12-year-old girl controls runaway horse at Expointer in Esteio (RS)

Full of attitude. This is how the 12-year-old girl who managed to control a runaway horse at Expointer, an agricultural fair that takes place in Esteio (RS), is described. Kaila Jardim Boettcher lives in Porto Alegre and has been practicing at a stud farm in Osório, on the North Coast, for 6 years. She came in 1st place in the Young B category at Expointer and received the award on Saturday night (5).

"I'm very proud of her being full of attitude. She always likes to act a lot, she has a lot of attitude", says her mother, dentist Márcia de Brito e Cunha, who witnessed the scene that happened on Monday (31) and went viral on social media.

The case occurred after another participant's horse ran across a track after the rider fell from the saddle. He passed at high speed very close to people and knocked down bars along the way. The girl was riding her mare and held the reins of the runaway animal.

The horse stopped by Kaila is Álamo El Cabur, who was not injured.

The relationship between Kaila and horses goes back years. The girl got on a horse for the first time in 2020, when she was 6 years old, and started competing at 7 years old.

"During the pandemic, we sought more contact with nature and started going to places that had Arabian horses. We discovered that there were these events and as she always liked competitions, she started training to compete. We are already on our fifth Expointer", reports the mother.

Márcia says she was amazed to see what her daughter did. "In the video, you can see that she crossed while all the children moved away from the entrance to the paddock, which is where the children are warming up for the test."

The mother also spoke about the relationship of trust that the girl has with her mare, with whom she has competed for three years. "We ended up forming a pair with our horse. She knew that Nutria wouldn't be scared by the situation either."

Kaila Jardim Boettcher — Photo: Ariane Grutzmann/personal archive

Despite not having shown fear, the girl says she was nervous, as she was worried about the possibility of the horse getting hurt.

"I was nervous, very nervous. I thought: bah, he's going to get hurt and something bad is going to happen. He was heading towards me. I tried to catch him, I couldn't. Then he took another turn around the track, came towards me, I went after him and managed to catch him", says Kaila.

Regarding the attitude of holding the horse, she says that she acted on impulse: "It was pure impulse. When I picked it up, he was very nervous", she says.

A runaway horse is controlled by a 12-year-old girl during Expointer in RS — Photo: Matias Moura/Jornal A Plateia

Kaila Jardim Boettcher — Photo: Matias Moura/Jornal A Plateia and Ariane Grutzmann/personal archive

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