Whoa! is me...

So in case you were not aware, I have been taking horse riding lessons every other Sunday for the past couple of months.  My enjoyment level has increased as I become more comfortable on the horse (Chantilly is the name of the horse I ride...my step-mom bought her October of last year).  Last Sunday I showed up for my usual 1:00pm lesson in good ol' Horsetown USA (aka Norco) and was notified that I would be taking a lesson on a different horse for the day.  The horse I would be taking my lesson on happened to be about twice as big as Chantilly and happened to be named RAMBO.  He was a sweet horse, really, but somewhere something went terribly wrong!  I started my lesson out as usual, just walking around the arena and trying to adjust myself to RAMBO (the trainer compared the difference in riding RAMBO instead of Chantilly to driving a truck instead of a compact car).  As we moved further into the lesson I began to trot with RAMBO and "Serpentine" with RAMBO and just as I was about to make a circle in the ring RAMBO decided that he would start Cantering on me.  Now, I have never Cantered on a horse before so the new movement took me off guard and I tried to pull back on the rains to regain composure, but everything I did seemed to have the opposite effect that I wanted...which was for him to please STOP!!  The more I pulled back on the reins and yelled out "WHOA!  WHOA!" the faster he went!  As he rounded the corner of the arena I fell off, hit the ground and skidded to a stop.  If I had fallen off inside the arena I would have fallen onto a bed of much softer rubber gravel...but as it happened...I fell just outside the arena onto the hard dirt ground.  I lay on the ground for a moment.  Falling off RAMBO was not the most pleasurable experience I've had, but nothing seemed to be broken so I dusted myself off, rinsed the gravel from the palm of my hand and got right back up on RAMBO to continue with my lesson!  I knew it was what I needed to do and as I've now been told...


So...I'm 2 falls shy of being a real rider and feel I'm a stronger person for it! BAM!