As you may have noticed I have depreciated myself as an animal person. What I forgot to mention was my HORSE PERSON escapades. The following picture is the horse I was given the pleasure to board.

After my juju failings with my cattle raising venture. I allowed a neighbor to board her two horses. In exchange we could ride them. These would be untrained and treacherous Arabians … at least by my estimation. They knew where to bite and even the owner got to close they bit her on her breasts.
Nice girls huh. Anyway, they behaved around me and strangely with my youngest daughter. Not so for the older. She stayed away from them as much as she could. As I saw it, they had pasture and a safe place to sleep. What more did they want?

 Now to the gritty: Naomi and I were riding together when the horse suddenly put on the four wheel brakes an option that horses have. (but not in the instruction booklet) Both of us were thrown off and nothing worse happened. It was a bear that was crossing in front of the horse. We got back on and came home.

A time later I was riding by myself and this breakage happened again. This time I was not so fortunate. The horse simply braked in front of a stream (moving water) it did not like. This time I went over a cliff and got injured by discovering trees and rocks I had never known before. By the time the owner came riding up … she was screaming at me to recover her damn horse, blood flowing from all of my appendages, I walked 2.5 miles home. A friend who was house-sitting my daughters remarked upon the ‘old man’ hobbling up the road.
I would later edit this from a phone call describing this event.

 

 By cliff, I mean cliff and I bounced down meeting every tree snag and boulder my body could find. My arms took the brunt of it trying to protect my head. My legs remained were untouched though battered. What I neglected to mention is that the horse owner was a NURSE!, and didn’t give a crap about my condition.

Need I say that was the end to my boarding of horses.What should have forewarned me about horses was an episode in the past.

As a ‘Tenderfoot’ Scout in more ways than one, my friend Huck and I decided to check out the nearby Girl Scout camp. As it turned out they were far more wily and knowing about boys than we were of girls. We came upon two horse backed Amazons and when questioned … assured them that we knew how to ride horses.

Somehow they discerned our lies when they had to assist us to mount. They gave both horses a big slap on the rumps and watched us bouncing up and down, totally out of control. Mind you, our legs were not long enough to reach the stirrups so when we were finally thrown we were not dragged. They got back on the horses and gave us a laughing kiss goodbye.

 Since then I have ridden Morgan’s, Thoroughbreds, and Tennessee Walkers. None would be a problem. After the treacherous Arabians the Tennessee Walkers would be like stretch limousines.

That said, the last picture reflects how I view myself.

(C) Herbert Senft 2014