Crapola!

Okay, so I lost my keys.
I don’t do this-lose my keys. I am WAAAAAY too obsessive to lose my keys.
Drop my drink? Break a glass? Chip that new set of plates? Oh, yes.
Lose my keys? No.

This drives me insane.
I do have backups.
That’s not the point.
It’s the principal of the thing.
Not to mention the fact that Home Depot can only reproduce one of the three keys
so now I have to contact people and admit that I lost my keys.

AND, somewhere, somebody has found a set of keys on a Sundowner keychain. If ONLY they could figure out what a Sundowner was (heehee)  and where it was parked then they’d have keys to everything-my new horse trailer, the coupler lock on my new horse trailer and my tack box. Everything except Horse. Okay, that’s the good thing, they can’t take Horse. Hmmmmm,  this is seriously making me reconsider getting a LoJack for him. Hahahahaha

The thing that really, just really, lights my match is that I KNEW when I did it that it was a bad idea.

I remember tossing my keys up on the back of the cover of my truck before I went and shut the windows on the horse trailer. I remember thinking,

A-Girl, this is not smart. 
You don’t normally do this. 
You could forget. 

And, I ignored myself.  THAT makes it doubly and triply bad. I knew better. And, I did it anyway.

Yep, last time I ignored myself I was trail riding on Horse and we saw a vicious, horse-eating white-tailed deer standing in a clearing. It must of opened it’s great snarling mouth and lunged at Horse with it’s fanged teeth ‘cause next thing I knew we were galloping through the woods.

Seriously, galloping through the woods.

There’s this thing about horses, they can dodge trees for themselves almost effortlessly. They do not dodge trees for the 3 foot of human that is sitting above them or the foot and a half of human that is out to the side.

You’re on your own.

TREE! TREE! TREE! 

If you could have read my mind, this is what you would have read. It literally took all of my mental capabilities to ride that gallop, dodge those trees and piece together what was going on. I could hardly think about stopping, 

One rein stop, A-Girl.  

Well, that would be a good idea, 

TREE!

except where to do it? 

TREE!

Stopping a horse that is running flat out seems like a straight forward thing to do, right? Well, this isn't a car, you don't have total control, he won't necessarily stop in a straight line and we're in the WOODS. I can't ride this ride and make a good decision about this. And, honestly, getting in a horse's way when he's got things covered (more or less) isn't always the best thing to do. Nope, better to just focus on staying on the horse until better options present themselves.

Finally, I saw the edge of the path coming up in my perphial vision and I looked down long enough to think,

There’s the path, 

get him turned onto it 

and you’ll have enough room to stop him.

I quit dodging trees long enough to think this thought and when I looked up a branch caught me full in the face. Luckily, it was a small one but off went my hat and my prescription sunglasses.  I managed to get Horse turned but now I was galloping down the path totally blind. I reached out, pulled Horse’s right rein toward my body and, as he pulled sideways, he stopped.

I slipped down off my horse and, as I retraced my steps through the woods, picking up my hat and sunglasses (thank goodness there were other people there to "see" for me) I KNEW exactly what I’d done wrong.

I'd ridden my young horse in unfamiliar territory with loose reins. I KNOW he has a tendency to spook and bolt, I know this and, yet, I let myself get too comfortable.  Things were going along so well that I'd all but dropped the reins on Horse's neck in front of me. I remember looking down at them and thinking to myself, I'm not sure this is such a good idea.

Deep inside of all horses is a prey instinct.
When the big hairy beast comes along, they are the prey.
And, literally, seconds can mean the difference between being dinner and eating dinner.
Their immune systems are keyed to run first, stop and assess later.
Anything moving in the woods could mean that they are tonight's main course.
So, when the EVIL deer appears, it's not the deer, it's the deer's movements that freak a horse out. Whether the deer is the bad guy or running from the bad guys doesn't really matter. He's moving, end of story.

It is an instant reaction for Horse to move his feet in the face of  "danger"- the adrenaline rushes, the heart starts beating faster, the feet start to move. I really think that before his brain can engage he is already moving.
If I can give him just a few seconds shut-down then it is time enough for his brain to catch up with the instinct to move his feet. A few seconds means he can think, Yep, it moved. But I'm safe. No need to run.

Normally, outside of familiar territory, I ride Horse like this, with reins short enough to gain instant control if he should do that "shutter step" that I know means "bolt!" is coming next.
Normally, he'll do the shutter step, and start to spin, I'll pull him to the side. He stops. He usually relaxes pretty much instantly.
Normally, I have my hand on the emergency break.
"Normally", was not that day.
(In fact, later that day, the mustang that was with us spooked again but this time we were all ready. I was able to shut Horse down immediately with just a hard tug on one rein. And, the young, green, just-off-the-range Mustang spun a few times before he stopped but nobody's horse took off through the woods, again.)

Does this freak me out?
Um, yeah.
Does having an experience like this,
in which really dangerous things happen in the blink of an eye, make me nervous?
Not so much nervous.
A tad bit terrified.

The thing is that this scary, creepy I almost died!!! feeling will slide over from my “OMG Basket” and drop down into my “Confidence Basket,”  if I can manage to retrain my brain. If I can meet every panicky feeling with logic- if I keep saying to myself, about the situation,

Yes, the worst thing happened 

but you handled it. 

You did not die, that day. 

You handled the situation. 

It  will actually make me feel more confident for future rides. I mean, I learned from it-do not ride with a loose rein on a five-year-old Warmblood on a trail ride. DUH!!! But I also get bigger britches from it.

I can do this.

But only if I, literally, get back on the horse. Only if I meet the fear with determination to not let it stop me from advancing. Only if I head back out to the trail, again.  That old saying, “You have to get back on the horse,” is true in a lot of ways.

"Courage is being scared to death...

and saddling up anyway." 

~ John Wayne

I can let fear become more fear which becomes…more fear… or I can make it become strength. It really is a choice.  (There’s a fear that goes deeper than that cold lump in the pit of  your stomach, you have to know the difference- don’t be stupid, get help with that one.)

This is one of the things that I love about riding horses- I am having all these little mini-adventures in my life. I’m constantly testing and retesting myself. I’m gaining confidence in my abilities in this area and that spreads over into all areas of my life.

"Life is a daring adventure or nothing." 

-Helen Keller

But...

...somehow, I don’t think that there is ANY deeper meaning thing to losing my keys. I think losing my keys will always JUST be an annoying thing which just… really… annoys me. :)