First and most exciting. I hit onederland!!!!!!!!!!!! I cried a little. I had Dave grab the camera and take a picture of the scale. I need to take some new pictures of myself and get them up. Before and afters and all that. This journey has been full of ups and downs, but it is all worth it and I'd do it 1000 times over. I have less than 40 pounds to goal and I will continue to work with my tool until I get there.
In other news, I got in a bad horseback riding accident with Rebel two nights ago. The good news, nothing is broken. I got incredibly lucky. The bad news. I hurt everywhere! It's similar to having whiplash in my back after a car accident, except my arms and left shoulder are also killing me. Rebel is very very well trained at a walk/trot and has come so far in the last 3 months. His trot used to be out of control - fast / slow / fast / slow - head up in the air, nuts really. However, long hard work has resulted in him getting better and better and he's lovely to ride at a walk/trot now.. His canter on the other hand we've mostly not touched. It's not only out of control, it's dangerous. When I'm working with him, even though I'm functioning as his trainer, I always make sure someone else is on site and close by if I'm going to canter. We're working on it, but he is still dangerous at it. To give a little background, the problem is that Rebel used to be a barrel racer. His owner would do nothing but get on his back and run run run at a dead run. This has resulted in his mind not understanding anything but head-on, dead to the bit, mind-blowing, muscle tensed hard running with no control. Someone would think, "well just pull him back and force him into control," but unfortunately it doesn't work that way when he's had 7 years of the other engraved into his head. It will take months, possibly more to fix. Anyhow, generally I canter him in the round-pen, it forces him to have some control and eliminates the possibility of him grabbing the bit in his teeth and pulling the control from me. Frankly, where's he going to go? Other than in a small circle around and around. This is why round-pens are used a lot in training. He's been slowly improving but has a long way to go. My error in the accident is that I trusted we had made enough progress to take him into the field arena. (much larger, tons of room, trees, bushes, etc). Earlier in the day I did it with no other horses in the arena and he did pretty well. Mostly out of control, but we had a few moments that he maintained a steady pace. So.. okay. We continue to ride with others at a walk/trot and we're finishing up for the day, I decide it'd be good to end the day with one last round of cantering. (I really have to say each time I say canter its like a joke since I think of a canter as calm and controlled and his is far from it). Anyhow, 3 other horses in the arena, I move him into the canter and he tweaks, almost running over the top of the other horses. This results in some serious, "WTF"'s from all of us, a punishing tight circle to bring him back into control, and a comment from me of "sorry guys, let me try that one more time." This in general wasn't a mistake; like training with other animals, if they do something incredibly wrong, you don't stop on that note, you try again until you get it right. I truly thought there would be no problem in asking him for the canter again, afterall, he had done it semi-controlled 4 or 5 times an hour previous, right? .. wrong. I ask him for the canter and for the 1st time since 3 months ago he does the worst thing that can happen on horseback; he bolted, causing me to pull the bit back, causing him to be able to clamp his teeth down on it, eliminating all of my control. He made 1 dead run aruond the arena, the other women knew from watching that he was out of control but were helpless to do anything. I've got both hands on one rein trying pull the bit out of his control and force his head sideways so I can get him to stop. (tight circles equal emergency stops) Within seconds it was all over, the other gals screamed as he ran headlong straight into a tree. My last desperate thought before impact was that he was going to kill himself by hitting it head first. However he turned his head at the last moment so it hit his neck and then his shoulder; bringing us from a dead-run down to a crashing stop. I flew from his back into the side of the tree, hitting my head, left shoulder, and left arm, scratching the hell out of the arm. The force of the impact bounced me back into his saddle which was the biggest oddity of it. We were both very dazed to say the least. I refused the call for the ambulance as soon as I found that no bones were broken, the scratchs were bleeding, but nothiing serious. I do realize now that with the adrenaline pumping I probably felt very little of the pain, though I still don't think I needed to be taken to the ER. Anyhow --- in hindsight, I still don't know what happened. We know he took off obviously, but why? and then why run head on into the tree? That night it was all about us calling him a stupid f'ing animal, but now it just bugs me. I sincerely wish there were better ways to communicate with our animals.
Frustrating news, Dave had an interview with AT&T today, he thought he did really well. Within a couple of hours he had an email saying, Thanks but No Thanks. *sigh* It's really hard not to get your hopes up when a good interview comes and we were really hoping it was finally time for him to find a good job. All that can be done is to continue looking, continue trying. For now he is working at Sears, part-time, which we're grateful for, it will help us make the ends meet temporarily. Though I still can't believe they get away with paying people $6 an hour. All because they have 1% commission... woo. Let's say that again .. uhm. woo. Feel the sarcasm?
It's late, we gotta get to bed. I need to get into work early because I'm leaving early for my flight. I get to see my nephew in 1 more day!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hooray!!!!!!!!
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