Never Been Kicked (Until Now)

I would like to begin with profuse apologies for not posting a blog in months.  In my defense, I have been working on a book during my writing time, but I should not neglect the blog and my readers (or reader if the case may be).  That being said, the reason I am posting again is because a friend of mine has recommended the blog to a horse-loving friend of hers.  Nagging works.  Okay, she didn't nag me, but knowing that someone might actually try to read this has inspired me to get on it.  Since my suspected new reader is a horse person, I will tend to talk about that more.

As you may recall, I was working with a young white stallion pretty regularly until daylight savings time.  That loss of evening daylight really messed me up.  For a while all I could manage to do in the evening was feed the horses and that was it.  Of course, that process got a lot more difficult because of the oil well next our house.  It is unsafe to have the horses around during the drilling process.  Mainly due to the mud pit that has oil residues in it.  So, the oil company hired us to put in a new fence (which was nice) and put the horses on the other side.  If you reference the map on the 14 July 2011 post it is just north of tank 2 and goes from West to East.  The upshot of this is that we have been feeding the horses in the pens for several months now.  Despite the daily feedings, they have started roaming through the old fence on the east perimeter and getting into that deer lease.  Recently, Anna, Dad and I have been rebuilding that fence and clearing a path for the Gator to go down in.  Before, it had been overgrown by thicket.

It was a cold day one afternoon so I was going to open up the barn in the pens for the horses.  I figured I should lead one of them in there so they would know about it.  Silver (the white stallion, I know it's cheesy, but I like it) is actually the easiest horse to catch so I started walking down the fence toward his bucket.  His back end was out to the pens, but kind of pointing toward me, so I took a cautious approach.  It is good policy to not walk up to a horse or cow with it's back anywhere near you just straight on.  You kind of saunter up, side first, not to turn all your vitals to the dangerous end.  So, I'm easing down the fence, right leg in front and my hand out so I can push off him if he swings all the way around.  He sure enough did.  He came around and my hand was right there.  Instead of letting me push off, I think it spooked him.  He jumped forward and landed a kick to my thigh.  A person knows in his head that a horse has power, but until you feel it, it just doesn't sink in.  I shudder to think of what could have happened, especially if I hadn't turned my body.  He easily could have broken my leg regardless, and at first I though he did.  I jumped back, grabbed the fence, gave a brief thought to throwing everything I had in my hands at him to show him I was not pleased, but wasn't sure if I was in condition to do battle, so I quickly limped out back to the truck.  Fortunately, Anna was there and she drove me home.

God was with me that day.  I was out for the count for the rest of the day.  I could barely walk around the house, but we iced it really good and in a day or two I was back to normal.  He did manage to get my keys.  He broke the keyless entry clicker off my key chain, but other than that there was no damage.  I barely even bruised.  I finally decided that I just spooked him.  He is pretty gentle, but he loves his food.  The next training step will be to get in there with a buggy whip and break him of turning his back to me in the first place.  After that he will be ready for the saddle.