Riding a bucking horse

Although it has been a while since I have had to ride a bucking horse, I still remember so much about it, true it only lasted a few minutes but the thrill and terror is long lasting.

The first thing I noticed was the twitching of the ears, leaning over the neck I could see the nostrils showing anger, then, even though there was plenty of leather and a saddle blanket between me and it's back, I could feel the back bone coming up and the tightening of the muscles.  All I could do was do my best to hang on. Only one started off with crow hops, the others went straight from a walk to a full blown buck.  Most of them were straight up bucks, back bowed, head down, legs stiff.  One, however, should have been a rodeo horse.  He was angry as hell and he wanted to be sure I knew it.  All I wanted was to get him used to weight on his back.  What I wanted was to lunge him first with the saddle on, but my husband at the time thought that was a waste, but he wasn't riding the horse, in fact he never rode any of the horses (in his defense, he hated horses as this was the only way he could be with his Dad was to ride horses).  So, I got on the horse and immediately felt all the signs that I was going to be in for some sort of ride.  The back yard had a 10 ft cyclone fence around it, you know the kind with the little prongs at the top...well we went around the back yard and he bucked higher and higher all the while getting closer and closer to the fence.  If he had thought about it, he could have simply jumped the fence since his bucks were a good foot above the top of the fence.  He decided he wasn't doing enough to he did a Sun Fish.  Know what that is?  It's when the front end of the horse is facing one way and the rear end is facing another with the middle twisted, like I said, he would have been a wonderful rodeo horse.  He went back to regular bucks and then threw in another Sun Fish.  All I could think of was that I had three little kids in the house and couldn't afford to get hurt, AND, I hadn't to fixed Sunday Dinner yet.  As he got closer to the fence I decided to bail off.  I hit the ground and looked up to see all four hooves headed right for my belly, so I got into a ball and  hoped for the best.  It was the right thing to do, the hooves grazed my top leg just above the knee.  My husband caught the horse and I got up, with a little difficulty.  I looked at my jeans and they were soaked in blood.  My husband insisted that I get back on, I sure hated admitting he was right, so I got back on and he led the horse around the yard until the hump finally left.  At that point I was ready to try again...that is until I looked at my leg.  My husband was nice enough to let me go in and take a bath while he unsaddled the horse and put him in the pasture.  It took two seconds for the water to turn a light red.  After I got out I checked it out, there wasn't a cut, it looked like all the small blood vessels had been ruptured.  Anyway I put something on it, got dressed and went to take care of the kids and fix dinner.  Monday I went to the doctor to be sure everything was okay, it was but he told me to watch out for a blood clot.  Well that was when I was 24 and I never got the blood clot.

Now, how did I feel during all of this?  Fascinated by all the strength and muscles I felt in this horse, scared that I might not survive and maybe even be crippled, and loads of adrenaline.  I never expected my horses to buck but I'm glad I went through it.  Why?  I learned to respect how powerful they are, how they still have a mind of their own and when they did as I trained them to do they were being nice to me instead of trying to kill me like they could have.  All in all, this actually made me love and admire them more.  Yeah, I know, I'm crazy.