My book group is unlike any other of my experience in that many members don’t read the books, or don’t finish the books; we often read children’s books; and most of our time is spent describing personal connections tangential to the books, or just socializing.

I don’t mean to imply that I don’t have agency in this group, all women roughly my age, but as the only non-Californian, I keep a low profile. This week we read Charlotte’s Web and the Ring of Bright Water, so we spent most of our time sharing animal pet stories, and it turns out many of us have dead pets at home in the form of either boxed ashes or backyard pet cemeteries. As a city girl, I thought that was illegal.

The pet story sharers had so much fun that it was proposed that we each write an animal story to share at our next meeting. I feel it is unlikely this will happen, since a key characteristic of the Central Coast personality is lack of follow-through. This is not a critique, they are delightfully chill and have low blood pressure. I did think of a story just-in-case, which I will share now.

My mother met her good friend Cynthia when they were both mothers of infants married to men in college, and both couples continued their friendship even after our family moved to Houston while theirs was operating a ranch in Sonora, Texas. Their daughter Cathy and I were the same age, and visiting the ranch was my favorite vacation, because Kids Ran Wild. Cathy and her siblings could drive on the property, which seemed huge to me; you could easily drive for an hour without exiting. There were hunting rifles which were much more fun that the BB gun I had at home, cattle and sheep to feed or chase, and a working windmill that generated a refreshing pond.

Best of all there were horses. My family boarded a pony in Houston for a while, a sweet animal roughly shaped like his name, Peanut, and so tame I could ride him with only a blanket and halter, so I was accustomed to horses, but I was not a competitive barrel rider and calf roper like Cathy. That meant I always ended up on Capuchin, a phlegmatic animal most likely to hit his top speed, trotting, when we were heading in the direction of the feed trough.

We were probably 11 or 12 years old the time I requested a more lively steed and Cathy obligingly saddled a tall, black horse I will call Putin, based on my memories of him, which don’t include his actual name. Putin started our relationship by trying to bite my feet as soon as I mounted; Cathy yelled, Kick him in the teeth!, so I did, and he stopped. This may not have improved our rapport.

We left the paddock in orderly file, yet Putin was apparently concocting a plan for revenge. Shortly after we entered the first pasture he made a beeline for the fence and attempted to press my left leg into the barbed wire, forcing me to drop that stirrup and put my foot on the saddle, effectively preventing me from dismounting. Cathy was loping toward us when I managed to jerk the reins enough to get Putin to turn away to the right. In retrospect this was probably hard on his soft mouth, but he started it.

I’d just managed to regain the stirrup when Putin launched into Plan C, a full out gallop toward a tree with a cartoonishly low-handing branch. This was–and is–by far the fastest horseback ride of my life, so I was very focused on staying on his back, clenching my legs and lying low over the saddle and holding onto the pommel, since I figured he wouldn’t hesitate to trample me if I fell. I had seen plenty of Westerns and knew what would happen: he would duck his head as we went under the tree, and I would be ready to grab the branch and hang from it then drop softly–WHOMP.

One second I was in the movie and the next I was on the ground. Putin was joyously free. Cathy hurtled past, yelling, and in a serious cowgirl move steered the two steeds neck-to-neck and grabbed Putin’s reins. She came back to me with both horses and said, You’ve got to get back on him! She did not mean this idiomatically.

I demurred.

I limped, wincing, back to the paddock. Cathy was riding Putin, on a tight rein at a slow pace while continuously dressing him down, leading her own compliant horse. The next day I was a little too bruised for a ride.

Thereafter I was delighted to ride Capuchin.