One Bad Day

​One Bad Day
By Gaye DeRusso
 
Your horse is usually very good, well behaved. If it acts up it is not very extreme or very often. But then you have one bad day, and everything goes wrong. You’re not sure exactly why, but your good horse just goes bad. 
 
He starts acting crazy, just getting jumpy but your friend is waiting so instead of lunging you jump on anyhow. Ok I’m ready he's acting weird but let’s go. As you start going down the trail, the other horse is fine, but yours is spooking and acting a fool. So, you try to distract him and get his mind working and nothing is helping. 
 
As you go down the trail, it goes bad. He is now leaping around behind the other horse. You keep trying to contain his unrivaled energy, but you can't.  You’re sliding the bit, half halting, giving him little jobs to do, but you are hardly staying on and hardly staying on the trail. 
 
You think I should get off and your friend says, no don't let him win you need to stay on. So, you listen and then a deer jumps out of the brush, your horse then launches you into oblivion and as your flying through the air in slow motion, you think, I knew I should have gotten off and just walked him home. Bam, you hit the ground like a sack of rocks and lay there, thinking, I hope I am not broken. The wind is knocked out of you, your friend is asking if you’re ok, but you can't even talk. As you lay there in pain unsure if or what is broken, you think this is one bad day. 
 
Everyone has bad days. Sometimes shit just goes wrong. You’re driving to work, and a tree falls in front of you, and you demolish your car. You open the door, and your dog runs away. You walk down the stairs and trip and break your ankle. You get to work, and you find out you just lost the companies biggest account because you made a mistake. Everyone has bad days and not much you can do about it, except move forward. 
 
But when you have a bad day with a horse, it can be death defying. Any little mistake can be a huge hospital bill and a body that will never be the same. We sometimes learn this the hard way and each time we have a bad day, if we are smart, we prepare the horse more and we take less chances. 
 
If they are acting up when we try to leave with our friend, we think the last time this happen he almost killed me, so you say, Suzie he is acting a fool, I am going to go lunge him and stay in the arena today, sorry. 
 
You’re riding on trail, and he becomes nutty, and you say hey Joe, can you stop I am getting off of this crazy horse and I am going to walk till he calms back down. You end up walking all the way home because he stays a nut, but when you get home, you lunge him for 30 min and tie him up for an hour. The next day you lunge him for 30 min and then you take him for a ride, and he is fine. 
 
Sometimes for unknown reasons, our reasonable horse just turns nutty, and he has one bad day. They give us so many good days, that of course they can have one bad day. Sometimes it’s because they smell a bear or a mountain lion that passed through the area and the smell is still there. Sometimes they smell the fear of a deer on the bushes you’re passing through because it was being chased by coyotes when it passed through. Sometimes there is a coyote or mountain lion hiding nearby but you can't smell, see, or hear it, but your horse can. 
 
They rely on instincts and sometimes those instincts are so high on certain days, that you can't over ride it and your horse just seems to lose his mind. We don't always know why they lost their mind but if it happens all the time, it might be lack of training, experience, or the wrong horse for the job. But if it happens very rarely even though it was bad when it happens, just remember it was one bad day. We all have them and so can your horse. It is not a reason to get rid of them or a reason to call them nuts. They just are reacting to something out there that was truly causing them major fear. 
 
So, realize these are animals with flight modes when they are in fear. Realize that they let us climb up on their backs daily and take us for hours into a forest where they know they can be eaten. Realize that is this is one day out of 100 that was bad. You may never know why it happen or what he was running from, but 100 days of good compared to one day of bad is really not a reason to sell your horse. Learn what you can from the experience. Prepare more, take less chances, wear your helmet and your vest and don't let your friends talk you into staying on if your instincts are telling you to get off. A long walk home is better than a helicopter ride to the hospital. 
 
And you just have to realize, he had one bad day.