Do you every have those moments when something down right out of the ordinary happens?

Hi I'm Bethany, and last week I think I finally became a rider.

          Everyone has always told me " In your riding career you will fall off lots! The more you ride the more you fall!" I never really believed them and I still don't!  If you have ever met me I am 5 foot 2 and I have a really short body and spidery long powerful legs. My gean size is 28/34! I have never hated my body and I don't think I ever will because for what I love to do (which is riding) I have the perfect built! because of my long legs I rarely ever come off the horse! Even when the horse bucks and half of me flys out of the saddle I still have a good chunk of my leg left on the saddle to grip and stay on! And that is why I have only come off 3 times in the 6 years I have been riding.

           Now let me explain the 2 out of 3 falls that I have had. the first one was I had just bought a new saddle, I had saved up all my money and bought a shiney, slippery new saddle at The Royal Winter Fair. The next day I had my riding lesson and I didn't know how to properly prepare a saddle for riding yet. But I was so determined to ride in MY own saddle that day that I didn't care and I got on my favorite horse Stella. As we were doing our warm up canter laps I felt my self slipping and sliding all over the saddle as we went around the corner I slipped right off! Just before I came off I thought " now I could try and stay on but that would be to much effort" so I just slid off and landed on my butt! Stella just stopped dead in her tracks and came back to look at me as if to say "why aren't you on me?"  The next time I fell off I had just juged the dictance after the jump wrong and Stella turned really sharply and I just took a little fall off nothing major. I just got up and got back on and did the jump again.

            Ok now for the "what just happened" part, about a week ago now I was riding the horse that was the only horse I had ever fallen off of and turned out she was the horse I bought, my Quarter horse Stella!( read all about that story in my other blog "The beginning of my first love"). Again I was just doing the warm up canter rounds around the arena and I was cantering down the long side that the door was on and my mum who had called door but I hadn't heard it poked her head in right before I had passed the gate . Stella spooked! She did the classic quarter horse turn on her hind quarters to the right and was off in the other direction before I had even blinked I knew I no longer had a horse underneath me and I was on my way to the sandy yet still hard ground. I hit the ground right on the right side of my tail bone, HARD! I heard my spin go crack and I hit my elbow so hard I skined it on the fluffy sand in the arena! And even though my horse spooked to the right I still landed on my right side! I wish I could have seen an olympic slow-mo of my fall because I must have done the splits coming off Stella. After I fell I rolled and rolled and came to a stop and I was face down in the sand! WHAT JUST HAPPENED! The first thing I did was wiggle my toes then I knew I was alive and not paralized then I just layed in the sand for a minute while my mum grabed my horse then I rolled onto my back and felt the pain. tTears started to well up in my eyes but I have always known that crying dosen't help anything! So I held back the tears while I figured out that I either had a broken or brused tail bone. Then I did what I thought was stupid but necessary. I dusted my self off, cheacked my horse for injuries and when I knew their were non, got back on the horse and finished the canter in the other direction. Then I promptly dis-mounted and I went to my chiropracter after Stella had been taken care of. It turned out that crack that I heard was my spin going so out that my legs were a half an inch different in length! I'm fine now I figured out that it was only a brused tail bone:) !

I had never before had as major fall as this, I'm sure was the first of the few ones to come. ;-)

I still run through what had happened and I remember thinking "what just happened?"

Bethany.