Oh what a dangerous game we play...

Everyone always talks about how dangerous equestrian riding is and after Christopher Reeve had his accident that left him almost completely paralyzed, I'd go so far as to say they became paranoid. After a young rider named Jessica Forsyth was killed when she and her horse flipped over the arena fence in a struggle to stop his bolting and he landed on her, crushing her neck and skull, the horse world suddenly stopped to think as well. After watching some of her videos tonight and reading the letter written by her parents about who Jess was and what, to their best guess, happened that day, February 6, 2008, when their 14-year-old daughter took her last ride, I began to really think hard about what it truly means to be an equestrian and what we're putting on the line everytime we get in the saddle.

Now, us horse people know two things:
1. what happened to Christopher Reeve is called a freak accident. Especially with what the average rider, even the average jumper does, the chances of that happening are one in thousands at the most, especially if you're jumping under 3 or 4 feet.
2. While extremely unlikely, it's always possible.

What other people don't understand is that we know what a dangerous game we play. We know that even a horse you've been partnered with for years and know like the back of your own hand is only predictable to a certain extent (and just think about horses you know not nearly as well!). We know the better we get and the braver we find ourselves, the more careless we become. Sometimes we you get to a certain level and you're riding a horse you know that's at least fairly well trained, you forget that anything is possible and it takes just the blink of an eye for that anything to happen. What they don't understand is, though those of us who have been riding for years and years don't constantly think about it, we all know on some level that everytime we put our foot in that stirrup could be our last...but what they also don't understand is that we accept those stakes and we ride on because without it, we wouldn't be whole, wouldn't be ourselves, and would have lost, in our eyes, a huge chunk of the point of being on this earth in the first place. Jessica Forsyth knew that too and it killed her. Her odds ran out but she truly died doing what she loved and in my opinion, that'd be the best way to go.

Over the years I have seen my friends, especially my best friend, take many a fall off many a horse and I have taken quite a few myself (19 to be precise). Eventhough several of my own have been head first and my best friend even fell in the path of her horse (a huge Irish Thoroughbred with shod feet as big as saucers) and got stepped on in several places including the side of her skull, none of us have ever been seriously injured. In fact, I believe between the two of us the amount of times we've so much as drawn blood from a fall could be counted on one hand. Until today though, I'm not sure I ever really understood just how lucky we all are.