The air vest....

It imploded this week,,,,,for the first time!

And, it was the gentlest fall I have ever had from a horse. Ok, so, I fall off alot....either because I am a terrible athlete, unbalanced, have a disobedient horse, I am not afraid to fall (lots of learning how to do this from skiing) or because (as in fact I was once told...) I push the envelope a bit too much. Whatever the reason,,,, I do come off. Yet, my last fall was with an air vest....and it was the easiest, least painful I have ever had. One day later,,,still no muscle aches or pains!

I must admit that I have been a skeptic: afterall there are no randomized control trials (the hallmark of what we do in science) to establish that the air vest really helps and mitigates risk. And we know from medical science (yes, I am a doc who works at the FDA and deals with the validity of evidence on a daily basis) that anecdotes and personal observations are often fallible. Yet, the testimony of so many advanced eventers as well as an injury I had in March (which likely would have been prevented even with a regular vest) led my husband to buy me an air vest for my birthday in April.

The first time I used it....all was good. I remembered to hook it to the saddle and to unhook it before I dismounted. And, it didn't implode (translation: I didn' fall off)......The second time I used it, there was an involuntary (easy) dismount and it didn't implode. Of course you have guessed: I forgot to hook it to the saddle. (My husband decided it saved me anyway.......)

The next time.....I remembered to hook it to the saddle, but forgot to unhook it when I dismounted. Fortunately, the long connecting cord saved the CO2 canister from firing .....and a
friend quickly unhooked it for me before it went off. After this experience, I began to wonder if it was going to work when actually needed. Was the lanyard too long? Would it actually pull the plug from the CO2 canister? Or, did we waste alot of money on a fad?

Well, this week I got my answer: It worked! and worked wondrously.

I was schooling my new horse! Despite the fact that he is a trooper and a good guy,,,,,,,like most ponies he takes cues from his rider. We were approaching a little BN (I thought) table that I hadn't seen before and therefore I made the mistake of looking down at the last moment. I saw the black top, the yellow bottom, wasn't sure what this was (OMG was this actually a trakehner?). And, being the good guy that he is, my horse must have sensed my anxiety and decided he would save me from this scary fate.....so he stopped. But I didn't.....

So the vest imploded....the fall was painless....the imploding vest did not hurt me at all and neither did the impact on the ground.

Must admit,,,,the vest is a confidence builder ........despite my initial skepticism....I ain't going XC without it ever again! And maybe I will even stop looking at those jumps, since, if I fall, it won't hurt anyway!