Well my foray into jumping has been a bumpy ride. My In-Laws have an old English saddle that they've let me take over because no one has ridden in it except for me in the past 10 years or so. But since no one has been in it, the leather is a bit warped and was painful to ride in. So I worked out the leather with Neastfoot Oil and made it slightly more comfortable and with a pair of chaps, it's not so bad. But then my stirrup leathers were too long so I got the hubs to put another hole in them and now they fit right. So I thought on Monday when I went up to ride that I was finally set in my English saddle.
It started out good enough we spent some time in the arena working on transitions and leads. And the leads are getting better, I am happy to report. Then we went down to the lower arena because some jumps were set up and we went over a couple of those cleanly (maybe not pretty) but clean. I felt Chief getting tired so I took him around the pastures. As we were headed for home, I signaled for the right lead and he picked up the left so I pulled back on the reins to slow him down. We were headed for home so it was a little tougher to slow him down than normal, when all of a sudden my left foot fell right out from underneath me. Now this could have been catastrophic but I was able to grab my seat easy enough. I looked down at my stirrup and most of it was gone. That's right gone. Seriously? Did the stirrup iron just break? I looked down again to double check. The stirrups are breakaway stirrups so I thought maybe the rubber band just broke, but no it was the iron itself that had snapped in two. So we retraced our steps and I was able to find the stirrup so I jumped off, which was a sight without the left stirrup, and picked it up. Of course there was no riding back since my left stirrup was gone but it was a short walk back to the barn. When I got back, I took this picture.
Happy Trails!
No comments:
Post a Comment