First

The sun had not quite peeked its head above the horizon, painting the edges of the trees, the barn, everything, with a hint of gold.  We were mostly alone,  save for the others who were turning out horses or tacking up--and my dad, who was documenting it all with a gigantic camcorder that looked like it had been swiped out of the back of a news van.

Nervously, I tried maneuvering Moe through the movements of the dressage test we'd been practicing all week.  We screeched to a halt where "X" might have been, had the wing of a jump standard not been hogging the space.  A pretentious salute, and off we bounced on our way over to "K", where we trotted a lop-sided circle.  Overnight, a storm had turned the arena into a soupy mess, dotted with pond-sized puddles.  Besides not wanting Moe to slip, I'd just bathed him and, for now, his legs were white.  He was more than happy not to get his feet wet, too.   All of this dodging of bodies of water and jumps made round circles hexagon-ish and straight lines squiggles.  Worse yet, I'd been forced to give up my beloved riding crop and learn how to ride wearing spurs instead.  

To up the difficulty a notch, out trudged one of the handful of trainers at the barn, a disheveled and quirky brunette, with her bay Arab gelding.  I thought it was impossible, but somehow she created just enough open space to lunge her horse near the center of the arena.

“Hey, look!” She bellowed, tipping her head in my direction as her dark horse spun around her, “it's 'desert donkeys' on parade!”

Ah, yes.  Desert donkeys.  Our horses were the only two Arabians in the group of horses entered to compete in the combined training event that day.  Not that there was anything wrong with that, except that there was everything wrong with that.  Our horses didn't move the same way the Thoroughbreds and Warmbloods did, and they weren't built to jump high and tight.  Not to mention that Moe had been mostly trained by myself, and I knew the other horses were show horses and been-there-done-that school mounts.  We were the longest of shots, but those were odds we were familiar with.

Too soon, the bell signaling my dressage test time jingled and the two of us recounted a week's worth of drilling.  Letters, transitions, circles, and changes of direction.  Near the end, I lost a stirrup during a canter circle and tried to pretend like I was totally cool with that (I wasn't).  The judge wasn't fooled, and let me know in my test notes that we'd looked a little stiff during that part.  Well, duh!

We had time to kill in between dressage and the cross-country phase, where we'd be in the farm's back pasture jumping rustic-looking jumps and teeny-tiny ditches.  I changed from my forest green hunt jacket and white blouse into something a little more sporty--a coral polo shirt I'd bought at a local horse show.  If I looked prepared for what was to come, it was a small miracle.  I was literally shaking in my boots.  

There was no trainer to give me any pointers as I set off to warm up over the single jumps in the open area preceding the cross-country start line.  My pace was wrong.  Moe was taking off before I was ready, leaving me playing catch-up somewhere in the air.  Or I was attempting to jump the jumps before Moe was ready, and....  it was a mess.  One ill-timed jump too many sent me off-kilter, dangling off the side of the saddle by a single rein and my left ring finger.  I landed on my feet, but knew something was wrong.  I'd broken my finger, no doubt about it.

Our cross-country trip was dismal.  We racked up refusals at nearly every obstacle, which surprised me as our lessons earlier in the week over the same jumps had been uneventful and confident.  Our refusals didn't disqualify us, but we were clearly no longer in contention, between time penalties and countless other deductions.  I'd stopped caring.  My finger was swelling inside of my glove.

Determined to finish, I shrugged back into my hunt jacket, and pasted on a smile for the final phase:  Stadium jumping.  In stadium, we'd be jumping obstacles we'd never jumped before, and trying to do it quickly and without plowing through them.  Face-to-face, those jumps loomed larger than Moe or I were used to, right around three feet high.  The first jump, a strange-looking intertwined contraption called a Swedish oxer, gave Moe reason for pause.  Literally.  It was, by far, the most intimidating jump we'd ever approached.  I couldn't even be mad at him for screeching up to it--I would have done the same thing, if I was in his hooves.  We circled around to approach again, and made it over.

Jump two seemed simple enough, a box with a single red rail.  The Red Rail of Doom turned out to be very, very scary.  Like, boogey-man scary.  So scary, in fact, we found ourselves disqualified from competition after two more refusals.  However, because it was a "fun event", we were allowed to continue the rest of the jumping course, with mixed success.  Moe nearly ran me into the standard of a jump with oddly-slanted jump rails, then proceeded to knock the whole thing down on attempt number two.  At the end of our round, there was polite clapping and murmurs.  Desert donkey on parade.  Nothin' to see here!

As quickly as I could manage, I tucked Moe away in his temporary stall for the night.  My finger was throbbing.  I needed medical attention, I was sure.

It was Sunday, and my father had come to see me at the event in between church services.  Fulfilling his show of support, he'd already headed back for the evening service, leaving my sister and her husband as my responsible parties, the lucky ones forced to chauffeur me up the road to the After-Hours Urgent Care.

The Urgent Care was quiet, with no trace of any of my fellow riders--because, apparently, they all knew what they were doing.  A nurse ushered the three of us back to a open room full of gurneys, then whisked a curtain around us, blocking our view of the beds all around.

"The doctor will be right with you."  She promised, half-heartedly.  Even she knew that she was probably lying.

Several minutes later, shuffling footsteps on the other side of the curtain indicated we had company.  The doctor was right with someone, after all, but he chose my new neighbor first.

"So, Mr. Smith....."  He began, loud enough for us to hear.  "How exactly does one cook turtle?"

A crackly but energetic voice replied with no hesitation, "Oh, you can make soup....  You can fricassee it...."

My new neighbor had a chunk of turtle lodged securely in his throat.  I bit down on my tongue to keep from laughing out loud as I met my brother-in-law's look of amusement.  Suddenly my problems didn't seem so large, but my eyes more than likely did.  All these years later, I struggle to remember the finer details of that day, the show, my injury--but we have never forgotten eavesdropping on Mr. Turtle Soup giving cooking pointers to the doctor.

Moe remembered it all, though.  After that event, each time we visited a certain riding trail that reminded him of the cross-country course, his ears would prick forward, and he would prance, ready to take his turn on course one more time.  And, wouldn't you know, he always came in first place.