Sage is sequestered at Pine Dell again on her diet.<\/p>\n
Tonight I am dedicated to cantering and galloping on Sage.\u00a0 I will not tense up.\u00a0 I will allow my hands to be quiet.\u00a0 I will not pick up the reins and hold them up to my nose.\u00a0 I will not tense up my shoulders.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sage is a well trained horse.\u00a0 I decided to skip all my normal pre flight check out.\u00a0 We walked up to the upper 40 acres.\u00a0 I tightened the girth several times and got on.\u00a0 The girth was tight.<\/p>\n
We went out to the place in the 40 acres where there are acres to run.\u00a0 I asked Sage to canter and away we went.\u00a0 I was doing great.\u00a0 I was rocking in the saddle in time with her body.\u00a0 I was relaxed.\u00a0 My hands were quiet and my shoulders relaxed.<\/p>\n
All of sudden, Sage was bucking with me!\u00a0 I pulled on her head, trying to keep it up.\u00a0 Of course, I was full of tension.\u00a0 I thought evil thoughts about Sage.\u00a0\u00a0 I got her stopped and but she kept bucking every few moments. I pulled up her head again.\u00a0 We stood stock still.\u00a0 I leaned forward and Sage bucked.<\/p>\n
How is Sage bucking when she is standing stone still?<\/p>\n
No, it wasn’t Sage.\u00a0 The saddle had slipped.\u00a0 I was riding her neck! When I leaned forward, the back of the saddle tipped up!\u00a0 HAY!\u00a0 This is a precarious situation!<\/p>\n
I decided that I needed to get off RIGHT AWAY!\u00a0 I leaned forward, preparing to swing my leg over and the back of the saddle bucked.\u00a0 I did that again..just to make certain.\u00a0 Yep.\u00a0 It bucked again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
OK, I’ll ride very slowly and quietly to a mounting block.\u00a0 Walk walk….oh WoW!\u00a0 The saddle is just balanced on her neck.\u00a0 There’s no round body to hold it in place.\u00a0 I have to get off before I fall off!\u00a0 Maybe I’ll have to fall off to get off!<\/p>\n
You know the alarm that starts in your toes and goes clear through your body till it gets to your brain?\u00a0 Finally, your brain says, “SCREAM!”<\/p>\n
I looked around for a miracle.\u00a0 There was no miracle to help me.\u00a0 I tried to get my leg over the back of the saddle without bending forward.\u00a0 Do you know how hard that is?\u00a0 Finally, I got my leg on the back of the saddle which held it down enough so that I could get off.<\/p>\n
I apologized to Sage for treating her so badly.\u00a0 She never did buck.<\/p>\n
We walked back to the outside arena.\u00a0 I told Tony about the saddle.\u00a0 He wanted to know “WHAT HAPPENED?”\u00a0 He was looking for dirt marks and blood.\u00a0 I told him the saddle tipped forward!\u00a0 He asked me if I was able to land on two feet.\u00a0 He seemed impressed when I told him that I did land on two feet.\u00a0 He quit looking for the blood.<\/p>\n
After a good preflight checkout, I rode Sage again.\u00a0 We did canter again for a short distance.\u00a0 I imagined that my body motion was forcing the saddle to creep forward.\u00a0 Concern\/fear won and I stopped cantering.\u00a0 From now on, we are going to canter and jump something on the ground…and tighten the girth at least 3 times before I get on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Saddles really should have a back girth!\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sage got a lot of extra treats!\u00a0 poor abused horse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sage is sequestered at Pine Dell again on her diet. Tonight I am dedicated to cantering and galloping on Sage.\u00a0 I will not tense up.\u00a0 I will allow my hands to be quiet.\u00a0 I will not pick up the reins and hold them up to my nose.\u00a0 I will not tense up my shoulders.\u00a0 Sage is a well trained horse.\u00a0 I decided to skip all my normal pre flight check out.\u00a0 We walked up to the upper 40 acres.\u00a0 I tightened the girth several times and got on.\u00a0 The girth…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1168"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1527,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168\/revisions\/1527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}