Growing up, my sister Matilda always wanted to ride horses. Through persistence and hard work she convinced our parents to get her lessons.
Then she convinced them to buy land so she could own her own horse. Then came pony club. Then she got more horses, and then the family moved again and we had a more land for more horses.
Anyways – my parents decided at some point that horses could be a family activity – I was perfectly happy being excluded initially. So I ended up with a horse too. Comical because I was already close to six foot when I got my first one. I kept growing; my ‘new’ horses kept getting bigger. I had gotten into Eventing – seriously large animals needed to carry me through a one day event.
The Horse’s Revenge
I had a horse, an ex-racing thoroughbred; it had beaten by a previous owner. It didn’t like being caught. His name was Taxi cos ‘you could never catch him when you wanted to.’ The parental collective had decided that Taxi was a good horse for me because I would learn patience working with him and more importantly he was a bloody good eventer.
I was on a holiday horse-camp and we’d gone for a trail ride. This part of the ‘trail’ was a narrow laneway with barbwire fences down both sides. Taxi had decided that he was going to show everyone what he could do. And he took off flat stick GALLOP up the laneway to everyone’s surprise. To this day I swear he had this planned as a square up for some crime he’d decided I was guilty of. He might have been malicious enough to want to kill me.
In this situation the best thing to do is to turn the horse in a circle. For some reason I didn’t panic, until then when faced with this type of situation, panic is the first thing I would do. I was almost dead calm – but I couldn’t get him around without going through the barb wire fences. So we meandered across the laneway. Taxi charging on at his mission and me at my mission of stopping his mission.
Eventually, I he slowed down enough so that I could get him turned around and circling. We survived and I trotted him back to the group. Then I started shaking. I realised how close I had come to putting the horse or myself through the barbed wire fences – doing serious injury to both of us.
I forgave Taxi – it’s really hard to stay angry at a horse. The same applies to people too.
Focus on What’s Important
Being able to focus on a single task to completion has served me well. That was the day I mastered it. Being able to block out distraction (and panic) so that the vital few tasks are accomplished that can be relied upon to make money. Newsletters written. Ad copy written. Clients called and spoken too.
Valuable lesson from a horse that was trying to prove a point, get revenge or kill me.