On Saturday I went riding up North with a friend of mine who owns two horses. It was pretty hot, so we decided to run them down the road to a large pond in the middle of a construction site. We aren’t supposed to go in there, but hey it’s Saturday. And it’s hot. And we wanted to take the horses for a swim.

The two horses are Jake and Dana. Jake is a large (just under 17HH for you horsey people) Quarter Horse gelding. Dana is a smallish (14HH?) Arabian mare. Brandi was on Jake, and left his saddle on to go swimming. I took Dana’s off to ride bareback. I will say this, Jake is not the smartest horse.

His first round swimming he did fine. The second, not so much. He slipped underwater, and instead of floating or putting his feet back underneath him, he started thrashing and throwing himself sideways. Brandi managed to get clear of him and swim off near his back, but he’d freaked himself out so much by this point that he just… sank.

Pulling a 1200 pound animal out of a lake isn’t something I’d ever like to do again. Taking a saddle off underwater isn’t something I’d recommend either, because as I did he thrashed into me and nearly took my head off with his own. We dragged him back to shore and held his nose out of the water so he could breathe long enough for him to settle down. 15-20 minutes later he finally rolled over and picked himself up.

Neither of us panicked, we’ve both been around horses long enough to remain calm in the event of an emergency. Luckily he was only superficially injured – he scraped one of his ankles on the rocks.

With disaster out of the way and Jake safe, we took ourselves and Dana for a swim. She may be short…

And moody…

But I love her so. And here’s a gratuitous shot of how stylish I looked in paddock boots and half-chaps with my pants rolled up.

It was hot.