The Diving Horse

Go to 1:08 for the horse diving video

I took some girls out for dinner tonight, part of a family that is quite close to the youth group I work with. One of the middle ones, about to go into sixth grade, is completely horse crazy. I never fully went through that stage, as any dreams about having a pony in the front yard were squelched by looking at our rickety yellow picket fence. The conversation invariably turns to horses whenever she's around. On our way out of Longhorn Steakhouse, we passed by a photo of a woman diving off of a platform on a horse. I'd never seen anything so melancholy and beautiful and frightening. The sixth grader calmly informed me that horse diving actually happens and is a legitimate sport. She looked at me with disappointment: "You've seen 'Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken,' right?" No...

Apparently a horse diver (I found out that the sport is quite rare and mostly for side-show acts) (wiki: diving horse) becomes blind but still continues to participate by memorizing how the horse sounds as it approaches, leaps on its back and falls off a platform into a pool. It sounds utterly terrifying.