Friday, November 02, 2007

Horses Don't Like Coyotes

Emily went riding yesterday on Princess, Trent's horse that she has riding lessons on. She rides like a pro, fluid and in control. She isn't great at side passing and gets nervous/scared about barrel racing, but that is understandable since Princess is a barrel racing champion horse and gets into it. She knows what to do when she sees those barrels and goes as fast as she can.

Yesterday, as Emily was taking her into a harvested corn field to the east of our house Princess got spooked and took off. I looked out the window and saw them galloping past and thought, "Wow, Emily has no fear. I would be panicking if the horse went that fast. How is she getting Princess to do that!" Then I realized that Emily was not in control and leaning back trying to get the horse to stop desperately. Princess ran at full bore past all of our barns and Emily turned her around and brought her back. All at a dead run. As they turned the corner out of the corn field and onto the road, Emily ducked a branch, lost her balance, and fell backwards off of the horse onto the gravel.

Her fall took minutes. But I was frozen too. Leila said her life flashed before her eyes.

Emily was crying and I picked her up and told her she had to get back on. She reluctantly climbed back up and rode back to the pasture. I managed to convince her that something had scared Princess and that it wasn't going to happen again. She made a few circles and was a little less shaky and panicky. Pretty scary for all of us. She hit her head and has a big goose egg and loosened her front teeth.

I went back to the field to see if there was something to frighten the horse. There were two coyotes right there hiding among the weeds. I am guessing that Princess doesn't like coyotes.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was going to write about this. Only my title would have been "We're not Boring!" and would have included all of the Not Boring things that have happened recently. Our free piano, you killing a possum with a shovel, the frozen squirrel in the watering trough, Emily's adventure and well...that's about it. Because some people (weird ones)might say we are boring because we don't travel the world climbing mountains (Rich :))or go out drinking until 2am and still catch all of the high school games the next day and stay out until 2am again (Bob, from work) or... you know ...do anything. But I say that anyone who has killed a possum with red-eyed passion is super exciting. And anyone who can scrape a frozen squirrel of the side of the trough without throwing up and who looks forward to going to the library and hitting the milk and ice cream sale at PayLess tomorrow is not only the most fun girl ever but the best thing that has happened to her super cute husband. With two such exciting people you never know what will happen!

Anonymous said...

Hey what were you doing up at 5 am anyway! Love you!

Anonymous said...

oops just realized that the times are 3 hours off,

BrianG said...

Leila,

Dang straight we aren't boring!

Charlotte said...

So... since you guys are so exciting, Jon and I would love to come visit you sometime. Maybe next summer. Hopefully we'll get to see you at Christmas time. Are you still planning on going to Bear Lake?

I'm glad Emily's okay. And I'd love to hear more about the possum murder...

Becca said...

I want to hear more about killing a possum, too. Allen tried to kill a squirrel once. It was already mostly dead from our dog, but it still took him several attempts with his machete and I've never seen him so white-faced. I don't know what would happen if he ever "bagged" a deer, as my Idaho relations would say.

I'm glad Emily is okay and I love hearing about your family. We miss you guys, and we don't miss boring people.