They Called Her Flipper

Posted by Linda Benson

Many of you enjoyed one of our recent guest posts about near-wrecks on horseback, written by Maureen Gaffney. Here is the link, in case you missed it: http://equestrianink.blogspot.com/2013/01/guest-post-from-maureen-gaffney.html

Today, Maureen shares another story from her experiences as an assistant trainer at an Arabian ranch. Please enjoy the ride, and hang on to your seats (or in this case, perhaps not!)

 While working at one of the large Arabian show farms in Santa Ynez, I was told to ride a smallish gray mare that was in the charge of the new trainer, who happened to be on her way to a horse show.  Something in the way she had said "....if you want....." and then almost imperceptibly grimaced as she drove out the driveway with a 6-horse trailer full of well-mannered, sweet and responsive mounts made several important hairs stand up on the back of my neck.  I should have listened to those hairs.

 

The head trainer—my boss—did not attend the show and we were riding together in the arena, me on the smallish gray and he on an elegant bay the likes of which I aspired to ride someday.  All was going well, just warming up after a decent but not devastating lounging—the mare had broken a sweat but no oxygen mask was likely to drop in front of her due to a loss in cabin pressure. 

 

I swung a leg over and settled into the postage-stamp sized English flat saddle (I would later thank 'lucky stars' it was not a western saddle with a menacing horn) and we tooled around the ring for a bit on a loose rein extended walk.  I gathered her up a tad and stopped to talk to the boss about this or that.  As we stood on our respective mounts chatting, the gray mare began to bob her head up and down rhythmically as if controlled by some unseen marionette conductor.  Unbeknownst to me, this bobbing was in preparation for something larger. 

 

Now, generally speaking, horses do not like to up-end.  If you've had the great pleasure of watching a days-old foal on its first full twisting, cavorting gallop in a large pasture, you've likely also seen the youngster bite the dust and with a great comic flourish, get up, shake off, and immediately look this way and that to see if the humiliating encounter with gravity has been witnessed by man, beast, insect or vegetable.  Like humans, horses become rather embarrassed when they fall down. 

 

Seems small gray mare missed this vital part of her "Horse 101--General Decorum" class.  While I sat upon her strong, short back, she nearly audibly counted "A-One, and-a-Two, and-a-three, and-a-Four" with each head-bob before she threw herself up and over backwards from a standstill, and with a flirty swish of her tail, slammed us both into the ground with great aplomb. I lay there stunned with an 800 pound animal resting calmly on my right knee and thigh, trying to ascertain if I am headed for the hospital or if I’ll just be bruised.  The utterly confounded boss says from his perch on high "What the..??  Get her off of you!!!" to which I respond "Uh, yeah...." like, gee man, that's a pretty neat idea—wish I had thought of it. 

 

She lingered a bit longer on my leg, then decided the jig was up and returned to that boring ol' standing position.  Having taken the first opportunity to put some daylight between the two of us, I was no longer astride by the time she was upright. 

 

Me, the boss, and the bosses’ horse just looked at her with incredulous and deeply offended expressions, like "What sort of a thing ARE you?"  She had, after all, just cast shame on her species by displaying her willingness to forego her noble ancestry and grovel like swine all in the name of…what? Revenge? Just plain march-hare variety madness?  I don’t know, but I put her back in her stall and gave warm thanks to the rest of the kind-hearted horses I rode that day.  The bosses’ horse who witnessed those strange events ever after gave her a curiously wide berth.

 

 

Starting as a groom and working up to assistant trainer, Maureen Gaffney worked at West Coast Arabians for 8 years, then moved on to work for some of the best performance trainers in Santa Ynez and Texas before ending up back in Northern California.  Horses supported Maureen through college in Santa Barbara and at UC Berkeley.  Maureen has since hung up her spurs and is now a desk jockey working to plan and implement a long-distance trail around the San Francisco Bay.  She enjoys writing, riding (mostly bicycles these days), cooking, wine and friends.  Maureen has been published in Horse Illustrated, American Trails Magazine, and Dirt Rag (a mountain bike magazine).  She lives in Larkspur, California with her favorite man.   

Thanks so much for sharing another of your experiences, Maureen, and glad that you survived in one piece!

