 Hello there, my beautiful, talented, lovely internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you for joining me here on the road today. I am currently in my favorite place in the world, Columbus, Indiana, visiting some friends. We just get done visiting some family after unfortunately death in the family, so we've been on the road. So you are currently balanced on a bag of clothes. It is very possible my tripod is going to give out to the clothes and just topple to the side, so be prepared for that at any point. So because I'm on the road, I don't really have a long video for you guys today, but I did want to answer a question that I've been asked many, many, many times, and that is do I hate horses because they technically cost me my leg? If you don't know anything about my story, first of all I am indeed a below-the-knee amputee. I feel like I have to separate it out and say below-the-knee instead of below-knee amputee because everyone thinks I'm just talking about the luncheon. So as you might be able to tell, this is not real. The reason that this happened is technically because I fell off a horse when I was 13. I had a really bad horseback reigning accent that then led to years of surgeries and procedures and pain and diminished activities where eventually by the time I was 27, two years ago, I got to the point where I was like, we're done here. This is not working. My doctors were on board and so I made the decision to take off a part of my body that just wasn't working anymore and launch on a new journey. So the long and short of it is, is that when I was 12, I started riding at a local barn. The owners were fantastic in letting me ride for free. I just like cleaned the barn all day and helped out with the horses and occasionally I could get on top of one. So I wasn't a great rider, but I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And I got the opportunity to go riding in this big open field where you could like gallop and just go for miles. And it was, it was a childhood dream of mine to do this. I felt like I was flying. I felt like I was like the coolest. So one day I went riding with a couple of my friends on this thoroughbred mare named Georgia. She was this beautiful chestnut mare, took off galloping and I suddenly realized I'd only ever been on horses in controlled environments where there was an arena and they could go in circles and everything was good. When you take a X racehorse out into an open field where they can run for miles, they're gonna go really fast. And so she was going really fast. I was not in control of that horse. She was doing what she wanted to do as her nature would indicate. And she actually ended up tripping a little bit and I went over her shoulder thankfully she didn't break her leg anything. She was totally fine, but I on the other hand fell and hurt my neck and then shattered my ankle. That moment changed the course of my life, right? I started having surgeries then. I had to have surgery to fix it. Two months later they get to break my ankle again because it was healing wrong. So they fixed it back the right way and then long story short it was surgery after surgery after surgery. So when I talk about this a lot of people ask me if I blame horses for it or if I think it's their fault or if when I see horses I get upset or anxious or anything like that. And my answer is and always has been not at all, not even a little bit. Horses technically cost me my leg if we like want to follow it way back to the beginning. But a lot of medical question marks and perhaps mistakes and just weird things that my body did are actually what brought me here to this day today. I actually really want to get back on a horse. I'm guessing you would, but let me know if you'd like to see a video of me like riding again for the first time since my amputation. I know that there is a therapeutic riding school in my area that helps people recovering from things or dealing with disabilities or having trouble with mental illness and I thought about applying and seeing if I could get on a horse again. I don't actually know how it would work because I like wouldn't want to hurt the horse with my metal leg. But I personally know amputees who are riders so I know that there's a way to do it. I'm just not sure how. I actually really miss being around horses. They're kind of magical. I don't think I ever grew out of being a horse girl. That's like a cliche on the internet now. So first of all I don't think it's weird or abnormal at all if someone was afraid of a horse if they had a bad accident. I think that's kind of that's really natural right? But for me I never felt that way because I always felt like it was my choice to get up on the horse. It was my choice to go riding and so feelings of resentment towards that horse or other horses never really developed. Which I'm great for because I still really love them. If you know me you know that I'm really into animals. I have three dogs and two cats and two little rats and what I love about nature, what I love about animals is that there's no intentional evil that I have ever seen. I feel like people like I love people but we do things that are not great intentionally sometimes. But animals are just animals right? They're just following their instincts, they're following their nature and we are coexisting with them. So when I choose to get up on a horse and I fall off of her I accept that that wasn't something that she intended. That wasn't something she caused or wanted to do. She was galloping through a field and tripped and I happened to tumble off her back. So this is kind of a short and sweet and to the point video but I did want to answer that question that so many people ask me. Like I said I think it'd be perfectly normal if you had some circumstance with an animal and you no longer like that animal because they scared you or they hurt you. Like that's human nature right? But for me I've always loved horses. I always will love horses and I can't wait to get back around them and figure out how to how to work this thing with them. If you are interested in hearing the full story of the day that I fell off the horse like what happened before and after and during and just all of it I would love to tell you that so let me know if you'd like to see that video in the comment section down below and I will make it for you guys. Thank you for watching. Thank you to my patrons for supporting this channel for making all of this possible. I truly truly appreciate it. Each and every one of you I don't take your generosity for granted. If you are interested in being a part of my Patreon community there are some cool perks and we have a great community over there so I'll leave the link up on screen and also in the description down below. Also I wanted to thank you guys because we just hit 8,000 subscribers on my second channel Trauma Talk. I've realized that many of you don't know that I have this other channel. It's all about mental health and mental issues and healing and recovering and all of that. I've actually had it for about a year and a half longer than I've had this channel Footless Joe so if you're interested in topics like mental health and trauma and PTSD conversations of that nature check me out there. To you watching this video thank you for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today. You could be anywhere in the world doing anything and you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes. I really appreciate that. Thanks guys. I love you. I'm thinking about you and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.