A story for another day # 1: Those Ostriches

For those of you that have/had horses you'll know that they are always handy when a good story is needing to be told. Horses make good stories happen, they bring to life to an otherwise dull situation and inject a bit of humour when things aren't really that funny. And so I shall tell you one of my more memorable horse stories.



It all started when I was at my best friend Sarah-Annes house. We set out on a trek with Murray (SA's brother), Cameron (a boarder), Heather(SA's sister) and possibly Richard (a friend) but I can't rightly remember. I had been given a little pony called Cocoa to ride and no one seemed to think that the fact she was scared crapless of ostriches was a thing to tell me. This wouldn't really matter in many other situations as ostriches are not wild animals that roam New Zealand freely. But you see Sarah-Anne and her family breed ostriches. Most of the ostriches were kept in ostrich pens at the front of the farm, except for one cutie called Ozzie (Aussie?). Ozzie had free reign of some of the paddocks and she happened to be in one of the paddocks that we were riding through. As soon as Cocoa saw Ozzie she went crazy, I can't remember all that happened apart from the fact the Cococa was backing up on the edge of a very steep bank. I managed to get her to start moving forward which she took as a cue to get away as fast as she could from the scarey demon bird. She bolted up a hill, while the others tried to scare Ozzie away from the gate we were trying to get through. I managed to turn her around, which was no easy feat, and get her through the gate and away from the scarey ostrich.



We kept on with the trek and nothing happend until we had almost finished. We were coming through a paddock called the Burn which happened to have all the yearlings and other young horses in it. As we rode along singing (oh yes we were singing) the young horses were galloping mindlessly around us. We were having a great time singing a round robin when suddenly Cocoa jumped up onto a bank that the young horses were milling about on. I kept singing, utterly proud of myself for sitting that very unexpected jump, when all of a sudden the young horses took off. Cocoa obviously was feeling young at heart because she bolted too. I was galloping along in the middle of this wild (ha!) herd of horses trying to gain control of my free spirited mare when I realised that my singlet top had slipped down my arms and was exposing my bright aqua blue bra. Needless to say I was quite embarressed. I could hear the laughter of my friends behind me and I could imagine what they were saying. I managed to pull my top up with one hand and pull her to a stop with the other. We shamefacedly walked back to the others, well I did, I dont know how Cocoa was feeling. They were all cracking up making jokes about the incident as we made our way back home. I remember Murray saying 'wouldn't it have been so funny if you had fallen off with your top like that'. The others found that hilarious, but I didn't.

We made it back home and I unsaddled Cocoa and went to put her away, unfortunately I didn't realise that Ozzie had been put in the pens close to Cocoa and upon seeing Ozzie walking close by Cocoa pulled back hard. It felt like she ripped my arm out of my socket. I put Cocoa away and then declared that I hated horses and never was going to ride again.

As you can see I did ride again, although I don't think I've ridden Cocoa since that day. But that story has gone down in history and I don't think I'll ever hear the end of it.