Animal Encounters: A Horse, Of Course

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[This was supposed to be a response to Get Your pen Moving: Animal Encounters, which as usual, I got to too late to turn in.]

There is a photo in my album of me standing next to a horse. I have a smile on my face, but the look is more exasperated than happy. The caption reads: Yo y mi pinche caballo. Me and my f*cking horse.

During my Junior year of college (Spring 2002), I participated in a ten-week language immersion trip to Mexico. One the weekend excursions involved a 5 hour (in and out) horseback ride to the bottom of a Parícutin volcano.

I am not a horseback rider. The only time I’d ridden a horse was a on a merry-go-round. However, I hopped on my chosen horse full of bravado and misplaced confidence. I was sure that riding a horse would be no problem, as did many of the other students in my class.

But we learned one thing quite quickly: Just about all of the horses had personality disorders.

My horse’s particular dysfunction came in the form of an intense desire to be at the lead of the pack. If my horse saw that other horses were riding in front of it, he would speed up into a trot. (Note: trot = painful jack hammering into one’s rear end.) Little more than an hour went by and my ass was incredibly sore.

I had two options: get the horse to speed up or get the horse to slow down. I could easily get him to speed up to a gallop, but that was a little too fast for my inexperienced self. So I would slow him down to a walk, but that would last for maybe a minute before he kicked into a trot again. It didn’t matter how many times I slowed him down, he decided he was going to do things his way, and that was that. 

My continued realization that I was not in control was heightened when my friend the horse attempted to gallop off down a random fork. For a moment I pictured myself trapped on a runaway horse while my teacher came galloping after to save me, but a yank to the right on the reigns brought him around to rejoin the group.

That was not the only time he tried to go his own way. At the half way rest stop, he thought it would be best if we continued on down the trail. I tried to pull on the reigns to get him to go back to the group, so I could get off and have the rest I desperately needed, but he wasn’t having any of it. I finally had to have someone come over and hold the reigns, while I dismounted.

At which point I had a total breakdown. I was terrified and sobbing and ranting in English to our teacher (who had a stunned look on his face, probably not sure what to do with this student who was freaking out on him). As is usual with me, though, the hysterics cleared out the gunk of stress and terror. Off the horse I was more relaxed and even asked a friend to snap the above mentioned photo of me standing next to my bastard horse.

By the time the break was over I climbed back into the saddle and continued on, only to immediately continue the battle of wills (which I was bound to loose considering the size and weight difference). Just as I was bout ready to get off and walk the rest of the way to the volcano, one of my classmates rode up and offered to trade horses with me. His horse, he said, was going too slow for him.

Thus, I traded one horse with a personality disorder for another. Yes, my new horse comfortably walked at a slow pace that was kinder to my hindquarters, but he (she?) also tried to bite any neighboring horse that ambled to close to her personal space.

Fast-forward: After we climbed the volcano, saw the crater, climbed back down, rode to another point of interest, checked out a lava buried church, fellow classmate Xela and I decided were done in, exhausted. We took our horses (me riding my new slower bastard horse) and began the journey back on our own.

Our horses walked about 30 ft down the trail and stopped. They just stood there nibbling grasses, refusing to move. We shifted, nudged, shouted, slapped the reigned, pulled on the reigns, kicked our feet. A couple of the Mexican guides told us to hit them with a switch. Nothing worked. Both horses just ignored the crazed attempts of the people sitting on top of them and enjoyed their grassy meals. Xela and I sat there for half an hour (or more) crying and frustrated, just wanting to go back to the cabins and sleep and never even look at horses ever again.

We made it back, of course. When the rest of the class came riding by half and hour later, our horses were quite content to follow the crowd. At least we had some things to laugh about around the fire.

[x-posted to my main blog]