Until now, I have managed to escape injury and death during my encounters with wild animals, but depending on how you see it, either my luck ran out recently or it kept running because I’m alive and writing this after one animal closed in on me.

For some reason, it seems to be those moments when I am relaxed and having fun that my world is flipped on its back. Minutes before El Toro the scrub bull confronted me I had been walking along a tranquil sandy creek bed anticipating a cool soothing wash downstream. Minutes before Jaw’s fin sliced through the water I had just begun to really relax out in those crowd free waves. This time was no different. Earlier in the day I had driven for forty minutes out to a floodplain paddock I’d leased for two of my horses. The grassy green field is in one of the narrow valleys that are flanked by the steep ridges of the Ourimbah State Forest, west of Gosford, an hour north of Sydney. I had my heavy breaking-in saddle and my light weight all-purpose saddle with me, and I planned to ride my new young gelding Jindy first and then my mare Twiggy. Jindy is pretty green and I had no idea how he’d react to the dirt bikes and four wheel drives we’d encounter so I rode him in the breaking-in stock saddle. When the first car approached us along the main road he freaked out, running backwards and he did the same when a string of very noisy guttural dirt bikes motored down past us as we climbed up the steep 300 meter accent onto the forest ridge line. I urged him past them with my calves gently pushing round his barrel and then he gained some confidence and started to relax and enjoy himself. His paces were smooth and super comfy and he behaved perfectly when we encountered more bikes, cars and wildlife during the ride.

Next it was my Arabian palomino mare, Twiggy’s turn. We had been training over the last few months for an endurance race so on that Saturday afternoon I planned to ride for thirty kilometers. Starting out slow my plan was to maintain a steady pace for the middle third, and then finish with a fast pace ride home. Usually I ride her in the light saddle but thankfully, this time I used the more secure breaking-in saddle. On the ride out she shied along the track a lot more than Jindy but mostly at rocks and stumps which is usual for her. We passed quite a few packs of dirt bike riders; a father with his boys on teeny cute dirt bikes and a few 4WDs coasting along. People were friendly and calm as I rode past.

After about seven kilometers, we chose the left fork at the main intersection and headed further west. I knew this track was pretty remote reaching deeper into the forest far from the hobby farms and well-used roads. I didn’t expect to see anyone this far out this late in the day. One red 4WD did drive past us but that was it. We kept on and the late autumn sun dipped below a large round high hill ahead of us. I felt my body start to cool down although I was wearing a fleece jumper.

I don’t know if it was the hill’s sweeping, dark black shadow or intuition but as we trotted along, the track ahead constricted into the bush and the air become super still. My instincts told me that we should turn around and not go any further. My eternal problem is I always want to know what’s around the corner so I ignored my gut and decided to explore further. We’d push on and just see what it looks like up the top there and then head home. Near the top, the track turned sharply to the left skirting around the steep hill while an embankment flanked the track on the left. The sun shone again, we slowed to a walk and I relaxed. I was just about to turn back when I heard a car engine slowly climbing the hill behind us.

The sound became louder and then it was drowned out by the noise of people yelling and screaming. I thought they were some drunk young hooligans driving along that were about to seriously hassle me. I coolly asked Twiggy to trot and looked ahead for side tracks but there were none. The screaming became more crazy sounding and I glanced back but only made out the blur of a white ute.

Then we saw it….Cujo (like from the horror movie). This grey bull-arab hunting dog, a meter high with a monstrous head had bolted hundreds of meters in front of the ute to intercept us. Cujo crossed the distance between us in seconds. So fast in fact that we didn’t know she was there until she was a few meters from of us. (I refer to her as female because the image of her is etched sharply into my brain and there is no willy in that memory). She didn’t stay within the three meter perimeter zone like wary dogs tend to do. Instead, she quickly circled us and moved in close very quickly, looking for an opportunity to strike. I spun Twiggy to face the dog, and when it refused to back off, I yelled at it “Go away” with my deepest voice. The dog didn’t back off. I looked up to see what the owners were doing, and I could see they were still 20 meters away. I looked back to the dog and it raised its head, staring up at me, rolling the whites of its orange colored eyes, mouth agape. It darted in under Twiggy’s neck and locked its massive jaws into Twiggy’s front hoof and pastern. Twiggy’s worst nightmare. Instantly she jumped away from it and leaped up the steep cliff rocky embankment next to us. Luckily she dislodged the dog’s grip, but she kept going and turning side on she started to fall back down towards the track. In that instant I weighed up the risk of bailing off her backwards verses becoming crushed if she rolled over me if she did continue her fall. Plus I didn’t know if I’d stay on anyway because I could not predict where she was headed or how. In the past I have saved my butt with a deliberate ejection and as a kid I fell off so many horses I kind of learned how to fall and not go thump and instead dissipate the momentum of energy by slowly rolling.

