Oooo, yeah. I've had one or two - maybe not as spectacular as some, but
I am perfectly okay with that, universe!
The very first one wasn't the result of a fall - but it
was the result of a totally barn-sour mare, an instructor not paying any attention, and a kid that didn't realize warning signs were being given until the hoof impacted the thigh.
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| Same mare, different day. |
There was the time a certain bay mare of my instructor's decided that she didn't like how I was lunging her. Her choice of how to express this was to flip me the equine bird and take off at a full gallop for the other end of the arena.
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| Yes, I'm talking about you. |
But hey, that was the day I discovered that:
a) Flat canvas lunge lines can cause some hellacious rope burn, and
b) The water at the bottom of black horse troughs is still cold, even in the middle of summer in an unshaded spot, and
c) Cold water doesn't really do much for rope burn blisters.
There was the time I found out that leather reins can also cause rope burn, when a certain idiot chestnut Arab mare of that same instructor's dumped me. (Through no fault of her own, really - that was a confidence issues fall. In hindsight, it's both a vaguely hilarious fall and pretty pathetic. Hooray for a slow-motion fall as a result of a perfectly predictable behavior!)
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| Good with kids, but a brain full of butterflies. |
Same instructor,
third instance (though in her defense, I rode with her for a decade). Big brown Thoroughbred chickened the hell out when a car went down the gravel road near the arena and spooked, first into a gallop and then out from under me.
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| Actually, you can almost see the section of fence where I fell in this picture. It's a bit further to the right. |
Two problems here.
1) I was riding in the morning before college classes. I basically had time to leave the barn when I was done, get back to my apartment, shower, and go to class.
2) When I landed, I landed sitting on one hip, with my elbow slung up on the (tilted) arena fence. Imagine, if you will, a pose something like
this, only sitting on the right hip with the legs extended to the side, and you've just about got the right idea.
I got back on, we finished the lesson, and then I went home, showered, and headed to campus. My first class was at 12:30.
By the time I got home that night - 5:30 or so - I had a bruise basically from hip to knee on my right thigh, a pair that together perfectly matched the fenceline if I bent my elbow, and one on my left shin that I never quite figured out where the hell it came from. Every one of them was a spectacular shade of purple.
I would like to note that shoving a gallon baggie of ice down my pants to try and make the giant freaking bruise less sore was not entirely effective. Hilarious and frustrating, depending on just what it was I was trying to do at the time, but not effective.
