30 Day Challenge - Day 9

Any injuries you've gotten from riding.

Oh dear. Well, there have been several that I can remember.

My earliest was riding Grady in the pasture practicing for barrel racing (I was into gaming at that point). He likes to buck when we gallop (still does) and I'm pretty much used to him bucking and me falling off. This time however when I got bucked off, I pulled a muscle in my back and couldn't bend or stand straight for a week. That was my earliest "injury" and I'm really surprised I didn't get hurt more with all of the falling off I did.

My second "injury" was when a mare I was training, Patch, spooked and sidestepped on my toe, planting all of her weight on it. I'm sure she broke it! That hurt for quite a while.

Then I was riding Jazz in the pasture bareback and bridless and I thought we'd just canter really quickly once more because she was doing so well. Shouldn't have done that. Grady ended up deciding now was a good time to play and kicked at her and she took off at a gallop. I can stop at a canter, but not at a gallop! We ran into the forest where I ducked to avoid branches. She stopped and I sat up thinking we were done, but instead she spun around and ran out of the forest and I had no time to react before getting whacked in the face with a tree branch, knocking me off. I guess my neighbor heard me scream when I fell and she called my mom to ask if I was alright. I was in the process of getting back on Jazz when my mom convinced me to come up to the house. My face was not in good shape, though really it wasn't that bad. I had a diagonal scrape across my face and had bitten my inside cheek (so I now talked really funny) and my nose felt funny, though thankfully it wasn't broken.

And then my most recent injury was over the last summer when Jetta slipped and fell on top of my which gave me bone bruises and a badly sprained MCL in my knee and a sprained ankle so I couldn't walk for two weeks. Great right?

But I think I've been pretty lucky in my horseback riding career. I mean I've started and ridden several babies and worked with problem horses and my most major injury was spraining my knee! Pretty good I think. Lets just keep our fingers crossed nothing else happens!