delilah_banks

I started riding horses when I was about eleven years old. My mom was an avid equestrian when she was young and wanted me to follow her over the jumps that bruised and scared her for life.

I went through various horses over the few years of professional riding lessons, and fell off various times for various reasons. It wasn't unheard of for me to come home with bruises in the shapes of hoves on my ass that crippled me for a whole week until I got on the horse again. Even though I would cry through the night because of the pain in my muscles, I loved the feeling of being on a horse, the smell of the horse's nose, the feeling of fly spray falling on my skin.

My junior year of high school, I started riding Dancer. He was an abused polo pony that my instructor adopted at two hoping to settle him down. She only let me ride him. This isn't going to be like the Seabuscuit story. I didn't break him into this wonderful horse to win medals and such. He was wild and didn't like people on his back, and I was one of them. Each time I got on that horse, I would get thrown off. It got to the point that I feared him (something you should never do as a rider).

I had just finished my lesson, and started walking Dancer around the ranch. A feed truck came racing in, spooking the horses in the pasture as well as Dancer. He took off and as I hard as I pulled, I couldn't stop him. About a quarter mile into the gallop my arm hit a tree, flinging me off his back and on to the ground. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't see (my helmet was on my face, but in a panic, I thought I was dead), and my arm couldn't move. I got up after five minutes, tears streaming down my face. My instructor had gotten Dancer and forced me to get back on. I was terrified. After two minutes I was off and in my car going home.

It turned out that I broke my arm and two ribs. My mom wouldn't let me go back to the stables, and after a long break, I have become terrified of all horses.

My mom bought a horse named Chester the other day. It's the first time since the accident that I've even been near a horse. The most I could do was get on; the moment he started moving, I freaked out. But I'm jealous of my mom trotting around the round pen. I want to be on him so bad. He stepped on my foot today; I have a bruise all the way up my ankle. That didn't scare me, it was the buck he did when he wanted to run.

Wow, this is really incoherent. Oh well, it's been a long week.