The Intercollegiate Equestrian Club, more commonly known as the horseback riding club, is, for lack of better words, totally equestrious.

I don’t know what that means. But they ride beautiful brown and white horses around circle dirt pits. Whoo.

The club members, with the gentle touch of a horse whisperer or Robert Redford, led the horses out of their hay cages for taping.

Like any football team before a game, riders tape the horses’ front legs to protect the horses’ tendons from the rigorous tasks of walking, running and jumping.

This was a task I was too terrified to imagine. One full frontal horse kick could put a hole into the kidney. Plus, if a mouse scurries from out of a hay bale and sends the horse backpedaling, there’s a good chance of becoming a human cow pie.

Not that club president Malory Murray’s horse, Cosmo, was capable of such brute destruction.

“He’s like a big puppy dog,” Murray said.

Perhaps. Horses do have wet, wiggling noses and big, puppy-dog eyes. But they’re huge, elegant and pissed off. No food and no attention makes horses crazy.

After a bored week, a horse named Accent ate a rider’s coat right off the hook where the slop bowl should have been. My fear whenever petting the horses was that my hand might resemble a slop bucket, coat or carrot.

Trainers and riders fed the horses carrots pre-ride in the dirt pit. The horse would suck in the carrot and chomp it quickly.

Summoning up courage, I, too, fed the hungry, hungry horse a carrot and was told to keep my fingers straight — if I wanted to keep them.

I also was told to wear a helmet. And only club treasurer Kristen Kechik’s helmet could fit my head. But it was my butt that needed padding.

On a moving horse, rigid up-and-down bouncing kinda hurts your tush.

“I’ve cracked my tailbone twice. That’s it. I’ve also fallen off and almost shattered my elbow last fall,” Murray said. Thanks for the reassurance, Mal.

There was no need for reassurance or even insurance. Murray tethered the horse to a rope and led me around in circles, sometimes even for a light jog.

Whereupon I braced in the jumping position, dug my heels into the stirrups, grabbed the horse by its mane (mane-grabbing is horse-safe), felt the cold wind in my face and looked below.

Everyone looked much smaller and I felt what Maggie McGonagle, a sophomore political science major, said was very therapeutic.

I also felt my damn hamstrings stretch over Cosmo, “the big puppy dog,” as the leather saddle stirrups dug into and chafed my legs.