Horses are one of God’s truly beautiful creations.
All of us have seen horses running wild and free, at least in a movie, right? The power and grace a horse displays when its running brings a sense of joy and the feeling of freedom. Watching a running horse’s mane and tail flying in the wind, the power that’s visible in their sleek muscular body can stir deep emotions within each of us.
I’m blessed in that I get the opportunity to witness this often, live, up close and personal. My brother and sister-in-law and a couple of my sister-in-law’s brothers own land in southeastern Oklahoma outside a small community where they pasture 10 horses. Most of the horses are trained and we ride them on weekends, sometime for several hours at a time. We have a mix of quarter horses, a few mixed breeds and a few mustangs that were captured in the wild and bought locally at auction.
Unfortunately there’s a down side to horses because if you spend enough time around them you’re likely to get stepped on, kicked or bucked off. I had two out of three of the down side experiences happen to me a couple of weeks ago, both on the same day.
My sister-in-law’s bothers, Jimmy and Larry, and I work with horses that we want to developed into better riding ponies and we also work with 2 wild mustangs that we are training to be riding ponies, hopefully. Jimmy, Larry and I were taking turns working with one of the wild mustangs named Bashful one morning and we discovered that Bashful kicks when he is startled and it doesn’t take much to startle Bashful. Consequently, we took extra care in how we handled him and we worked on training him not to kick. I was taking a turn handling Bashful and I decided to bruch him; bad idea. Apparently the brush spooked him and he kicked; and even though I was standing at his side when he kicked, he still managed to land a glancing blow on my right thigh. Man, did that hurt like everything. So for the rest of the day I limped around on a bad leg.
Later that same day I decided to work with a somewhat trained horse name 
Goose. This picture is of me and Goose. Goose hasn’t been fully trained to neck rein and he hasn’t been trained to work away from other horses. So here I was with a bum leg riding a half trained horse that was getting nervous and jumpy because I rode him away from his fellow horses. At that moment, something spooked Goose and he bucked sideways and threw me out of the saddle and I hit the ground and bruised my hip and shoulder. So, by the end of the day I wound up with a bum leg and bruses on my hip and shoulder. By the way, did I say that all the damage was on my right side. On top of humiliation of being bucked off a horse I had to deal with Jimmy and Larry laughing so hard they were almost falling down. They took great pleasure in my physical pain.
This happened a couple of weeks ago so I’m pretty much healed and we’ve scheduled a weekend camp out and horse back riding trip later this month. We’re going to camp out under the stars and ride horses all weekend in the mountains of southeastern Oklahoma. Stay tuned for further developments.
I love horses and I wouldn’t change a thing about the blessing I have been given to have the opportunity to experience one of God’s true creations. But if you hang around a 1,200 pound horse long enough you’re going to get stepped on, kicked or bucked off!
rodgerblaker
