Just Horsing Around

Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear or a fool from any direction. ~ Cowboy saying

Do you remember Duke and his escapades? Well, at Miss Annette's we have three large horses that like to horse around when coming in to the barn to eat and be sprayed to protect them from fly bites. Senoya has the first stall on the left, but she likes to go for a stroll in the barn just to see the other stalls, although she does not usually go into them. Hammer, the largest and sweetest of the horses, (at least he is sweet on me) is the newest and sometimes gets confused about where he is supposed to go, although he should know by now and may just seem lost because he likes the attention. Then there is Duke....

Duke purposely goes into a stall next to his, which is where an Iceland pony called Mack is already. He did this last Friday and I went into the stall to walk Duke out. Determined to stay, Duke put himself against the far wall, which made Mack have to back up and that was towards me. Mack is easy-going, but any equine can get annoyed when crowded by another horse in his own stall and the way he backed up suggested to me that he might be of a mind to kick.

Now here is the problem. If you are really close to a horse, he cannot get enough power behind his kick and you just get a strong push and maybe a bit of a bruise. If you are far enough away, you are out of the kick zone. Unfortunately, I was neither. I was in the perfect kick zone.

I backed up quickly out of the stall to get out of that kick zone and, in so doing, tripped over the lip at the bottom of the stall door. I fell down in a sitting position onto my behind on the right and then back to scrape my left elbow just a bit. Right then I was thinking how I wish Miss Annette had not laid the bricks paving the barn walk just a couple of weeks before and I had landed on the previous dirt floor. Thankfully, I had no serious injuries, but with my history of back problems I was concerned about how it would affect me later. I remember thinking "Well, my Lord, I knew injuries were likely to happen around horses and I have prayed that if all this has Your blessing that You will protect us from serious injury, particularly my daughter's piano hands."

First things first. I walked back in to get Mack out of the stall and then we had room to get Duke out and to his stall next door. All was well.

When I got home an hour or so later, I put arnica cream on the injury and did some other things later on before bedtime that are too involved to described right now, expecting to have a flare up with my back that could take weeks to calm down, but hoping I would not. The next morning, I had only a bit of tightness in my traps and upper back that was gone with just a bit of arnica cream.

Isn't God just the greatest?

Today I have a bit a soreness only if I sit a particular way so all is well enough. Today is Friday and we are going back to the barn late in the afternoon. Today I am determined the horses will not get the better of me with who goes to which stall.

Well, it is a plan. We shall see how that goes.

~ Thank you, my Lord, for protecting me, even in my own foolishness, from serious injury. ~