On the Line

Ah Mondays. A horse person who works on Mondays is perhaps one of the very few people who looks forward to the first day of the week. At my shared facility most of the trainers take Mondays off, which means that in the winter months, the indoor ring that normally looks like Grand Central Station looks like this:

There are few sweeter things in life than a big empty indoor ring at a 300 horse, multi-trainer facility. I know there will be many more days this winter spent crushed together in the indoor, but today I was happy to be riding and teaching while the other barns had the day off.

The crowded ring added to the drama yesterday when an unsuspecting child and her pony came face to face with a very scared deer. All of us in the indoor witnessed this freak incident with varying levels of horror, disbelief, and (later) amusement.

(Disclaimer: Neither deer, pony or child were hurt during this incident. In fact child walked away tear-free.)

Small white pony, with even smaller rider aboard, heads out of arena on pathway towards the barns. An errant deer, antlers and all, somehow finds itself smack dab in the heart of the cluster of barns next to the ring. In a panicky search for human-free territory, it heads up pathway at top speed. Pony rounds corner at just the wrong time, and suddenly there are three panicked animals, pony, buck, and one child suddenly sitting in the mud. My group of four riders just happened to have a clear view of the altercation, but could only stop and stare in a horseback version of rubbernecking. They alternately jumped off their own horses in fright or stuttered a late warning “Deer. . .! . … Pony! lookout.”
The riderless pony takes off with the deer down the outside of the ring. For a moment pony and deer appeared to be running together, or perhaps racing each other in terrified flight-animal solidarity.

I wish I had taken a picture of that.