Readers - have you had experiences with horses that reared, and then flipped over, while someone was riding them? How did you handle this very dangerous situation?

Guest Post from Maureen Gaffney

It's interesting, isn't it, how some of our most memorable moments in this sport are wrecks that we barely survive, horses that are bad actors, or moments that really set our hearts racing? (And not in a good way.) Please enjoy this guest post from one of our readers, Maureen Gaffney, as she recalls one such incident. But first, a little about Maureen:

Maureen was born in Sebastopol, California, about an hour north of San Francisco.  As her family could not afford to own horses, she found a nearby stable willing to let her work for free.

This small Arabian horse farm was then purchased by new owners who dramatically expanded the facility and it soon became one of the top Arabian show barns in the country.  Starting as a groom and working up to assistant trainer, Maureen worked at West Coast Arabians for 8 years, then moved on to work for some of the best performance trainers in Santa Ynez and Texas before ending up back in Northern California. Horses supported Maureen through college in Santa Barbara and at UC Berkeley.

 

Eulipia

By Maureen Gaffney

While working at Paragon Arabians in Santa Ynez, California as an assistant trainer (this is code for ‘sacrificial rider’), we took in two horses from a new client.  They were brother and sister, both by the notoriously hot (and a touch psycho) sire, *Gdansk.  I had learned to be a little wary of the owner who brought in a young horse and cheerily proclaimed “Oh yes, she’s broke”.  Sometimes they were. Sometimes mom and dad had an interesting interpretation of “broke”.  It was time for me to find out on which side of the line “Eulipia” fell.

I grabbed the requisite fistful of strawberry and gray colored mane with my left hand, reins short enough for light contact with her mouth, and placed my foot in the awaiting stirrup.  For the previously mentioned reasons, this one made me nervous.  With one last full in-and-exhale, I checked her eye to make sure we were still on the same planet, and having been given the proverbial green light, I pushed off.  Somewhere during those yawning, eternal 4 seconds before I was firmly ensconced in the saddle, the light in her eye flashed red! red! red! and with my leg at approximately mid-arc over her back, the three-year-old filly with the hot bloodline lost her ever-loving mind.

She bolted--first up--then forward like a sleek hide-and-hair covered cannon ball.  Having not yet attained a sitting position much less the second stirrup, I was hurtled onto her neck which only served to further her profound and deepening pool of panic.  My attempts at soothing words were hampered not only by the imminence of my impending fall--only the severity of which was now in question--but by the copious amounts of her long silvery hair winding through my molars.  My soft-toned pleas of "It's okay honey" she heard as "run for the bay like a bunny" and so we lurched around the arena via the most tenuous of connections for a few more adrenaline-laced moments before she unceremoniously threw me over her head where I landed with a thud in a mushroom cloud of dirt. 

Generally speaking, horses--Arabians in particular--do not like to step on foreign objects in their path of travel.  In fact, they will go to great ridiculous lengths to avoid even a discolored patch of dirt.  A horse that you have finally decided is physically incapable of performing a simple cross-over move will suddenly embark on a 40+ mph supersonic side pass if a shadow or stray bit of hay interrupts his route.  For this reason, I was greatly surprised to find the filly placing not one, not two, but three hooves into the small, middle and upper levels of my back. I lay there for some time trying to decide if I was broken.  She gingerly approached me, reins and mane all asunder with that "So....um, hey--whatcha' doin' down there?" look on her face. 

I was not broken, nor--apparently--was she.  She persevered and menaced me further, but via a clever combination of a near starvation diet*, exhaustive pre-ride exercising, and an inventive program called "let the groom ride her", she never managed to unload me again. 

*not really.

Maureen has since hung up her spurs and is now a desk jockey working to plan and implement a long-distance trail around the San Francisco Bay.  She enjoys writing, riding (mostly bicycles these days), cooking, wine and friends.  Maureen has been published in Horse Illustrated, American Trails Magazine, and Dirt Rag (a mountain bike magazine).  She lives in Larkspur, California with her favorite man.    

Thank you so much for stopping by, Maureen, and sharing your story of one of those "memorable" horses. I'm sure many of us can relate, and glad that you survived to tell the tale!