Me, Oreo, & Equinophobia

Today was Thunderhorse Day, and it was a beau­tiful day to over­come a baseless-​but-​longstanding fear.

My new tiny­horse friends.

S. and I drove out to Bobby’s Ranch for a trail ride; it is a lovely place on the edge of a huge expanse of con­ser­va­tion land. Bobby him­self wel­comed us warmly and pre­tended not to notice when my hands shook while signing the waiver. We got to spend some time wan­dering the grounds and meeting all the ani­mals; the chickens and ducks in the roost, the goats lounging on the patio, the donkey and the sheep and the bison (!!), and even the teeny-​tiny minia­ture horses (I cannot even fathom that these are real things, they are ridicu­lous), as well as the res­i­dent Great Pyrenees dog keeping a watchful eye over his charges. I might just have been a little trembly when I met the horses through the fence; they are fairly intense ani­mals and would just trot up and fix us with a stare.

Our trail guide intro­duced us to our horses, Oreo and Foxxy, and sat us up on their sad­dles. The worst part was actu­ally sit­ting up high and feeling the horse shift its weight under­neath me; it’s dif­fi­cult to get used to sit­ting on top of a living, breathing thing, and all I could think of was the fact that William the Conquerer and Genghis Khan are both rumored to have died from horse-​related acci­dents. Once I was in the stir­rups and rel­a­tively sure that I wasn’t going to tumble off Oreo’s back like a rag doll, we started our casual stroll along the trail.

Oreo is the one with the teeth. D:

Our horses han­dled the pud­dles and rocky hills like champs, and were super-​mellow. We wound past streams and small bridges, lis­tening to bird calls and run­ning water, and after a few min­utes my white-​knuckle grip on the pommel relaxed a little, and I started to focus on the clean air, quiet, and gor­geous land­scape. (I don’t get out into the woods as often as I’d like, so trees con­tinue to be some­thing of a nov­elty to me.) S’s horse was a glutton who decided to be dif­fi­cult, stop­ping reguarly to grab mouth­fuls of hay or grass from the side of the trail before our guide switched horses with him. Before I knew it, we were wan­dering back to the ranch — the horses had walked this route so many times before that they picked up some speed in antic­i­pa­tion of get­ting back to their busy schedule of munching on hay.

They’re a little scarier when you’re this close to their GIANT TEETH.

Sometimes, with fears, your brain needs to be proven wrong. Even though I knew full well that tons of people spend time around per­fectly pleasant horses every day, I could not wholly con­vince myself that every horse wouldn’t sense my ner­vous­ness at being around such a large animal without turning into Thunderhorse The Untamed Stallion. I had to expe­ri­ence it for myself to actu­ally accept it. Small steps just didn’t come close to climbing on and going for a ride, damn my nerves — a body can only pump out adren­a­line for so long before it has to take a breath, look around, and realize that nothing is going to go wrong.

No lie — there is no better feeling than begin­ning a trip as a bundle of nerves, and won­dering what the big deal ever was on the way back. At this point I almost feel like I was just being a huge wuss about nothing.

S. and his mighty steed!

What are you afraid of? Is it time to dive in?