Conversing with a horse
Boarding school memories make happy recalling and provide a soothing balm when times get packed, hurried and harried. College life was spent as a boarder and it was there that we were introduced to the art of horse riding. Equestrian, the word we were taught (the other one being equine liability), was to teach us the ability to converse with an animal in general and the horse in particular.
The initial initiation days to this art was indeed very interesting. The steps and methods employed in the teaching process is not the main aspect of this narrative. Suffice to say that within a period of six months we had learnt to snort like a horse and the horse had learnt to comprehend our snort.
It was thus on this one sunny clear weather day that our batch of mates were taken for our first cross country ride atop our mare each. Lush green grass and the trot of the horse were the view and sound that reached us while the fresh air blew its wind upon our face.
Soon our ride came to an area that had a deep trough in its forward trail. This was part of the training course and supposedly meant to teach the rider how to handle the horse during the down and up slope gradients. One individual amongst our batch had by then been silently encroached by the spirit of a cowboy. When it was his turn to go the trough way, he did what we all sat in a trance and watched.
Grouping the reins in one hand he held the other hand crooked at the elbow in perfect western man style. Where the horse was meant to be reined in to slow down its speed the horse went galloping down. At the other slope of the trough the horse went the same galloping way up. This time though the rider atop him was leaning backwards and therefore his weight was acting on the reins. The bit that dug into the horse’s mouth was digging in hard and the horse did not like it one bit.
The moment the horse had reached the lip of the trough he bucked and up into the air flew our rider friend. A perfect somersault he executed in air and came legs wide open by the natural effect of gravity. The horse had also trotted up ahead having relished the incident of bucking off his tormenting rider. That’s when the rider once aging came crashing down at the middle of his saddle in full control once again.
We heard the two talking to each other thereafter. The horse in admiration of his rider, and the rider in admonition of his horse.
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