Stuck Under a Horse

Now I know what it feels like to be between a rock and a hard place -- or in my case between a rock and a 1200 lb. horse.

I've been trying to take it easy with the hiking lately because of the pain in my left heel. But riding a horse is not too hard on the feet, so yesterday Maureen and I took our horses out for a short ride in Garin Park. The horses are boarded at Alta Vista Equestrian Center right next to the park, and we ride there pretty regularly. Our horses are both 25-year-old geldings and hardly anything bothers them on the trail. Maureen usually rides Zach, an Appaloosa, and I ride Rio, a quarter horse. Our rides are usually uneventful, and not worth a blog post, but yesterday was different.

Everything was fine for the first half hour or so as we rode out into the park. Then Maureen decided to head off the trail up a short steep hillside that connects with another trail. The horses were working hard, trotting up the hill when suddenly Rio stopped and his legs started to buckle. I turned him sideways so he wouldn't back down the hill, and then he just lay down and rolled over on his downhill side. Several times in the past few years he has started to do something similar, but he always was able to get back up and keep going, so I didn't think of trying to jump off. Besides, it happened so fast I don't know whether I could have anyway. So there I was with my right leg stuck under Rio, and no way I could pull it out. Rio just lay there, not trying to move. My leg hurt quite a bit because a rock was pressing into my calf muscle. I tried to get him to move, but I didn't want him to move too much because I knew I might get hurt much worse if he did a lot of struggling to get up.

Maureen was up the hill from us, and she got off Zach, who was getting freaked out, and soon realized that she couldn't help me unless she let him go. So he ran back and forth a bit and then went under some low hanging trees, which freaked him out even more and he took off out of sight over the hill.

It seemed to me that I was stuck there for about 20 minutes, but it was probably not really that long. Maureen tried to pull on Rio to get him up, and he began flailing his hooves, and she got kicked a few times, but not badly. I got my other foot against Rio's neck and pushed hard, and very slowly my leg moved a couple of inches. Then Maureen thought that maybe the saddle was making it harder for Rio to get up, and we managed to undo the cinch. Finally, Rio moved again and I was able to pull my leg all the way out leaving my boot under him. Then he got to his feet. He was still a bit wobbly, but Maureen was able to lead him back down to the base of the hill. I brought down the saddle and put it back on him so we wouldn't have to carry it, and then we started walking back on the trail.

About half way back to the barn, we saw someone riding a horse and ponying another (leading him without a rider). When they got closer we saw that it was a young woman riding Zach, and it was her horse that she was ponying. She said that she had been heading out for a ride and saw Zach running back and forth by the gate to the barn. We all walked our horses back down the trail. By now Rio was doing fine, and Zach was wet with sweat, but seemed OK too. We had really worried about him hurting himself on his wild run.

We put the horses away and were driving back home thinking that it was all behind us now, when Maureen noticed that her phone was missing. We went back to the barn and looked all over, even back up the trail a ways, but it was getting dark, so we gave up. Back at home, I had heard of an app called "Find my iPhone", so I tried to download it to my phone. It required me to upgrade my system software, which seemed to get hung after loading half way, and I thought that I was going to lose my phone too. Then the TV stopped working. After getting everything working again (except for the app which didn't work), I was so ready for a drink.

The next morning, we went back to the barn and walked out to the site of the incident, and there was the phone lying in the grass. But it didn't work, and after charging all day it still doesn't work. And I ended up doing way more walking than I probably should have on my sore foot, but besides my foot, I have aches and pains just about all over now. But I shouldn't complain. I feel very lucky that we got through it with no serious injuries to either people or horses.