Now that I was getting older, owning a horse of my own was going to be expensive, which meant that I was going to have to save up for it myself, straight away it was going to be a struggle as saving was not my strong point, actually even now I can’t seem to get the hang of it.

My friend Jo used to ride a horse called Goldie, he was a lovely palomino which was kept on a farm down the road from where I lived, it was a wild thing which had been sent away to be broken in but somewhere along the way we think he kind of forgot all he was taught and by the time he came back he was still out of control, the farmer was quite upset that his granddaughter, who he originally bought Goldie for would go no where near him, so Jo was starting to ride him out. Me, well I wasn’t quite ready for a horse like Goldie yet.

Now Goldie had many fields to roam, and every time we went to get him he was always in the one farthest away, and the funniest thing was how deaf he was when we shouted his name, but he could hear you drop horse feed nuts into his bucket from four fields away, funny that. Now one day as we were walking down the field, Goldie was running up and down the far hedge neighing and whinnying, on the other side was a brown cob doing the same.

It did not take us long to find out who owned this pony, I am not saying that we were nosy, just inquisitive, she belonged to a family who had just moved in down in the valley, they had two ponies, one called Willow who was only six months old and the other called Honey who they said we were more than welcome to ride, this for me was a dream come true. We decided just to ride her in the field to start with so we could get used to each other, we ran down to their house to get her tack. They told us she was hard work to catch and best to pen her into a corner then throw a lead rope around her neck, as soon as you do this she would know that she was caught and would stand still whilst you put the head collar on her. Jo and I looked at each other and giggled, as experienced as us how hard could this be?

We had all the horses tack sat on the fence ready, Jo had the lead rope and I had the head collar, Honey took one look at us and galloped of around the field, not a good start but after about ten minutes she had calmed down ready for us to make our move, we walked up slowly behind her and started to get her penned into a corner, so far so good. Jo walked slowly up ready with the lead rope but Honey saw it coming, rearing up she span around and shot straight past us both back out into the field, OK, plan B, lets both hold the lead rope and walk up behind her. This worked a lot better and Jo got close enough to throw the lead rope over her neck, on doing this Honey stood still looking at us both as of to say, well come on then you have caught me.

Keep in mind that this is me we are talking about, you know the girl who knows everything that there is to know about horses, so at this point it was my move and I ran up behind Honey with the head collar. That day I learnt a very valuable and painful lesson. Honey must have been spooked at me running at her from behind, because just as I ran up behind her she kicked out with both legs, she caught me in the top of my leg and sent me into a flying backwards somersault, oh my God did it hurt. Jo came running over but I jumped up saying that I was OK and that it was lucky that she did not have any horseshoes on.

We decided to give up and come back tomorrow. My leg was getting tighter and tighter underneath my jeans. I just wanted to get home so I could see if it was bruised, thankfully Jo carried the tack back down to the house while I waited by the gate for her. Walking back home that day took me over a hour for a ten minute walk. As soon as I walked through the door my mum knew that something was wrong, but it was at least another half hour before I took down my jeans to expose a bruise that covered the whole of my top leg right down to my knee, it was huge, my mum had a fit and started to shout at me, which was when I burst into tears. For a whole week after that I could only wear pajamas bottoms because of the swelling, but we were soon back in Honeys field with head collar and lead rope in tow. This was another lesson that I had learnt so I would be ready when the day came when I would be owning a horse of my own.

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