We decided to have her ride outdoors rather than in the indoor ring as it was such a beautiful day. She was into it. Smiling. Chirping. Laughing. As it was going so well, the instructor suggested we go on one of the short trail rides through the woods. It was a little more bumpy(translate: more work) than Sarah was used to but she loved it. Finally, we emerged from the trail and took one more walk around the track before heading into the stables.....
Well about 30 yards from the dismount area, Sarah's trunk muscles simply gave out. They had nothing left. She started giggling to let me know 'something' was happening and the next thing I knew she was leaning more and more to her right and was heading straight down. I was trying to push her back up from that side and the instructor was trying to pull her up from the other side. What a sight we must have been!
There was no way we or she could get her back up into the saddle. What to do? what to do? She was going down unless we took her off the horse. So while she was leaning and giggling, we released her feet from the stirrups and I had no choice but to drag her down from the horse. Slowly.
And there I was in the middle of a field holding a totally floppy 68 pound child. I started laughing and that was not good! I still had to get her to my car which was quite a ways away. I could have layed her in the grass and waited for someone to bring her wheelchair but it is no easy feat to get her up from the ground! As I already had her in my arms, off we went to try and make it to the car. I was successful and we both were amused.
So today, the 'day after', we are both a bit sore. Sarah, because she exercised to the point of failure and me because I carried her to the point of failure. Tylenol is on our agenda today :)
