Will the judge excuse us from the ring?

if the rider is the one bleeding??

We all remember WEG, and the number one gold medal contender being eliminated for the tiniest bite on her poor ponies tongue.

And believe me a TINY amount of blood slung about can look very impressive. And just makes for rather bad television which is why the tolerance for that at these big competitions is…… zero.

Well this wasn’t my horse.

I was the one bleeding!!

I knew this feeling already. It had happened before.

I was 13 years old, about 5’4″ and MAYBE 80 pounds.
My LITTLE brother was 11 years old, 6′ tall (yes, really) and probably 150 pounds.

Most of our childhoods I had beat on him mercilessly. That’s what big sisters do to little brothers, right?

This was the day he decided to take his revenge.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was standing on a chair getting something out of a closet. As I turned around I saw the very impressive fist headed for my mouth.
It was like a cool 3D effect in a movie!

Unfortunately for me at the time I had metal braces on all my teeth complete with several hooks for rubber bands.

The surprise attack (besides knocking me off the chair) had left me with my upper lip firmly attached to my teeth.

I now know precisely how fish feel.

I remember running to my mother and yelling,” Momph, we haff to go to phee orphodontipht. My liphh is tthtuck on my teeph!!”

She made me repeat it half a dozen times.

“What was that honey?”

In retrospect I think she was just having fun with me.
We did eventually go to the orthodontist who unceremoniously ripped my lip off my braces.
Even at that age I thought, “Well hell, I could have done that at home!”

Fast forward about <cough cough> 25 years, and I had that same damn feeling!

I had decided to practice my dressage test for my up and coming horse trial. This test has a few moves in it that we’ve never done in competition. I thought a run through to look for issues was a good plan.

The test was actually going spectacularly. I was really happy with my leg yields and quiet <for once> canter departs. We changed canter leads through the trot at X and she was just brilliant.

Maybe I was smiling and that’s why I was now in this predicament.

I had never really asked her to do a rein back before. Sure we’ve backed up, but not in a frame during a dressage test.

I asked her to halt, which she is very good at and typically does a nice square halt. And then we had a bit of a discussion about what the cue for “rein back” was. Apparently what I thought it was, she thought meant smack me in the face with her head as hard as she could.

This is how I found myself with blood dripping down my chin and my lip firmly attached to my teeth.

I have yet to figure out how she gets me so good every time. The last time she pulled this stunt she actually hit me in the face hard enough to knock me off. I actually measured the distance from her head to my face (yes with a ruler) because I just don’t understand how she can bend her neck like that & so quickly!

I will say I was warned by the previous owner. The lovely beast had actually broken her nose pulling this magical stunt and this was the instigating reason she decided to sell her.

Many many C words came out of my mouth when she did this and I called her a COW, a CREEP and a few other things. I then wiped the blood off of my mouth, pulled my lip off my teeth, checked to make sure the teeth were likely going to stay in my mouth