Another One Bites the Dust

Because it's NEVER a bad time for Queen.

Unfortunately, the "another one" in this instance is me.

Mr. Moses is, as we know, a very sensitive soul. He gets his feelings hurt if he thinks I'm mad at him. He doesn't like fly spray. But he's also Lazy. As. Hell.

When I broke him, you may recall, my main issue was getting him to goooooooo forrrrwaaaaaarrrrrd. That really remains the central training issue to this day.

I got so tired of kicking him last week that I finally decided to put spurs on. I hadn't, because I wanted him to understand what the leg meant, and because we spent so much time leaping around that I didn't want to accidentally goose him and really get in trouble. But the time was right, so on went the spurs. I touched him with one in that first ride and he was like "WHAT THE FUCK" and jumped straight up into the air, but then the little shit went forward so I was happy.

Put some bass in your walk, cover girl.

The next day I put them on again. Another student of M's was at the farm, someone I like and respect very much. I was chatting with her while I was getting on Mr. Wiggles, and then... I must have touched him with one of my spurs, because he immediately took off bucking. I'm pretty sure I held on for the whole 8 seconds, but then he was going right at a jump. I was all "FUCK, we're either going over that and I fall off, or he's going to swerve and I fall off." I was sorta hoping for the swerve, because the jump was one in a line of four. I had absolutely no steering or control whatsoever.

He swerved.

I fell off.

RIGHT on my head, too. In my pretty helmet that's less than a year old.

He then proceeded to gallop around the ring like a fucking lunatic. Of course M was sitting on her most spooky spooktacular horse and Mo kept heading right for him. M brandished her dressage whip at him and got off when she could. I grabbed Mo, having leapt up before checking to see if I was okay. My neck was killing me but everything else seemed okay--except my left pinky, but who needs those anyway.

The student held Mo for me while I removed my goddamn spurs, hobbled back to the barn to get the lunging stuff, and got super pissed at myself for not staying on.

Oh, and also, the things I've had to replace in the last month include my car, and that day it looked like I was probably going to also have to replace my computer (didn't, thank christ--but that's why no posts last week). So the thought of replacing my helmet was bad enough, but it's just been a killer summer for me for a bunch of small and large reasons, and I wanted shit to calm down so I could enjoy a ride on my lovely horse.

Go. Somewhere.

I trundled back up to the ring with the lunging gear and lunged him until M was done riding. He was super chill on the lunge line, licking his lips right away. I think he knew he was in trouble. After M put her horse away, she had me get on while she held him, go trot around, come back over, get off, get on, go trot around... we did that about eight times, until I was telling her about my annoying DMV trip that morning. After that, we proceeded to have quite a nice ride. Ha. Ain't that always the way.

So, aside from the time Mo tripped last fall and we both fell down, this is the first time I've fallen off since high school. Which was a looooong time ago. My sore muscles have recovered by now, but my ego hasn't. That's horse training, though.

The plan now is that I'm allowed to not wear spurs for a couple weeks, but then I need to put them back on. And no cheating with rubber spurs or any of that crap. He has to learn to go in regular spurs. He'll be fine. He's not been abused, he has no excuse. I won't use them to jump for awhile, I don't think, but it would be SO NICE to have them on the flat when he's like "this snail crawl is a totes acceptable trot, Mommy. The dressage judge will think I'm super cute with my little blaze face and let me do whatevsies!"

The thing that holds this horse back is NOT going to be SPURS. Good gracious.