3′-6″ Jumper Course. Gamble finishes without pilot…

Highland Green had their third and final Jumper schooling show this weekend and for the third time, Rachel Mutton got on board Gamble to take him around the courses.

She won the first class (3′-0″) with an excellent first round and quick jump off.  She had a knock down in the 3′-3″ division so had to settle for 2nd place.  But it was the 3′-6″ division where it got exciting!

There were 11 fences (including combinations) and she and Gamble popped over the 9th fence (#7b) a little high and Rachel lost her stirrup.  She kept going though trying to get the leg back into the iron — and while she didn’t recover the stirrup in time for fence the 2nd-last fence (#8) she and Gamble still got over it okay.  But now they had to make a sharp right turn to get to the last fence.  Gamble made the turn, but Rachel kept going straight and fell off.

Gamble, being the trooper he is, kept going and did the last fence anyhow.  We had to stop him from looking for more to do!

When we got to Rachel, she was lying on her back and blinking.  So far so good.  We started chatting with her. She knew she’d come off.  She knew her name. She squeezed Kim’s hands with each of her hands, and she could wiggle her toes.  She eventually straightened her legs and when she felt comfortable, she sat up, and eventually stood up.  Everything seemed pretty good, so we walked back to the warm-up arena and Rachel walked Gamble around while I collected all our stuff to go down to the trailer.

By the time we got down to the trailer, though, Rachel couldn’t remember a thing.  So, we loaded Gamble up and headed straight for University Hospital.  Jake stayed with her while I took Gamble home and Jenny and I took Rachel’s car back to UH where we had a good long visit.  They did a cat scan and didn’t find any cats whatsoever.  She had no short term memory.  She couldn’t remember how she did at the show in any of the classes, or even what month it was — even after we told her over and over again.  She was eventually cleared to go home, but with zero work for 2 weeks.

It was a really good thing she was wearing a good quality helmet.  But even still, it serves as a reminder that no matter how good you are as a rider, stuff still happens — and all it takes is a split second.

 


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