As Twiggy fell sideways, the last thing I remember was pulling my feet backwards out of my oxbow stirrups, letting go of the reins and trying to leap off her back as Twiggy’s body rose up in front of me. Usually in these situations, this is when time slows right down and I’ll remember the every detail in slow motion, from leaving the saddle to hitting the ground but not this time. No opportunity for that prayer of contrition, Betwixt the stirrup and the ground or having my life flash before me.

I blacked out. I came to, my entire body a bundle of pain. I lay on the rocky dirt track and I think I was face down on my front. I couldn’t move at all nor could I speak. Eventually I started getting annoyed at the bloke who owned the dog whose voice I could hear telling me to get up just over and over. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak and he expected me to get up! At one point there was some commotion I couldn’t see and I irrationally thought maybe I could be run over by a car and would not be able to do anything about it. The all body pain rush started to subside and I realized the worst pain patch was my wrist. My leg and elbow were sore too. Moving my fingers I told myself and the man that it’s probably just a sprain. That type of pain however felt quite severe. I had no bones sticking way out of my arm, only a small bump protruded. I sat up and the bloke proceeded to talk at me. I still could hardly speak. He kept on a few times about how my horse jumped up the cliff like it was her fault. All I could do was listen and store his words for later thinking. He said that the dog was his friend’s and that it didn’t bite the horse. I was in no state to even look at Twiggy’s body or really take in what his words even meant. Something took over in me in that vulnerable state that even if I could manage words, no way would I argue as I needed the help of the man and the woman that was with him. I couldn’t see the dog and they must have caught Twiggy. I did ask two things. Was it a pig dog? ‘No never hunted’ was his answer. I remember the feeling that there was this urgency that they wanted me back on my horse so they could just leave the scene. The second question I asked was ‘can you hold my horse while I get on’? They were happy to help. Both of them looked into my face and apologized to me which brings tears to my eyes as I write this. I think because those words gave me a sense of relief that they wouldn’t hurt me and vulnerability is not my thing. The man clutched hard at the reins and I remember the whites of his knuckles gleaming round lumps. The first attempt to mount failed because Twiggy moved. I knew I had strength for only one more go so I’d better make it as good as I could I told myself. Somehow my body let me swing over her back and settle into the comfort of the saddle and security of being able to get away. I turned towards home and the lady handed me the visor from my helmet which I didn’t know had broken. I vaguely recall another dog and maybe a kid but don’t remember the car number plate but over the few weeks since this happened, I’m starting to get an image of it suggesting I did try and take it in.

The first ten kilometers after that were a mix of relief and trepidation. My left hand stopped working; it was broken, so I had to keep a firm right handed grip on the reins. My left leg ached with every movement and my right elbow hurt. I knew if Twiggy shied, I’d have trouble staying aboard and if I fell, I would really injure myself due to lack of muscle control and balance. I would hit hard. My body was a cauldron of pain especially my back which jarred at very step. My phone was strapped around my waist so if I came off, and there was reception and I could move, I’d be able to use it. After those first kilometers my fear was the people and Cujo would drive back behind me so on the slight inclines, I began to force myself to endure a slow trot to cover ground faster. I realized that if I lent forward and we trotted slow enough, I became distracted, and the pain became bearable and I loosened up. Twiggy shied slightly once which hurt but she really looked after me and carried me back the 15 kilometers safe and sound.

I slid from her back, tied her up but it was hard going undoing all the buckles and I knew the saddle was too heavy to hoist into the Landcruiser with one arm. I called out to my friend Jane who was feeding her horses across the road and she helped me out by doing it all and washing Twiggy down and later disinfected the puncture wounds in Twiggy’s pastern. In contrast to what the man had told me, his dog had inflicted deep wounds to the horse’s leg. Jane helped me take my bangle off my swelling wrist and gave me some panadol from the glove box. She offered to drive me to the hospital and take me to her house to sit with a cuppa but I said that if I could manage to turn my car around using her driveway then I’d be right. The hospital was on the way home. I managed to drive one handed although roundabouts were a bit tricky and I couldn’t park properly. Three hours later I left the hospital and drove home with a plaster cast after an x-ray showed a piece of bone protruding from my wrist and fracture across the main bone. No breaks in my elbow but a later bone scan revealed a compression injury to my tibia. The injuries I have don’t match with how I found myself face down on the ground and it is frustrating having a memory gap like this. My injuries included a grapefruit sized swelling and green thunder bruise from the back of my left knee to the top of my thigh, a serious knee injury, a broken left wrist with bone protruding, a bruise to my right bum cheek and elbow. And I had busted my helmet visor. But it could have been much worse. Twiggy could have lept down the cliff, the horse could have fallen on me, and the dog could have mauled me as I lay unconscious on the ground. So my luck is still running with me I reckon. And faster than Cujo can run!

Twiggy’s wounds healed and a month later, although I wore a cast on my broken arm, we successfully competed in an endurance race.

***   *****   ***

You can read more stories in my Series about Encounters with Wild Animals such as Great White Shark, horses, snakes, whales, rockpossums and a bull buffalo.

And you can also read stories on how I Source Strength.

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