The one with the horse

OK, I took a little detour with an announcement but now I need to tell you about the horseback riding experience we had in St. Maarten.

We knew I was pregnant but I’ve ridden horses before and a trail ride is not typically the most exciting of journeys so while I was apprehensive we went along with it. We arrived by bus to the stables and I requested a mild horse even though I’ve ridden before. The ride was to be along the mountain and then into the surf. We signed a disclaimer on our way to the stables and it had the typical stuff for horses and included that sometimes horses like to roll when they come out of the water. Chris pointed this out to me and said that he’d had a horse roll on him before and that they go to their knees and then over so you just hop off when they go to their knees. Alright, no worries.

They point out my horse, Caramel, and she looks pitiful. She’s healthy but she’s just standing off by herself with her head down and she barely moved when I got on her. She was a very mild horse indeed. Chris’ horse, Amore, on the other hand, was chewing at the rope tying him to the fence. Chris is an experienced rider as his mom had horses when he was younger so he got the young feisty male.

They lined us up to go on the ride and there were other riders that were basically freaking out because their horse was moving. They were at the front and Chris and I brought up the rear with Amore nipping Caramel’s hind end all the way down the street.

The first part of our ride was down the street through a little industrial area to get to the nature reserve we would be riding on. They assured us that the horses were used to the traffic and the sounds and they were right. Caramel even stopped several times to eat. Oh, and once Caramel stopped to eat she wasn’t interested in moving again. No matter if I kicked my heels into her side or yanked on her reigns. Chris finally had to smack her on her rear to move her a couple times. Let me tell you…that went over great. On the street, her ears were back which I can understand it was noisy and I wouldn’t expect her to be happy walking on the road.

The second part of the ride was in the “mountainous” area, which is not so much mountain as it is really steep rocky hills. Caramels ears perked up a little but Amore was still trying to nip her every chance he got. Chris did an awesome job of keeping him far enough behind that she was out of reach. I trust horses and I know their footing on trails is awesome so I let her take the path she wanted to take. She knew the path, I didn’t. Well on the steep downhill side of one particular rise she decided to snack. OK, I’ll let her get a mouthful and we’ll move along. Nope. She TURNED SIDEWAYS on the steep incline to eat. Chris came up beside me to try to help me get her moving and she kicked Amore in the side! Thank God Chris’ foot wasn’t in the way. She did finally start moving and on we went.

We came to a little bit of a clearing and our guide stopped us to talk about going into the water. She mentioned again about the rolling but said that none of the horses in our group had ever rolled and that to keep them from rolling we just had to keep them moving and keep the reigns pulled tight. No problem. We continue down the trail and Caramel is doing well but Amore is mad that Chris won’t let him get close enough to nip and is starting to act out a little more.

We get to the beach and the horses go into the water and enjoy cooling down. The ride into the water was not quite what I thought it would be. I pictured romantic riding though the surf kicking up sand and it was more like wade out into the water to soak your jeans and stand there. The horses milled about a little bit and during this time I got Caramel away from Amore and she perked right up and was much happier. We started out of the water and she was trotting (moving? Yep…got that) and I was pulling on the reigns to make her slow to a walk (tight reigns? Yep…got that) and instead of slowing she decided that rolling in the sand would be fun. She went down so fast that I didn’t have much time to react but I got my feet out of the stirrups in time to just roll into the sand as she went over. My right leg got caught under the saddle horn and I got a nasty bruise, but it was loose sand so I was able to pull it out. I rolled away from her and stood up so that I could react better to what was happening. I was covered in sand.

Chris’ version of what happened is that Amore didn’t want to go the right way so by the time he got him turned around all Chris saw was Caramel on her back in the sand and me standing covered to my knees in sand and wasn’t sure what happened and why I was so covered in sand.

I wasn’t about to call Chris up to me – I didn’t want Amore near Caramel when I got back on her so I handed the camera to another lady and climbed back onto Caramel (what is that saying about getting back in the saddle?). Somebody commented that I was shaking and I wanted to say some very not nice things to them. There was only about 90 seconds between her going down and me climbing back on. Our guide couldn’t get over the fact that Caramel had gone down first because Caramel had never gone down before and second because she was at a trot when she went down. Right after I got back on her she tried to go the wrong way following the guide around a bush to get back to the front and I made some park rangers day because I yanked her reigns and said “You stay right here you hussy!”. The ranger guy was sitting under a tree and had seen the whole thing and he literally rolled over laughing and saying hussy. He was still laughing when we left the area. The ride back was uneventful. Caramels ears were perked up and Amore was in the back of the line pestering some other poor horse. I wouldn’t go near him. I learned my lesson.

To top off the story once we were back at the stables I handed Chris the camera and said “Here it’s got a little sand in it” and he looked at me disgusted and said “What did you drop it or something?” Never mind that there wasn’t an inch of me not covered in sand. I lost it a little and may have cried and may have cussed and may have looked like a crazed woman wet and covered in sand but at least I have a great story for the blog.