A Horses Opinion

Why didn't someone stop me? They knew it was dangerous, but no one said to me, "Don't do that, it's too dangerous". No, in fact, they dared me to do it, so I did.

It all began on a day in, oh must have been about nineteen seventy- nine if I recall correctly. I was a young thing then and sometimes when we are young we will do things we know we shouldn't do.

At that time in life, I was really into horses and anything that had to do with horses. I ran around with a bunch of young gals and guys who were like- minded when it came to horses. We often went on long trail rides on the weekends and even went camping with our horses. We had some great times.

On one particular Saturday, we decided to ride down by Lake Michigan. In those days, you could still ride horses in the dunes and along the lake shore. We saddled up and headed down the trail around eight in the morning.

We reached our destination around noon and had a marvelous picnic on the beach. As we were sitting there one of the guys noticed a huge sand dune just north of our picnic spot. It must have been about twenty feet high, almost straight up.

"Bet no one has guts enough to ride their horse up that sand dune", Mark said.

Of course, I had to be a smart- ass and answer, "Wouldn't be nothing to it, my horse could fly up there"; a dumb thing to say.

So there I was sitting on my horse and staring up that sand dune, hoping someone would say I better not try it. Instead, the idiots were cheering me on and placing bets. Pride wouldn't let me back out now.

I kicked my horse in the ribs and, to give her credit, she did give it her best effort. Halfway up her feet went out from under her and she began sliding downhill. I tried to get off, but the horse lost her balance and rolled over me as she slid on down the dune. Luckily neither one of us was injured.

I got to my feet, spitting sand out of my mouth and trying to get the sand out of my eyes. My one thought was for my horse, hoping I had not hurt her in any way. She was fine and blew a nostril full of sand and horse snot in my face. Her way of telling me how stupid my stunt was.