Flying lessons - by Alida

Flying lessons

By the way, Twister had his name when we met.  Little did I know then that his name would prove to suit him very well!  That boy could crawl underneath the paddock railing and through a hole in a wire fence to get out when he wanted to.  He also on occasion managed to flip himself over the paddock fence and landed on his back (just got up, shook it off and carried on running!).  He managed to entangle himself in the only piece of barbed wire that we didn’t spot on the ground, and we had to untangle it from his tail hair by hair!  Twister by name, Twister by nature! 

So through the years I’ve sustained a number of injuries to wrists, elbows and ankles, bruised my coccyx at least twice and have a few scars to remind me of my exploits.  My latest injury (a stress fracture on my right foot) happened two weeks ago just because I landed wrong on dismount.  Very unglamorous! 

I’ve had one fall from Fernando just a few months after I started leasing him.  I managed to scrape together the amount of courage one would normally reserve to climb Everest, and had done a few jumps at 50cm height with him.  Fernando would be quite capable of walking over the cross bar, but I would approach at a trot.  Being the show-off that he is, he would bounce into a canter one stride before the jump, and launch himself in spectacular style at least 1 meter high over the jump!  I managed to stay on and I was just thinking “Hey, I can actually maybe perhaps do this”. I approached the next cross bar and as we launched over, I heard my instructor say “Nice jump”.  Well, the next sound was a resounding THUMP.  That was me landing shoulder first on the ground, face in the dirt.  How did that happen?  I was a bit dazed and very sore.  Fernando was standing a few steps away looking mildly worried.  My kids witnessed this along with my husband, so I had to maintain my composure even though I wanted to cry like a baby!  Upon closer inspection of my saddle, it became clear that the safety catch had released the stirrup leather as I went over the jump so when I put my weight into the stirrup to sit back and balance on landing, it unhinged and fell to the ground, with me following suit. 

My husband is, fortunately, quite strong and managed to haul my bruised body back into the saddle.  He almost threw me right over the saddle!  I lost my nerve to jump completely right there.  I think the fact that even when neither the horse nor I did anything wrong, and I still managed to fall, made me think that maybe jumping is not for me.  I have since tried going over a 30cm jump in a trot, but I’ve lost my nerve.  So I guess I won’t be in contention to win the showjumping event at the next Avis Derby, but hey, that’s fine with me!

Coming up.

Dezzi goes to boot camp