Schooling Horse

Lisa’s words turned into a yell of surprise as, without warning, Milky bucked, whirled, and tried to bolt back to the stable. Lisa fought for her balance. Milky broke into a gallop.

“Sit up!” Carole yelled. “Keep his head up!”

“Hang on!” Stevie hollered as Lisa and Milky disappeared into the pine woods. She and Carole quickly turned their horses and followed.

As soon as they reached the woods, they could see Lisa struggling with her mount. She was leaning back far enough that Milky couldn’t unseat her, and she was pulling hard on the reins. Milky had slowed to a near walk. When he saw the other horses, he relaxed and allowed them to come up to him.

“Whoa.” Lisa gradually let up on the reins. Milky walked forward as though he had done nothing wrong. But Lisa’s heart was hammering, and her hands were shaking. “What was that about?” she asked her friends.

“P
RANCER
!” L
ISA
A
TWOOD
cried, her voice rising in frustration. She brought the elegant Thoroughbred mare she was riding from a canter to a walk, and then to a halt. Prancer threw up her head and squealed. “Stop that!” Lisa said. She used her legs and hands to make Prancer back up several strides. “Listen to me!” she told the mare.

“Circle her, Lisa. You’ve got the right idea. Get her attention, then ask her to canter again.” Max Regnery, Lisa’s riding instructor, spoke calmly, and Lisa felt a little ashamed of her outburst. Riding was difficult, as difficult as anything she had ever studied, but she was a straight-A student and she’d always learned quickly in the saddle, too. Prancer was one of Max’s lesson horses, but Lisa
loved her, and usually they made a good pair. Lisa thought they ought to be doing better than they were today.

But Prancer won’t behave
, she thought.
She knows how to act, and she’s not doing it.
Lisa and her friends were in the middle of their usual Tuesday-afternoon group lesson. There were six horses in the ring. Every time one of the other horses came near Prancer, the mare squealed and tried to buck. She put her ears back and shook her head. Lisa was trying everything she knew to calm Prancer down, and nothing was working. Most of the time, when Prancer started a lesson fresh and excitable, it only took Lisa a few minutes to settle her into a learning frame of mind. Today it seemed as if the longer Lisa rode, the worse Prancer behaved.

“Come again with the canter,” Max said. “Everyone, canter, please.”

Lisa signaled Prancer to canter. Prancer dropped her head, cantered, then bucked. Lisa shouted at her.

“Press her forward, Lisa,” Max said.

“I’m trying!” Lisa said.

“Everyone else halt,” Max said. “Come into the center for a moment. Lisa, canter her hard. See if you can get her mind off her personal problems.”

The five other students clustered in the center of the ring while Lisa galloped Prancer in circles around them. Stevie Lake maneuvered her mare, Belle, beside Carole Hanson’s gelding, Starlight. Stevie, Carole, and Lisa were best friends.

“Wow,” Stevie whispered sympathetically. “Prancer’s giving Lisa a hard time. Think it’s raccoons again?”

“What?” Carole asked, frowning at Stevie.

“I said, think it’s raccoons again? You know, the raccoons that were stealing Prancer’s grain.” A short while before, a family of raccoons had taken up residence in the hayloft right above Prancer’s stall, and Prancer had been upset for days before anyone figured out what was wrong. Stevie looked at Carole closely. “It was a joke, Carole. Or at least, sort of a joke.” Stevie was famous for her practical—and impractical—jokes.

“Okay,” Carole said. She gave her horse an absentminded pat and looked across the arena. Stevie was concerned. All three friends were horse-crazy, but Carole was the horse-craziest. Usually she couldn’t keep her mind on anything but horses, but today her attention seemed to be somewhere else. Thinking back, Stevie realized that Carole hadn’t looked happy once that afternoon.

Stevie studied Starlight closely, but the horse seemed in perfect health. He was doing well in the lesson, too. “What’s wrong?” Stevie asked Carole. “Are you feeling okay?”

Carole shook her head, and Stevie was amazed to see tears well up in her eyes. Carole pressed her lips together. “I can’t talk about it,” she whispered at last. “Not during the lesson.”

