Another horse calamity, narrowly averted...

Riley's alternate title: "Mom never lets me have any fun..."
At the end of my life I may not be an expert horsewoman, but I'll be eminently qualified to write the book, "1000 Ways Your Horse Can Get Injured" -- thanks in large part to Riley. My heart is still racing, just a little, as I write.

Friday 1pm
Friday afternoon I call Riley's barn manager to find out the weekend work schedule. She tells me in an apologetic tone that the horses have not been out in three days. The pastures are a sheet of ice after a series of rain/sleet and freeze/thaw cycles. Riley has never been stallbound for more than one day, and I speculate he must be bouncing off the walls. I want to go out to the barn right away, but my stepsons are in town and Bob wants us to take them out to dinner. I campaign for a very early dinner so I can go out to the barn afterwards.

Friday 7pm
Dinner is over by 7pm, partly because I lie and tell everyone "the desserts here are awful." Then Bob and I drive out to the barn. The plan is to turn Riley out in the indoor arena and let him work off some steam. Before leading Riley into the ring, I brief Bob on his turnout duty--to hold the lunge whip and keep Riley away from the end of the arena where jumps are stored (he could run into the standards and get hurt). We otherwise Riley-proof the ring and I go get my horse.

I lead Riley into the ring, close the door and turn him loose. To my surprise he is energetic but not crazed, and he does a few laps around the ring. On the third lap, he passes the jumps but the huge sawdust pile adjacent to the jumps catches his eye. This is the mother of all sawdust piles, an 18 wheeler loads-worth that is well over Riley's head and runs almost from corner to corner of the ring's short side. I never dreamed Riley would look twice at it. But he trots toward it, ears perked and head lowered, and starts to paw at the edge. I yell at Bob to move him away, but Bob doesn't see any danger and is only sauntering toward Riley.

Without warning, Riley leaps into the sawdust pile as like a kid plungeing into a pile of leaves. He scrambles up the mountain of sawdust, makes it nearly to the top of the highest mound. Then he slides halfway down, toward a narrow space between the pile and the corner of the indoor. He isn't exactly stuck, but he is stifle/elbow deep in sawdust and flailing. It's easy to see he could roll and get cast behind the gigantic pile. I run around the back of the pile and make my way toward where Riley is. Wading into the sawdust up to my thighs, I crack the whip, hoping to flush him out. I can't see what effect this has, but Bob, on the other side, does. Riley leaps up throws himself in the other direction. As he clambers down the side of the pile he tips forward, loses his balance, and goes down on his chest and neck. Thankfully it's a short, soft fall, and as he frees his legs he slides to the bottom of the pile, landing on the solid footing of the indoor.

I follow him to the other end of the ring, grabbing a lunge line that is looped around a jump standard. Clipping the line to his halter, we finish his exercise in a more controlled fashion. He is okay, but my mind is filled with visions of Riley on his back, lodged between the pile and the wall, feet flailing. I want to throw up.

Riley, on the other hand, is trotting merrily at the end of the lunge. "What a goofball," Bob observes.