A Helmet Can Save Your Life!

By Katelyn Stuck

11/29/2011

Up until recently, I haven’t been much of a helmet advocate. I like to ride with the wind in my hair, which is a feeling I’m sure many horse-loving girls have. However, when I first started riding at Windy Ridge, helmets were an absolute requirement. Everyone wore them – including the instructor! Of course, I wore one too, but I didn’t particularly enjoy it.

Well, a recent experience has taught me that helmets are critical, because you never know what could happen while riding. At the end of October, a riding friend of mine asked me to ride with her at her stable. Unfortunately, helmets are not a requirement there; but thankfully, I chose to wear one anyway and I’m so glad I did!

My friend’s trainer took us on a trail ride through woods and fields. To make the trail ride even more fun, the trainer decided to create jumps on the incline of a wooded hill by lining up logs across the trail and then have us each canter over them and proceed up the hill. The horse I was riding had a limp from a past injury and his gait was a little different than most horses – it took some getting used to. Also, I had been having problems with the right stirrup. It wouldn’t stay on the ball of my foot, but kept coming loose. Things were going fine over the first two jumps, but on the third, where the trail’s incline was steeper, I lost my stirrup.

As the horse lunged upward to clear the log, I slid to the left, unable to catch myself with the right stirrup. I landed sharply on my left hip, hitting my head very hard against the hill. Everything went black for a few seconds. After a minute, I got up groaning, feeling a little dizzy, and rubbed my hurting hip. When I failed the first attempt to get back on my horse, the trainer came over to steady me and asked if I was okay. I said I was, but I know that reason I was okay was because I was wearing that helmet!

After I got home, I laid in bed all evening with a bad headache. I couldn’t get up without feeling like my head was whirling and I (and my mom) began to wonder if I had a slight concussion. The following morning I woke up with the same bad headache and didn’t feel well most of the day. The day after, though, I felt much better and was able to get up and do things.

All this is to say, wearing a helmet can save your life!! It can also save you from greater pain, serious injury, or even a hospital visit. I am so thankful that I wore a helmet that day, for without it I probably would have had a serious head injury.

Thank you, Mr. Ward, for providing helmets and requiring that we wear them!!! I am now a great advocate of helmets and will continue to wear them, if possible, whenever I ride.

This is me (and the same horse) on the day I fell off, wearing the cherry-red helmet that saved my head.  (2½ hours after the fall, but before I really started feeling the headache.)

            And me at WRR jumping Trav – with a helmet!