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Danni and I have had horses for about 15 years now. I come from a long line of equestrians, so you could say that horses are in our blood. Danni took to riding like a duck to water, right from the start you could see she was a natural rider.
We made her work in a barn for a year before we agreed to buy her a horse of her own, we wanted her to understand exactly how much was involved with caring for horses, to make sure it was what she wanted.
Danni's first horse was a total disaster, we were royally screwed by a dishonest trainer, and sold a horse with a torn suspensory, don't even ask how I allowed that to happen, I was a complete idiot and trusted a trainer; if you are not familiar with horses, just believe me when I tell you that this is an injury you do not want your horse to have, they can take years to heal, and some never heal at all. Consequently poor Danni spent the first 2 years of horse ownership hand walking, wrapping legs and watching all her friends ride while she nursed her horse, and we dished out a few thousand dollars on vets, equipment, medication and treatments.
Once it became apparent that this horse was never going to be ridden ever again, we bought Danni another horse. This time we were much more cautious, and far less trusting, but we got lucky and bought from an honest trainer, something we have learnt to our cost is very rare in the horse world.
We traveled to Florida and found Travis. This amazing, talented, incredibly sweet little guy not only became a great horse for Danni but he became her best friend too. Over the next few years Danni did eventing and did really, really well. Travis was extremely pretty in the dressage show ring, always placing in the top 3, he was also a very talented jumper. He loved the cross country and would set off with his ears forward and a "Let's go Danni" expression on his face.
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| Danni and Travis |
For the next few years Danni won more and more competitions, progressing to higher levels of eventing, this scared me to death, as I would walk the course with her before the show, and be scared out of my wits at some of the jumps.
Because Danni seemed to have a natural talent for dressage, I worked on persuading her to move from eventing and concentrate on dressage instead. Sadly Dressage was not something Travis enjoyed, he loved to jump and tear across the open countryside. Despite the odds Danni worked hard, and again did very well with Travis in the show ring.
At this time I had returned to riding again, and had bought myself a beautiful 17 hand, black, 3 year old Oldenburg, gelding. We still had Danni's first horse, he was at home on our farm just hanging out in the field. Both Danni and I were riding every day, my new horse was a handful, but the trainer was giving me daily lessons, and I have always enjoyed a horse with spirit, so his nonsense didn't faze me, and I could see that with the right training he had the potential to one day be a fabulous Grand Prix dressage horse for Danni. That was until the day of my accident. October 23 2003.
I dropped my husband off at the airport to get a flight to New York for business, and was on my way back to the house when I noticed Nautica out in the field, one of his turn out boots had come undone and was hanging loosely around his leg. I parked outside the barn, climbed the fence and went over to where he was grazing. I petted his neck and talked to him as he was quietly grazing, then I bent down to do up his boot, and the next thing I knew there was a loud crack everything went black and I was flying threw the air, I crashed through the fence and landed on the concrete drive.
My vision was blurred, I had a sharp pain in my shoulder, I was dizzy and couldn't stand up, blood was pouring down my face, I was totally disorientated everything was spinning, I crawled across the yard to my neighbors house and banged on her door.
The next 7 days were spent in intensive care. Every bone in my face was broken, I looked like the elephant man, but I was lucky to be alive. My skull was cracked, the bone that protects the brain behind the skull was cracked and some air had seeped in, it was pretty serious, but I have since joked about how I was officially an "air head" for a while, in the true sense of the meaning.
I think it was more frightening for everyone else, poor Danni was brought from school to the hospital, and almost fainted when she saw me, her screams were heard 30,000 feet up literally, as Bob had been alerted on the flight and was on the phone with the hospital when Danni arrived and started screaming, scaring the life out of Bob and every passenger and crew member on the plane.
So anyway, that's basically why I had to stop riding, and I only had my new horse a few months. It was pretty sad. My accident had scared the life out of Danni, and for a little while she was nervous when riding Sultan, because he was so unpredictable. Consequently Sultan didn't get ridden as often as he should have been, which was not good, as he was so hot headed and he needed exercise and turn out, the longer he was left the more badly behaved he became, just about everyone at the barn we were boarding at was too nervous to ride him, and Danni also had Travis to deal with, and Nautica at home, and school, and no Mother around to help, so life was hard for her for a while. We didn't get much help from the people at the barn, Sultan was too much for any of them, this was really the beginning of a long and very hard chapter of our equestrian lives.
More to follow later...
Because Danni seemed to have a natural talent for dressage, I worked on persuading her to move from eventing and concentrate on dressage instead. Sadly Dressage was not something Travis enjoyed, he loved to jump and tear across the open countryside. Despite the odds Danni worked hard, and again did very well with Travis in the show ring.
At this time I had returned to riding again, and had bought myself a beautiful 17 hand, black, 3 year old Oldenburg, gelding. We still had Danni's first horse, he was at home on our farm just hanging out in the field. Both Danni and I were riding every day, my new horse was a handful, but the trainer was giving me daily lessons, and I have always enjoyed a horse with spirit, so his nonsense didn't faze me, and I could see that with the right training he had the potential to one day be a fabulous Grand Prix dressage horse for Danni. That was until the day of my accident. October 23 2003.
 |
| Sultan |
I dropped my husband off at the airport to get a flight to New York for business, and was on my way back to the house when I noticed Nautica out in the field, one of his turn out boots had come undone and was hanging loosely around his leg. I parked outside the barn, climbed the fence and went over to where he was grazing. I petted his neck and talked to him as he was quietly grazing, then I bent down to do up his boot, and the next thing I knew there was a loud crack everything went black and I was flying threw the air, I crashed through the fence and landed on the concrete drive.
My vision was blurred, I had a sharp pain in my shoulder, I was dizzy and couldn't stand up, blood was pouring down my face, I was totally disorientated everything was spinning, I crawled across the yard to my neighbors house and banged on her door.
The next 7 days were spent in intensive care. Every bone in my face was broken, I looked like the elephant man, but I was lucky to be alive. My skull was cracked, the bone that protects the brain behind the skull was cracked and some air had seeped in, it was pretty serious, but I have since joked about how I was officially an "air head" for a while, in the true sense of the meaning.
I think it was more frightening for everyone else, poor Danni was brought from school to the hospital, and almost fainted when she saw me, her screams were heard 30,000 feet up literally, as Bob had been alerted on the flight and was on the phone with the hospital when Danni arrived and started screaming, scaring the life out of Bob and every passenger and crew member on the plane.
So anyway, that's basically why I had to stop riding, and I only had my new horse a few months. It was pretty sad. My accident had scared the life out of Danni, and for a little while she was nervous when riding Sultan, because he was so unpredictable. Consequently Sultan didn't get ridden as often as he should have been, which was not good, as he was so hot headed and he needed exercise and turn out, the longer he was left the more badly behaved he became, just about everyone at the barn we were boarding at was too nervous to ride him, and Danni also had Travis to deal with, and Nautica at home, and school, and no Mother around to help, so life was hard for her for a while. We didn't get much help from the people at the barn, Sultan was too much for any of them, this was really the beginning of a long and very hard chapter of our equestrian lives.
More to follow later...
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