Vernon resident Kristen Marie Pym, 20, is pictured riding a horse in this contributed photo. Pym was out for a relaxing ride on her seven-year-old black and white mare Lilly when a passing driver honked at them, causing Lilly to buck and bolt.
Image Credit: Contributed
October 01, 2015 - 8:00 PM
VERNON – A competitive show jumper was seriously injured by the thoughtless and dangerous actions of an unknown motorist near Armstrong this week.
Kristen Marie Pym, 20, was out for a relaxing ride on her seven-year-old black and white mare Lilly on a warm, early fall evening Sept. 30. Pym was riding Lilly in a pasture by a road without a saddle, as she usually does, with only a blanket and a loose rope to help guide her.
“That road is fairly quiet most of the time,” she says.
As Pym and Lilly were returning home, something happened that could have cost her her life.
“It was a beige car,” she says. “They drove by and honked once for no reason. It was a steady honk that only lasted a couple seconds but it sent my horse running and bucking. She only ran for about 5 seconds but those five seconds seem like an eternity when you’re trying to stay on a bucking horse.”
Pym fell off and landed on the rock-hard clay on the edge of the road.
She wouldn’t know how badly she was hurt until hours later.
“I ended up tearing muscles in my pelvis… and some scrapes and cuts. I also probably re-tore my shoulder slightly,” she says. “I’m completely crippled from it.”
Pym is a competitive show jumper. She regularly rides without a saddle, especially when riding Lilly, who she rescued from a farm in 2012.
“She came to me with giant lash wounds on her back and on her legs,” she says. “She had hardly any hair on her and wounds all over her body.”
The horse's horrible past is why, when the driver of the beige car honked and she was bucked off, her first thought was for Lilly. Not knowing how badly she herself was hurt, Pym walked as quickly as she could the ten minutes back to Lilly's pen.
“She was just quietly eating grass in her pen waiting for me,” she says. “I got back on her because that’s the equestrian thing to do, then I put her away and drove home. Two hours later I realized how much pain I was in."
She went to the hospital where she found out the extent of her injuries.
“Doctors say it will be a slow recovery so I’m doing a whole lot of nothing right now,” she says. “I have a horse show I’m supposed to go to next Saturday but I’m not sure if I can. I’m going to try.”
Pym says she did not get a good look at either the licence plate or the driver of the car and she has no idea if they saw the consequences of their thoughtless action.
“My only focus was trying to stay on,” she says. “I’ve had motorcycles rev their engines as they went by but I’ve never had someone honk at me. Horses are flight animals so to honk at them for no reason is ignorant."
To contact the reporter for this story, email Adam Proskiw at aproskiw@infonews.ca or call 250-718-0428. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.
News from © iNFOnews, 2015