Ginger part 2

So there I was with a horse who, while lovely and friendly on the ground, didn’t enjoy riding and was dangerous and scary.  But you keep going, keep trying to get a break through… what else can you do?  He’s not sellable.

At that stage I was trying the Monty Roberts join up methods.  While I didn’t have a round yard I would make one with tall electric fence standards and tapes.  This worked fine and meant that if needed I could set up a round pen anywhere.  So before riding I would always check he was with me, would follow and attend to me.  Not sure I was doing it right, but I was trying… read the books, been to see Monty when he visited New Zealand.

I actually took Ginger out to an event… just once… and because my main intention was to keep everything calm and happy we actually had a good day.  In hand classes in the morning – why people like that I can’t fathom! Not my thing – but a good way to just hang out, relax and get used to the atmosphere.  During lunch time I tried getting on him… seemed ok, so I entered the afternoon riding classes.  Again I was careful to keep him in his own space as we rode in a circle around the judge with the other horses, and to not put any pressure on him.   Whether it was that or just a good Ginger day he was very good and was going with his head low and relaxed.  In fact someone actually came up and complemented him, saying how lovely he was!  I was stunned and thinking “Actually he’s mad!”  Later I thought “I should have sold him!”  But that wouldn’t have been a good idea, in spite of that day he still wasn’t safe or reliable.

I discovered that it was possible he actually enjoyed going to the beach.  Hooray, I’d found something we could both enjoy, perhaps this would bring about more progress.  So I arranged for my friend to come with me, George and Ginger for a nice ride along the beach.  It was the middle of a holiday weekend in the middle of summer, so parking was scarce and our normal path to the beach was blocked.  We rode for about 20 minutes before actually making it to the sand… we stopped to let children pat the horses, generally soaking up the holiday atmosphere.  But he was still feeling a bit on edge, though not doing anything wrong.  We make it to the beach, walking through the soft sand… nearly to the hard sand where I’d be able to get him trotting, get him moving forward and hopefully feeling a bit safer.  But he’s pretty relaxed and we’re walking on a loose rein, I’m not too worried.  There’s nothing around us for probably 50m or more, no dogs, no logs, nothing.  It’s not even particularly windy…

Then suddenly he’s bucking.  No warning.  No reason.  Just bang straight into a massive bucking episode, the sort you’re just not going to stay on… especially when you were wandering along on a loose rein!  However, I managed to stick on for a few bucks before hitting the ground hard, we’re on the hard sand now and looking at my helmet and the way the outer plastic peeled back, yes, I hit the ground hard.  But that wasn’t the main problem, with his next buck he came down on my leg… a blinding flash of pain.  The kind that defines the hospital’s “on a scale of 1-10 where 10 is the worst pain you can imagine…” Turns out I can imagine pretty high now.

I sit up.  My dark green jodhpurs have red mush and white mush soaking through the fabric.  Too hard.  I lie down again and wait for help.  It’s not long arriving, that’s some bonus for it being a holiday weekend I guess.  I give them my parents phone number so they can ring Mum.  “Are you Dad?”  That’s good someone is home.  I tell my friend where I’ve hidden the car keys so she can take the horses home.  I would be happy for Ginger to stay, but he’s got my saddle.  I hear someone groaning, well that’s a bit melodramatic!  I stop it.  I have a new friend looking after me, I think of her as Beach Mum now.  She keeps me talking, stops me from just closing my eyes to wait out the time until the ambulance arrives.  “They’ll be here any minute, walking across the sand”.  “They could run” I reply.  It was a little joke with us… yes when they did arrive she made sure she told me they were running!  If you have ever been to a first aid course, and felt silly doing the role playing and having to make conversation with your practice victim just be assured it really makes a difference.  As they were preparing to carry me across the beach to the ambulance she asked “Would you like me to hold your hand?”  I was surprised that the answer was yes.  I was 35 I didn’t need someone to hold my hand… at least not usually.

Across the sand, into the ambulance, onto the gas, phew.  A guy in togs and sunhat was a paramedic and was able to put a drip lure in for them.  They decide to put my leg in a splint in case it’s broken, I’m sucking on the gas.  Now I discover that you can have too much gas… so as I’m lying there sucking gas I’m thinking “I’m going to have to kill the horse”.  He’s just too dangerous, if this was a one off then ok but it’d been over a year of low achievement and high risk.  As a friend later wrote in the Get Well card “Despite knowing the horse would win in the end…”   Everyone at work had seen me trying so hard to get him used to ordinary things… and seen me failing to make progress.  Going to have to kill the horse…  So I start crying.  Of course the ambulance staff think it’s because of the pain, “We’re nearly done” they say as they finish bandaging my leg into a cardboard splint.  I hadn’t the heart to tell them I couldn’t feel a thing, a bit spaced out to tell you the truth.

On the ambulance trip from the beach to Hamilton – a bit under an hour – I made a point of having a good look around inside.  On previous ambulance trips I had always had concussion and all I could remember was staring out the small, tinted windows up high at the sky!  It’s not that exciting but at least I have now looked.

We arrive at Waikato hospital.  The back doors open and Mum and Dad are standing right there.  I don’t know what I expected but it wasn’t that.  The relief is huge and I can relax, and start crying again – apart from the killing the horse moment I’d been pretty stoic until then.

I ended up in hospital for two weeks, mainly waiting for a skin graft.  There were no bones broken which was pretty amazing. 

I had promised myself that I didn’t have to ever ride Ginger again.  I tried to give him away.  It looked promising when a local event rider was very interested as she had had a good horse by the same sire.  But he wasn’t quite big enough and she wouldn’t have been able to resell him.  I advertised him cheap, “needs expert rider”.  Someone rang “Why does he need an expert rider?”  “He bucks.”  “Just small?” “No, he keeps going until you come off.”  She told me I shouldn’t say things like that, that I would never sell him.  But he was dangerous, unless the person was capable, he could kill someone.  I was just lucky he landed on my leg, another six inches my knee would have been shot, and abdomen doesn’t bear thinking about.

He ended up going to the knacker, he recycles some – George for instance – but I don’t think he would have recycled Ginger.  He would have put a saddle on, it would be a different saddle without a fluffy girth… Ginger would have bucked.  When the guy came to pick Ginger up I gave him some oddfellows so he could get his halter on as Ginger was eying him suspiciously. Ginger then followed him happily onto the truck, got to trust a person with peppermints.  I felt awful, but better to go quietly than to have a fight and more stress.

That January we had a lovely canoe trip camping around a lake, I spent a lot of time alone crying while trying to learn to skip stones (pretty unsuccessfully) and thinking of the horse I had failed, that had been sent away.  I never did ride him again.