October 17, 2024 
A few days ago, I turned to my partner and said, “I have strong wrists because I am a horse girl.”
Then, I gestured to the crutches I was on, and said, “Then again, I am also on these darn things because I am a horse girl.”
A week earlier, my horse, Brandy, was spooked by a noise in the indoor arena and I came off. It was neither an exciting spook nor an exciting fall. It was a simple moment of her going one way and I going the other.
I landed on my feet, but I twisted around on my right ankle as I came down. The pain was so immediate and intense that it mocked both the adrenaline in my veins and my automatic desire to get back on. My best friend, who had come back to check on me after hosing off her own steed, saw me standing on one leg, dazed and hyperventilating.
She came in and took Brandy back to the barn while I limped behind. She untacked and put everything away, wrapped my ankle in a polo wrap, and got ready to drive me to the emergency room. As I sat on my tack box and waited for my friend to finish, Brandy pressed her nose against the back of my head through the bars of her stall. My often most-marish-of-mares was worried sick.
This accident was the first time I had come off Brandy. While occasionally spooky, and always judgmental, Brandy had, up to that point, usually done everything in her power to keep me on her back when things went array.
As I write this, my ankle is still in an air cast, and I am doing what the sports medicine doctor recommended. I feel like a superwoman that I didn’t break anything, nor do I need surgery.
But if I were a horse, I would still be categorized as head-bobbing lame.
I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t frustrated and grouchy. Mild bouts of depression have come for several annoying visits: a gloomy telemarketer in my mind, saying that everything is pointless, and that I need to renew my car’s extended warranty.
I had forgotten how much I relied on my time in the barn to regulate my mood and quiet my mind. Watching the leaves change and the temperatures drop as I sit on the couch, working from home, has been a painful kind of FOMO. Fall is my favorite time to be outside, and here I am on ‘stall-rest’, dreaming about the second I can climb back in the saddle.
As an equestrian, I have always found a deep satisfaction in being called “tough” or “a hard worker.” I am terrible at parties, but if you need me to show up and help with a project, or lift something heavy, I am your girl. Yet I have also learned that being a good equestrian also means knowing when to ask for help.
The belief that I have the right to let other people help me, though, is a new one. In earlier days, I fed horses on a broken foot and drove a tractor with a blown-out eardrum from a sinus infection I neglected to treat. While I understand that the younger me didn’t have the safety net I have now, I still didn’t believe I was worthy of the love offered, even then.
This time around, though, I am changing my tune. I trust those who are taking care of Brandy while I am gone, and I am learning to trust those at home who want to take care of me, too.
Before a cold snap hit, my boyfriend drove my crutches and me back to the barn. He refilled grains and supplements, ensured the horses’s sheets fit, and folded them in front of the stall doors. Brandy and my new gelding got a good groom session, too, as they like it better when he does it anyway.
The first place I kept Brandy before this barn was a tiny, mom-and-pop place with only three or four other horses. Sometimes, the owner’s husband turned the horses out in the morning. He was dying of cancer and Brandy—who could be kind of pushy coming out of her stall in the morning—was careful with him in a way she wasn’t with the rest of us mere mortals. She would gingerly follow behind him, watching each step to keep him safe. He adored her in return.
I have seen her extend this same grace several other times with several other vulnerable people, but she never had for me until this injury. As I stood in front of her on my crutches while my boyfriend brushed, she rested her head against my chest, as if relieved that I was back in the barn.
I am a firm believer that in horse-human relationships, it is important to remember that humans usually need to be the grown up. It is our job to regulate our emotions and be sources of comfort and stability for our animals, not the other way around. However, at that moment, I let Brandy comfort me.
In many ways, these moments of deep connection are what keep so many of us returning to horses over and over, despite expense and injury. That love, in the end, is what makes us crazy horse people exactly who we are.
