As horse people, we never want it to happen. We hope and pray that it won’t happen. But, inevitably, even in the best of circumstances, it happens.

I’m talking about falling off. Every experienced horse person will tell you that falling off is part of riding. And it’s usually when you’re starting to feel really comfortable with your current situation, and perhaps a little cocky, that it happens. That was most certainly the case with me.

About two and a half weeks ago, I was feeling SO good about my progress. Kiss was getting better and better and really stretching down at the trot. I was starting to improve my riding with lunge lessons and focusing hard on all of my strengthening exercises. I had even gotten back into running and had started being able to run two miles again without stopping or feeling pain. I was losing weight again. Everything was heading in the right direction.

So, of course, you know there had to be bumps in the proverbial smooth path I’d been traveling along. Well, actually, one BIG bump.

The actual happening was a bit of a freak occurrence. I was just winding down the best ride we’d had so far this summer. I was feeling fantastic (oh no!). A friend of mine, Taylor, who boards her horse at the same barn had come out to ride her horse, so instead of stopping and hopping off, like normal, I kept Kiss walking around the arena. Kiss, who knows the usual routine, where I hop off after a small amount of “cooling off” and stretching, kept hesitating and asking me if it was time to stop yet, but I kept urging her on. I could tell this was annoying her, as she kept looking longingly toward her pasture, with her herd of mare buddies chomping down on an additional few flakes of hay that the barn owner, Kate, had thrown over the fence.

“Okay, okay, fine, we’ll stop after this circle,” I said in my head to my horse, and I turned her halfway across the arena, toward the direction of her mare gang.

Just then, one of the mares squealed and chased off the other, who galloped a few steps away before trying to return to the hay pile. Both Kiss and I looked in that direction. I worried for a split moment that Kiss might spook at the nonsense, but when she saw it and processed it, I knew no spook was eminent.

However, that moment of thought was interrupted by my mare bolting forward as if her behind had been tapped by an electric cattle prod. In hindsight, while it was very spook-like, she was actually bolting toward the action, not away from it. And just as the momentary decision to blast off on a loose rein toward conflict came into her mind, it dissipated, so she then chose to spin abruptly to the side, throwing her rider off kilter, and then, in the dirtiest move EVER, she dropped her hip to finish the “job.”

All hopes of Kiss’s Bedouin “war mare” ancestry kicking in to help protect her rider from coming off were in that moment dashed. I was going down. It’s funny how you have so much time to think about what’s going on in the split second when something awful is about to happen. It’s like you’re in The Matrix or something. Everything slows down.

Well, I’m coming off. I guess it was about time for this to happen to me. It’s going to hurt, no doubt. At least I’ll be landing on a pretty padded spot. It appears as though I’m about to land on my butt. I mean, I’m sure it will hurt and all, but not that ba–

OUF!

I did, indeed, land on my butt, but somewhat in the upper quadrant of my right butt cheek. It did, in fact, hurt. The sand had been rained on during the day, so it was absolutely denser than normal. That factor had not helped.

When I’d recovered from the shock of falling, I made my first attempt to move…and that, my friends, was a RUDE awakening. WHITE HOT fire streaked down my leg, a pain so furiously concentrated, I don’t think I’d ever felt something quite so intense in my life. The good news was that I was able to move, even though it hurt, so my hope was that this was just some sort of soft tissue damage, and, it appeared, that I’d also pinched my sciatic nerve something fierce.

Taylor texted Kate and also grabbed Kiss, who was calmly and contentedly watching me from the other side of the arena. I thought maybe, just maybe, I’d be able to shake off whatever this was and get back to being normal again, once the full shock and trauma of falling wore off. However, by the time Kate got there, I had to struggle to my feet, feeling the full force shock of that intense pain every time I moved even a tiny bit.

Kate drove the little UTV over and I winced as I got myself in and situated in the seat on one butt cheek. I yelped as it rollicked over the grassy humps on the way to the barn. I could barely shuffle and could not stand upright without pain. I sat in a camping chair in the barn and sipped sweet tea while Taylor finished taking care of the horses and put Kiss away for me.

Taylor was an absolute saint bringing me home in my car and helping me into my house. She and her fiancé, who picked her up from my house to drive the 35 minutes or so back to the barn to get her car, went out of their way that night and truly renewed my faith in humanity. Sometimes I find myself feeling undeserving of this kind of kindness, but I have to remind myself that I would do the same thing if a friend and fellow horse person had found themselves in that predicament. I was (and am) incredibly grateful to both of them.

It’s been almost exactly three weeks since that fall and, thankfully, I’m almost 100 percent better and have been back in the saddle this week. I rested and did all of the ice/heat/massage things I was supposed to be doing. And, thankfully, I think all of the structural strength work I’d done before this incident likely kept it from being worse.

Interestingly, I don’t seem to be feeling additional fear. I think my brain recognizes that what happened was a one-off thing. I am a little extra cautious because of the lingering soreness and not wanting to part ways with the saddle again any time soon, but my body still feels mostly calm up there.

I guess if there is a takeaway here, it’s that sometimes a fall is just a fall. It doesn’t have to mean anything. It hurts, and if you have extra recovery time, that’s a bummer, but it’s part of riding. Just make sure you keep your body strong, your helmet on, and get good with that 5-point tuck-and-roll!