One Minute from trailride to Underwater

Back in the early years of Velvet and I is the memory of the back property trail ride.  Oh my goodness

My new best friend, Lanie, brought her horse, Sparkles, and her husband, Tim, over to the house. Husbands went to the shop. Horsewomen got on their horses. We were exploring my 20 acres of forest, creek, glen and glade and then we explored the neighbors acres.   Oh what a marvelous time were Lanie and I having on our horses, Sparkles and Velvet.

We came upon Big Creek running thru north/south thru the property.  We came right down a slight hill to the creek. We could get right in it. We decided the stream was an easy way to get back to my property instead of going back through the forest path.  Boy howdy! We were walking through the stream and came to a bit of a deeper place.  Suddenly, Velvet decided to leap out of the stream up on the bank.  Well, Sparkles decided that was a good idea too. Sparkles leaped up and landed right beside Velvet on the bank of the creek.

Lanie and I were both on our horses.  That was nice.  That was nice until Velvet and Sparkles tried to move.  No moving because their legs had sunk into deep mud…right up to their front knee.

Velvet and Sparkles thrashed without anything happening. They were struggling to get their legs out of the mud.

Velvet decided to give a huge lung upwards.  She reared with a ton and a half of power. She got free of the mud. But physics dictated that my body fly into the air backwards.  I landed in the deep part of the stream.  I submerged!  My head was under water!!!

I worried that Velvet’s body would crush me. Thank God she stayed on her feet and clammored out of the mud.

Oh, I forgot to mention that this day was a chilly 40 degree fall day and I was wet from head to boots.

I managed to fly out of the water to the bank.  Sparkles had toppled over sideways…on Lanie’s leg.  Then Sparkles was free of the mud and got up..without stepping on Lanie.

I asked Lanie laying on the ground, “Are you all right?!” She replied, “HELL NO”!

Turns out Lanie had a car accident earlier in her life and this was the bad leg. She has a titanium knee and this was the leg that was crushed by 1100 lbs of horse.

Lanie drug herself up and dragged herself over to a tree. She clung there for a while telling me about her titanium knee between clenched teeth moans.

Then Lanie got on Sparkles.  I got on Velvet.  Yes, we were tough.

Probably a total of 30 minutes had gone by since we left our lovely husbands playing in the shop.

Here comes the wives, wet and hurting.

Later that evening we went to Jenny’s birthday party at Pine Dell. We got to tell our story.

“What do you do with horses?  I’m just a trail rider!”  When you hear someone say, “I’m just a trail rider.”  Smack them a good one. Trail riding can go from fun to disaster in a blink of an eyelash. 

 Lanie died from lung cancer some years later and she is missed every day.  RIP, Lanie