horsesforlife

             One day many years ago, a rider, whose name is very similar to the author of this blog, decides with mulish stubbornness that she would ride.  Her decision wasn’t that quite straight forward. This rider chose to ride a horse barely broken to saddle, bareback at dinnertime.  The ending seems clear doesn’t?   But the tale is not over yet.

 Decisively, the horse refused to head out into the trails.  What horse wouldn’t?  She leaps off at the tack shed, grabs (pause for effect) a helmet and a crop.  No saddle.  The horse decides to head back to the barn for a second time.  The crop only makes it worse.  The horse heads back at a canter. 

 The helmet may have saved her life.  She remembers thinking about how she needed to land.  She couldn’t afford to have a broken arm.  And something was going to be broken.  She let the horse’s buck carry her off and she landed on her back on pavement.

             The status of her lower spine and tailbone still finds itself on the back burner.  She babied her back, while still working, for eight to ten weeks and to this day when it rains, it aches.