So, about the horse thing…

Sterling

When I was a little girl, we would go to Palo Alto, Long Beach, and eventually Seal Beach, California every year to visit my maternal grandparents. One of the earlier years I remember, we went to the Ponderosa Ranch as part of the vacation too. The Ponderosa was a theme park inside of Nevada and was sometimes used for the filming of the television show by the same name.

One of the features of the theme park (after getting robbed in a fake robbery on the way to the main house) was a trail ride on the ranch horses. Not much really shined about the trail ride. While I was a decent rider, honestly I was too inexperienced to know much about horses other than the ones we used were considerably bigger than me, well taken care of, and quite bored.

On our way back home from the trail ride we were crossing a “ridge” of sorts, heading ultimately back to the stable. The horses really just followed each other one after the other along the trail. My horse decided that he had another idea in mind and decided to go after some grass along the trail side. It was holding up the line of horses, my mother’s included, and while he munched his happy way through the grass, the trail leader shouted from the front of the line to just pull up and back, hard on the reigns because he would just get back in line.

Perhaps he misjudged the strength of a little girl. Perhaps I did something wrong. Perhaps there was something wrong with the horse. I don’t know and won’t. But the net result of my efforts was that the horse backed up quickly into my mother’s horse and a major fight ensued. In the middle of the fight, I got bucked off. But instead of merely getting thrown (it never works like the movies show, by the way), I got trapped by the stirrup of the western saddle on my horse. It twisted around my leg and my foot was trapped inside it because I was so small.

The horses continued to fight with me under them and when the fight ended with my horse taking off, I was still trapped in the stirrup. My horse spooked for a hundred feet or so, but was so startled by the little girl still attached, that he stopped and tried to trample me so he could get free of me. Somehow I managed to twist and turn away from the majority of the damage and get my foot free.

The extent of my injuries involved the obvious bruises that would happen in a situation like this, but also severe damage to my right calf. The majority of the skin had been peeled down but was still attached, and one of the horseshoe nails gouged a large wound in the muscle of my right leg. I was in shock almost immediately.

The ranch hands took me to the staff hospital on site. The doctor was a very nice man to a very scared little girl. We ended up heading back to our hotel after he fixed me up and I discovered how good casino security really is. My dad was carrying me and I was miserably tired. We didn’t make it five feet inside the casino before we were whisked into the care of the casino staff doctor who double-checked the ranch work and gave us additional bandages.

I remember precious little of the rest of that vacation. I still remember the son of one of the ranch hands, younger than me, who came running to sit by my side with his one-eyed lassie dog. The dog sat by me with all the chaos going on and let me pet him and the little boy repeated over and over “My horse. It was my horse that hurt you. I’ll shoot him myself.” I remember convincing him it wasn’t the horse’s fault, but mine. I remember being in the hotel bathroom locked in the room with all the bandages and refusing to come out or let my parents in. They wanted to change the dressing on the wounds and I wouldn’t let them do it. I did it myself.

I tried riding horses one more time when I was a teenager in high school and the experience was a dismal failure. I was thrown hard within 5 minutes of getting on the horse and landed in a rocky field, resulting in a trip to the hospital to be sure none of my ribs were broken.

I believe it’s safe to say that while I’m not terrified of horses (I prefer cautious), I am, without a doubt, terrified of riding them.

It’s taken me until this weekend to come closer to a horse than mere petting. I got up on the horse you see in the picture here. He comes from draft horse stock and is considerably taller than me at the shoulder. It takes a box to mount him because of his height. Truthfully, I was just going to sit on him for a little bit. But he had other ideas. He turned around, walked in a big circle, and headed back to where the other horse was standing. 20 feet total at best, 10 there and 10 back maybe.

I’m ashamed to say I liberally used alcohol to calm my nerves after. The thought of doing it again makes me queasy. I’m not sure I can do it. But I did do it once. And that’s a nice first step.