My Bad Day

My bad day happened sometime while was in middle school at the end of July during the Grand Stampede Rodeo in Helena, MT. It was just an average day during the fair and my friends and I decided to take our horses out for a little ride. Because I had a competition later that day I borrowed my dads saddle so I wouldn't get mine dirty. My dad's saddle was a little big and the stirrups didn't quit fit but I decided my ride wasn't going to be that long so I wasn't going to spend time and fix them. So, I grabbed my Thoroughbred horse Ben, saddled him up and joined my friends, but before I was even able to start on my ride my foot fell out of one of the stirrups and hit Ben. He took that hit as a cue to trotting, this caused my other foot to fall out of the other stirrup which Ben took that as a cue to RUN. Now both my feet were out of the Stirrups and they were hitting him harder and harder and he was runnin faster and faster. Another mistake I made was not putting a bit on Ben. I decided to put a hackamore bridle (which only puts pressure on his chin) and doesn't give me much control of his head. So with combination of empty stirrups and lack of control Ben didn't stop. He ran and ran as fast as he could and the only thing I could think of was to bail. I jumped off tucked and rolled and hit the ground. My parents came running frantically to see if I was OK. I got up, dusted my self...and put Ben away.

Later that day my friend Jade and I decided we were going to try to riding tandem on a small pony. We started off great then all of a sudden I started to slip off the pony. Since we were trotting pretty fast I grabbed on to Jade to hang on but instead of holding me up I ended up pulling her off with me. We hit the ground pretty hard, but since we were only on a pony it didn't hurt as bad. We were laughing so hard we didn't even notice Jade was bleeding and we were covered in the soda we were holding before we fell. It was then I turned around and collided head on with a crazy brown horse. The girl riding the horse didn't even try and move around me, she just ran right over the top of me and went on her way. I couldn't believe I had just gotten ran over by this girls horse and she didn't even stop to see if I was OK. I had bruises all over my body and even a great horse-hoof sized one in the middle of my stomach.

This was the worst day at the fair I had ever had. The only lucky part of the day was the horse that ran me over wasn't very big, and the girl who so rudely ran me over was asked to leave the arena for the remainder of the fair.