Had one of the worst days at work ever today.
For those of you unaware, I work at a ranch and I teach kids to ride. Each week I get a new batch of kids and new horses from the ranch. In addition to this I work on project horses and do trail rides with my students.
Got a lot of horses I’ve never worked with this week but I have really good riders so it’s ok! Well. Wasn’t told how sensitive one of my new horses was about his cinch being tight. My kid got on while I held the horse and the extra weight caused the cinch to shift.
Long long story short I got massive rope burn on my left hand from trying to hold a panicking horse and watched my favorite student hit the ground after nearly having the horse fall on him and watched this kid immediately go limp. Kid was out cold for a full minute. A lot of other things happened between then and when they got picked up but I have been on the verge of a panic attack all day because of it. Had to help my kids mount up again in the second half of the day and almost couldn’t do it I was shaking so much.
This horse has super bad trust issues as well so he panics when I do anything with his bridle, which amped my anxiety up today. So, I rode him on my trail ride to try and bond with him, get him used to me. Forgot that today is the day my kids get to swim in the lake so I have to hold 6 horses at once. For those of you who have never held horses before, 6 horses in the middle of the woods is quite a bit for one person. Very not safe. Very high anxiety.
I was going to go on a trail ride on my own after my kids all went home just to destress but I just couldn’t. I was too amped up which is disappointing cause I haven’t gotten to go on a private ride since I got injured. And now just got told my kid who fell off has a concussion and won’t be in my camp for the rest of the week. I know nothing I could’ve done would’ve prevented the accident given the information I did not have and the norm for the lesson horses, but the guilt and blame is weighing very very heavily on me right now.