daughter is sitting on. By this point, my butt is airborne out of the saddle, I'm trying to hold on with my legs, stirrups dangling, we're headed at my child running at a trot/lope. Looking back, I know what happened.

He barely missed Sam's butt because I pulled him back the other way and Jessi had Sam move forward when she realized that Spot wasn't stopping. That moment that I realized that my child was in the path, I didn't care about staying in the saddle. I didn't care about anything but keeping Spot away from her. I'm pretty sure Sam slept through the whole thing.

Once we got past her, I'm not really sure what happened. I'd lost my balance, my butt was popping really high out of the saddle, and next thing I knew, I was on the ground. Head first. I was face down in the sand thinking "Well...okay." Jessi comes running and the first thing she says is "OH MY GOD I'M SO SORRY! Are you okay?!" And I'm laying, looking at the dirt thinking "I have no idea" and kind of taking a mental assessment of where all my parts are. She says "I think he stepped on you! Can you roll over? Are you okay?"

By this point, I've kinda pushed up on my arms and I think all that hurts is my head. Jessi's mom headed over when she saw my butt popping out of the saddle because she was pretty sure I was going down.

I think I'm okay and start to get up and her mom Dee yells "Are you okay? He stepped on you!" I get up and brush the sand off. My daughter is laughing. Dee has Spot now, Jessi's standing there like a deer in the headlights and I'm thinking "Well that was fun."

Dee said he stepped on me, and my leg kind of hurt, but I couldn't tell if it was from the bite Anya gave me, or if it was from falling, or if he had stepped on me. It wasn't nearly as bad as when I got bit, so I was pretty sure I was fine. I took my helmet off and kinda walked a minute and aside from my head hurting, I was good. Dee's holding Spot still and Jessi asked if I wanted to quit for the day. I was okay, I didn't see any reason to stop and said "No, I'm good." Dee said "You've got a kid watching, you have to get back on!" We all laughed and Dee said she'd fallen off a horse when Jessi was about 8. I think she said they were on a trail ride and Jessi was behind her, the horse spooked and she was bucked off and because Jessi was there watching, she had to get back on. It's one of those times you know whatever you do is going to make an impression on your kid.

Needless to say, we took the spurs off at that point. I've never had a problem making a horse go. It's the stopping that I have a hard time with.

Dee had also told me a story a few weeks before about when she backed one of their horses into an electric fence by accident. The horse got shocked, obviously, kicked, and threw Dee over his head. First she landed on the saddle horn, then she went over. He kind of hopped around her and stopped and looked back at her. She said he looked so sorry and was like "Oh gosh are you okay?" Turns out, that was Spot!

She said he kinda danced to try and side step over me when I was falling. My leg didn't hurt near as bad as I thought it should if a horse stepped on me. (Well, and compared to the bite it was nothing.) I wasn't even sure if he had stepped on me until I got home.

My husband had taken our son while we were at lessons, and thankfully he didn't see any of this. I thought maybe I just wouldn't say anything. He's not a fan of horses to begin with. I was okay, no big deal, right? He came back before we were finished and our daughter, in all her four year old glory yells "MOMMY FELL OFF THE HORSE!"

My husband looked at me, sitting up on the horse. Obviously I'm okay cause I'm up there.

He's like "She what?"

And so she yells it again, this time a little bit more enjoyment in her voice. "MOMMY FELL OFF THE HORSEY!" And she laughs! Full out laughs. Then my husband laughs.

I look at Jessi and say "Nothing is a secret in our house."

I trot past and my husband says, "You're going to have to give me the details later."

"There are no details," I said and kept on going. Which of course made him laugh more.

Once I got back on, we worked on "whoa" a lot. He'd been leased out over the summer and the people who had him apparently didn't enforce "whoa." Jessi said he would stop from a full run instantly before, legs splayed if he had to, but whoa meant whoa. We trotted and once I got him to a good stop from a trot, I really wanted to try to canter again. Yeah, I know.

My daughter was done by that point, at 4 years old, she only wants to do so much. I told Jessi I wanted to try it again, but I didn't want to have to worry about her and so Dee took her and Sam out of the ring.

We walked through it again. Heel drive, loose reigns, lean back, kiss. I can do this. Jessi said "If he starts doing that bouncy thing, pull him back in and make him stop." Right, we've got "whoa" again, we can do this.

We come to the corner, headed into the long stretch of the ring. I drive in my heel with a kiss and off he goes. This time, into a canter. Jessi's yelling "Just sit, just sit! Don't do anything, just sit it!" And I feel like I'm floating on air. It was awesome. I yelled "Oh my god!" He didn't do it long before he went back into that bouncy trot thing. (They call it his "trope.") I pulled him to a stop and was just grinning, completely on a high.

"Oh my god that was SO worth it!" I said to Jessi.

"It's awesome isn't it?"

"Oh my god, yes!" It was like a drug. I wanted more. "I want to do it again."

"Okay!" she said. I did it a few more times, each time he held the canter a little longer. The last time he held it nearly a full trip around. When he finally broke stride and started troping again, I pulled him and did a completely involuntary and very loud "WOOOHOOOOOO!!!" I was euphoric. Oh to be able to do that every day!

At that moment, it completely made sense to me why cowboys yell "Yeeehaw!" I walked Spot in, he got some apple and lots of petting and I smiled like an idiot all the way home.

My jeans were full of sand from sliding on my hip. I've never had that much sand anywhere without being at the beach. I looked at my leg and there was a bruise starting. Yep, probably got stepped on. Within a few hours, I had a perfect hoof print bruised into my thigh. Except Spot has front shoes. I think he stepped on me with a front hoof because there's a darker bruising where the shoe would be on his hoof.

I said to my husband in the car on the way home, "If I had to fall every time in order to do that, I think it'd be worth it." He just looked at me like I was crazy. I probably am. But I suspect anyone who has ever felt that feeling would say the same thing.