Horse stories

 

image from Stencil

This will probably seem way different from my recent blogs, but it's not for my life experiences and isn't that what blogs are about.

I came across this YouTube through one of those things we get if we are on YouTube-- recommendations. Not sure why but it's interesting to me and might be to some of you.

Five Friends who died with horse accidents.

Although I have had my own interests in horse, I have only a few experiences to share. In my historical novels, I have horses as part of the stories-- more rarely in the contemporary but also in the urban fantasy novels. I base some of that on my times on horseback--though i am not remotely a good horse person. 

Growing up, my favorite books were the Black Stallion series and had almost all of them from various Christmas or birthday gifts. Because my father was allergic to horses, we couldn't have them-- with one exception. He decided to give it a try and we got a gelding, which worked for a while before it began to make my father sick. I had enough experience with him (don't remember if I knew his name). One of them was life experience kind. I saddled him and rode up the dirt road on our property that led to the back of our 80 acres. All had seemed well, until I turned him to head back to the farm. He began to run. I had little control and pulled on the reins to stop him. He stopped all right and I went right over his head. I was not hurt but definitely got scared by it. Not long after that he was gone from the farm but not because I told anybody. I did not. it wasn't the horse's fault.

I had a couple of trail ride experiences in later years. One went smoothly, along the Metolius River. Lovely time. The second was heading into the pine forest in that area. The horse I was riding apparently was what can be called barn sour as when we all turned, he broke into a run to head for the barns. I remembered my earlier experience, thought I can never stay on and ahead was a paved road. So, I kicked my feet out of the stirrups and rolled to the right side of the trail, all loose dirt. If i hadn't been wearing a sleeveless shirt, all would have been well, but I was, scraped my shoulder and had to head to a nearby town for a tetanus shut.

Horses continued to fascinate me. I debated taking lessons when I was in my 50s but just never did it. Our Oregon farm wasn't good for horses, too wet, although we boarded a friend's horse for a few years before she died of old age. For our limited land, we had enough cattle and sheep, sometimes too many, and horses didn't make sense.

My other horse experiences were pretty much without incident. At my age, there won't be more as starting over with horses would make no sense now. I still love them but do see the need to know what you are doing with them-- and even then, things can go wrong as you will see in the link, if you read it. .