... I think I am doing pretty well!
It’s been about 5 years since I last fell off Becky. That time, I fully deserved to get dumped as I had been warned and had ignored the warnings.
We were trail-riding with a couple others – cantering along a quiet country road. Becky and I were in front, and doing rather well, when Becky started to put her breaks on and sidling to the opposite side of the road. What the hell? I could see a large rock coming up on the side of the road we were on, but Becky was normally a brave girl - surely she could not have been afraid of rock! So I kicked her on and told her to stop being stupid! Just as we were about to pass the rock, she really put her breaks on, skidded forward and spun around, depositing me – rather gently all told – right in front of her feet and a meter away from the rock. Which turned out to not be a rock at all, but a massive old wombat who was nosing around for grass and just didn’t give a damn!
The look on Becky’s face said it loud and clear: "Have a closer look at your 'rock'!" A sardonic raised eyebrow would not have been out of place.
Last week, the clock struck, and it was time for me to make a fool of myself yet again. This time, we were heading out of the arena for a trail ride by ourselves (I am still stoked at our rediscovered pleasure of trail riding). I needed to close a gate and I didn’t feel like getting off Becky (primarily for the fact that she is so round now that I cannot get up on her from the ground without having the saddle roll, so always need to find some sort of step up). So I urged her forward… and walked her right into the fence by the gate – an electric fence! Poor Becky! She panicked, started bucking and shot me out of the saddle (or, rather, I figured that I was going to come off anyway as she was in no state to be reasoned with, so I just went with it).
I did apologise to her profusely, and it’s a testament to her strong nerves that she settled right down afterwards and we continued onto our trail ride.
With a bit of luck, it’ll be 5 more years before I do something silly again… and, maybe, by that time, I will mature enough not to do it at all.
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