Horse

  I loved watching westerns on TV.  Almost all of them involved riding horses.  The actors looked like they knew how to ride.  One secret about actors is that if the director asks you if you can ride a horse, you tell them that you can, even if you have never seen a horse before.  I expect that some of the actors in the westerns had no clue how to ride a horse before getting on one.

 When I was in high school, our church's youth group went to a horse farm outside of Columbia.  I don't think anybody in our group had ever ridden a horse.  The closest I had come was riding a mule down the Grand Canyon, when I was five.  Mules and horses are not the same thing.  Each of us was assigned a horse to ride.  There was a path that the owners said the horses would follow.  They had done this before.  We were given a quick lesson on how to ride a horse.  If you want the horse to slow down, you pulled back on the reins.  If you wanted the horse to go, he hit its sides with your feet.  If you wanted the horse to turn, you pulled the reins in the direction you wanted to go.  It seemed fairly simple.

 I got on my horse and off we went.  At first, everything went according to plan.  My horse sauntered along the path.  Then, it happened.  For some reason, my horse decided to walk a little faster.  He also decided to get off of the path and into some woods.  I was pulling back on the reins, but he didn't seem fazed by what I wanted him to do.  He was trying to knock me off by running under some limbs really fast.  It was getting a little dark, and I was having trouble ducking under the limbs.  He also enjoyed running through bushes.  I didn't share his enjoyment.  

 Eventually, one of the trainers saw my predicament and rode out to get my horse back on the trail.  He accused me of getting off of the trail on purpose.  I'm sure I heard my horse laugh under his breath.  When we got to the end of the trail, I dismounted and gave the horse a dirty look.  My butt was sore.  My legs were sore.  My head was sore.  I haven't ridden a horse since.  Years later, I had a girlfriend who loved horses.  She taught me a lot about them and what to look for in a horse.  If only she had been there the day I rode the horse with no name.