“Okay,” Stevie whispered back. “Afterward, then.” The three friends had a rule that they always, no matter what, helped each other out. That and being incurably
horse-crazy were the only two requirements for membership in the club they’d formed, The Saddle Club. In truth, Stevie thought as she stroked Belle’s neck and watched Lisa canter by, they were all as friend-crazy as they were horse-crazy. As much as Stevie cared for Belle, she cared for her friends more.

On the rail Prancer again tried to buck. “Oh!” Lisa said. Her face was red from exertion, and she was breathing hard.

“Another lap,” Max said. “She’s starting to settle down.”

“She doesn’t feel settled down,” Lisa said.

Max grinned. “More settled, then,” he said. “This may be as good as she gets today. Are you okay, Lisa?”

“I’m not scared,” Lisa said. “But I’m annoyed.”

“Don’t let yourself get too frustrated. None of this is your fault.”

Easy for Max to say
, Lisa thought resentfully.
If he were sitting on this horse, he might wonder why she wasn’t listening or behaving at all.
She quickly looked sideways at Stevie and Carole, who were sitting in the middle of the ring, waiting for her to get Prancer back under control.
Waiting
, Lisa thought with a spurt of resentment she didn’t usually feel toward her two best friends,
on their
own
horses.

When Lisa had first started riding, her parents had offered to buy her a horse and had even taken her to look at a few. But even though Lisa hadn’t been riding long, she’d ridden long enough to realize how much she still didn’t
know. Back then she hadn’t been ready for her own horse. She’d still been a beginner, and the safe, easy sort of beginner horse she would have needed then, she would have outgrown by now. Plus, back then she’d had no idea how to care for a horse. So even though she wanted one very badly, she’d told her parents not to buy her one.

Now Lisa was starting to feel ready for a horse of her own. She was never jealous of Stevie and Carole—after all, they’d been riding much longer than she had—but sometimes she envied the special relationships they had with Belle and Starlight. Even though she rode Prancer several times a week, it wasn’t the same. Especially today.

“What do you think’s gotten into Prancer?” Stevie asked Carole. She was starting to get bored with sitting still.

Carole watched Lisa and Prancer make another half circuit of the ring. “I think she’s in heat,” Carole said.

“Oh!” Stevie thought for a moment. “I bet you’re right. She’s acting pretty awful, though, even with that as an excuse.” Mares often seemed skittish and grouchy when they were in heat. It was one reason many riders preferred geldings.

“It’s cold out, too,” Carole said. “And Lisa didn’t ride yesterday, so Prancer might not have gotten out.”

Stevie nodded. “Poor Lisa.”

On the rail, Prancer suddenly slowed to a trot. Lisa, her legs aching, sighed in relief. “Canter her,” Max commanded. “Make her canter another lap, then ask her to trot.”

Lisa nodded, though it took all her strength to press Prancer forward again. Prancer had to trot when Lisa wanted her to, not when Prancer wanted to. They cantered another lap, then Lisa slowed her to a trot, nearly gasping from relief. “I don’t know if it’s settled Prancer down,” she told Max, “but it’s settled me down, that’s for sure.”

“You’re doing fine,” Max said with a smile. “Horses have bad days, just like people. You’re coping, Lisa.”

“I can always cope,” Lisa said. “But she’s driving me crazy.”

Max nodded sympathetically. One of the many things Lisa appreciated about him was that he always seemed to understand his students’ troubles. “Why don’t you come see me in the office after the lesson?” he suggested. “We can talk about how to handle this.”

“Thanks, Max,” Lisa said gratefully.

Max started the lesson up again, and in a few minutes he had them all jumping a course of fences. This was where Starlight and Carole usually shined—they loved jumping more than anything else. Today, however, something was missing. Starlight was approaching the fences correctly, but he didn’t seem to be jumping with enthusiasm, and Carole wasn’t smiling.

“What’s with Starlight?” Lisa hissed to Stevie as they waited their turns to jump.

“He’s just picking up on Carole’s mood,” Stevie told her friend. “She’s upset about something. She said she’d tell us later.”

Lisa nodded. She watched with concern as Starlight added a stride in front of the big rolltop jump, then lurched over it. Normally Starlight relished jumping. But she could see that Carole wasn’t riding him well. For Carole to look like that, Lisa decided, she must really be upset.