A terrible terrible day.

There are moments here and there in my life I have asked myself, WHY?  Why do I ride these beasts?  Why do they have such a hold on my heart and life?  Why do I place my life and my childrens lives in the hands/hooves of these powerful, unpredictable animals?  Monday was a day that all of those questions rushed through my brain.

The day:  Monday was a sunny beautiful day for mid to late November.  63 degrees and just a lovely day.  My daughter has been wanted to ride with her friend and I saw this as one of the last great riding days until spring.  So I called her mom and we worked it out so we could go for  ride.  I drove out with our horses to their place.  I took my daughter on her horse and Elisabeh on her horse out for a trail ride.  We all tacked up and headed out.  I asked Elisabeth were she likes to ride since I am not familiar with riding around their place.  She led the way as we went to one of her favorite trails.  When we got to a place where we had to go under and overpass and the horses seemed to be a bit uneasy I made the decision to not continue ahead and do something else that the horses were more comfortable doing.  As we turned around we had to go down a small ditch then back up to the field to head back to the house.  I led the way, Elaina followed me and Elisabeth was behind her.  Elaina and I turned around and were watching Elisabeth make her way through the ditch.  Elisabeths horse is King.  King went down the ditch and on the way back up kind of bolted up the ditch.  Then as soon as he made it to the top he threw his head down and gave a huge buck.  Elisabeth was thrown up and over his head.  He proceeded to trample over top of her then bolted bucking to the barn. 

I jumped from my horse and helped my daughter off of her horse and told her to stay put holding her horse.  I still had Steady in hand and made my way over to Elisabeth.  On my way over I asked if she could get up.  She tried and said "NO, I can't move".  Immediately my heart sank and ran faster to get to her.  It was hard to get close with Steady in hand.  As soon as I made it over to her thank God someone saw us from the road and stopped to help.  The man took Steady so I could tend to Elisabeth.  She was terrified and so was I.  I asked her what hurt and if she could move.  She said her arms hurt and she could not move.  I didn't have my cell phone with me and by then another car had stopped and he was making his way to us.  He had his phone and we made the call to 911.  She had a helmet on but she did have a bloody nose.  I had no idea the extent of her injuries but it was so scary for her and myself.  After a few moments she said she could move her legs and a sigh of relief came over me.  I kept her laying down and asked her to please try not to move.  She wanted her mom but I could not get in touch with her.  It took about 20 minutes for the first emt to get to us.  By then we did get in touch with her mother and she was on her way out.  Once her mom made it and the ambulance got there I decided that I needed to get the horses out of there.  It had been about 30 minutes and my daughter had been holding her horse and the good samaritan holding Steady.  So I as quickly as I could got them loaded and home.

I immediatly made my way to the ER to stay with Elisabeth and her mom.  When I got there I found out that she had broken her left arm and possibly her right wrist.  Otherwise she was going to be fine.

I will conclude the story tomorrow.  It is late.