Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Horses Are Dangerous.

Pasture full of some danger.
In case you forgot, horses are awfully alarming when they injure someone. Even if the injury was unintentional. While I was out scrubbing Bacon's tail yesterday, I kept playing a scenario in my mind. That scenario involved kicking. Why was I all of the sudden thinking about my loving horse kicking me?

Because. Horses are dangerous.
Oh hey look. Some danger happening.
A local equestrian and friend had an incident on Sunday that has been heart wrenching and devastating. He is a super friendly kid (I swear everybody knows him) about to go to college for the first time. I use to compete against him on Vegas. He shows up to jump nights. He paddocks race ponies. And he was kicked in the chest so hard that his heart stopped.

Yep. It stopped.

From what I know, somebody was there to perform CPR on him and he came back, but he was without a heart beat for so long that they are worried about brain damage. The hospital kept him in a medically induced coma to let him heal before seeing if he could wake up successfully. They started the process last night, and the horse person and fighter that he is, was trying to wake up too fast. So there is some hope.
Just leading some danger around.
It is amazing seeing all of the horse community over here rallying together for him. I watched that happen another time when another friend of ours had a horse rear and fall on top of him, and the saddle horn went through him and was touching the arena dirt. That man is now one of the friends rallying for this new fallen equestrian.
Jumping some danger over some stuff.
We as a group are frickin' insane if you think about it. We usually get hurt at one point or another, and COME BACK. "Silly 1,200lb animal, let's try this again. Let me climb on you and guide you. Let me pick up your legs. Let me strap things onto you. Hey, why don't you climb into this dark rattling moving box so I can take you somewhere and climb on you some more."  We should have BAD ASS tattooed across our body. Or dumb ass? Either may work. What is it about horses that makes us come back after injury? All I can say is you can't keep me away.
I love me some danger though.


11 comments:

  1. oh no - i hope your friend wakes up without issue and recovers fully! :(

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  2. I think Dumb bad ass covers it? I hope your friend recovers 100%. Freak accidents like that are so scary/sad.

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  3. Super scary. Happy he's getting a lot of support and hope he heals up good as new.

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  4. I agree with Lauren....dumb ass is probably right. :)

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  5. I hope your friend recovers well and I'm so happy he's getting so much support! I can't tell you how many people called us insane after my mother's recent accident and told us we needed to get out of horses and put the horse down...our reply? "We're stupid and crazy for having them but we'd be miserable and crazy without them" I think we're wired differently, lol.

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  6. I hope your friend gets well soon! I got kicked 3 months before freshman year in college. Double barreled to the liver. I had a level 3 liver laceration (which is a big deal) and several broken rib. I was lucky enough to not need surgery but it took years to full recover from it. To this day I am so thankful that the horse didn't have hind shoes. Because if he did, I'd be dead.

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  7. A local kid had that same thing happen. :( She was eventually ok. It's amazing how many different ways there are to be hurt around horses. I hope your friend recovers well and swiftly.

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  8. Horse people are a special kinda crazy. Some more than others too. Best wishes for the kid.

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  9. Thinking of your friend...

    It really is insane what we do. I want to know who the first person who thought, "Let's climb onto this gigantic animal with a flight instinct and see how long we can stay there," was. The fact that we can even sit on horses is amazing.

    Sometimes you fall off and you die. Sometimes you fall off and you're fine. It's not a reason to stop riding.

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  10. When I started riding, one of my mom's friends told her straight up, "Horse people have their own brand of crazy."

    Your post sums it up- we strap things to a 1200lb animal with a mind of it's own that chooses to do what we want to do. We sit on danger, jump over danger, climb all over danger, and love every minute of it.

    I hope your friend comes through ok- he sounds like a fighter who will back on a horse before the doctors clear him :-)

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