Aufwaendinge Bergung

"Intricate Rescue" says the paper about our accident. When I saw the picture I was a little sick to my stomach. Then again, the picture doesn't show any of the horrible details, it actually makes it look like a peaceful situation.

You can see I'm holding onto one of the sharp branches that the firemen later cut. My jacket is on Baasha's chest. The article talks about how I'm new to the area, and describes the bridge as rotten, 50cm high. It describes how I found the house and the man helped me. How it was an "impassable" area that the firemen had to carry their tools to on foot (I guess normally people are nice enough to have their accidents in convenient areas, hehe.) It describes the tools they used, why they didn't want to use the chainsaw. They say "Since we had to do everything by hand, it took over an hour to cut the horse free." They say my horse was relatively calm, probably due to shock.

And the end says I have a guardian angel, for if I'd ridden across, I would have been trapped too. Funny after my ponderings about bravery and cowardice - would a braver rider have ridden across? I am just in the habit of jumping off anytime a situation looks tricky, and I hardly ever ride across bridges I'm not sure about. I'll probably not ride over the ones I am sure about either! (Article in German here.)

Since this is Germany, we have a few safeties in place for whatever comes next. Every horse must have liability insurance, because the Germans know how accident-prone horses are. So if the city decides that it's up to me to pay for the bridge, my insurance will cover it. Likewise, when I get the vet bill, I may not even have to pay it because the city should maintain its bridges. This was not a horses prohibited trail. I was very law abiding that day. My man was on the phone right away with our insurance agent to file the report.

My tack. Omygoodness my tack. I finally got around to inspecting it, checking my saddle for damage, etc, and I found that one of the spikey branches had impaled my breastcollar! Check that out! Then I noticed my EZ ride stirrup cage was crushed. It made me so glad I always buy the plastic ones and not the aluminum. Those metal ones are so painful to run into, much less lie on for 2 hours.

Baasha is getting spoiled, don't worry. I bought two more bags of carrots today because we are going thru them fast. It's been raining so he's been hiding in his stall, pooping, peeing, and making a total mess in there. He even had the absurd idea to lay down in there and get green spots all over him. It's hard to get mad at him for that though, after being so thankful to God to have him alive! And since I'm not making him do anything he doesn't want lately, I am not going to make him endure a bath. So his green spots stay.

I got a picture of his banged up front leg, but it was hard cuz he kept trying to shake hands. My man has him shaking hands all the time now, he just clicks with his tongue and hands over the carrot. He does it from outside the stall even, and makes Baasha shake with both front legs.








I'm not giving up on my plan to ride around the watershed, I just really need the GPS and a cell phone from now on: )












I know, I said that last time but this time I'm serious.











These are all pics from that day before the accident, and it's trippy for me to see what could have been the last ride.









Oh, he looks so clean and unblemished as we started out. When we started out, it was sunny. I saw dark clouds in the distance and thought, "Man am I glad I brought this jacket! I almost didn't!"













Little video of taking a moment to look at the water. If you would like to watch it, you might want to turn down the volume cuz the wind was very loud.






Definitely turn down the volume - the wind was really amazing that day! Kind of a boring video of just walking through wind. I'll try to do more interesting things on video in the future: )


Thanks for your remarks upon reading about our near-tragedy, I couldn't even proofread that entry without crying and it made me cry again that it touched you guys. I have to repeat what one commenter wrote - "It's amazing what horses can survive, and what little things can kill them." Indeed. Sometimes horses have the sense to just wait and let us help them. I honestly didn't know if Baasha had that sense.

Like my mom said, "Praise God all creatures down below."

Now to get this thank you package to the nice man who helped me....and next week I'll make another one for the firechief.