Schooling Horse

by Bonnie Bryant

  “Oh—Oh, hey, good name. Better than Au Lait, anyway.” Max grinned at her. “Tell you what, Lisa, you could do me a bigger favor right now. I don’t want Au—er, Milky—learning that when he tosses a rider over a fence, he gets to go back to his stall and have a nice rest and dinner. Would you mind riding him in the ring here while I finish the lesson? If you feel up to some jumps with him, so much the better.”

  Lisa smiled to herself at the way Max made having her ride Milky sound like something he’d just thought of. She guessed that he and her mother really wanted the truth about Milky to stay a secret for now. Lisa was willing to play along. And she realized that Max was right—Milky didn’t need treats. He needed to learn what was expected of him. From now on, Lisa thought, I’m going to be the one responsible for his training. It gave her a thrill.

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll get changed and be right out.”

  In a minute Lisa was back, buckling the strap to her hard hat. Jessica was trotting Penny in circles to warm her up while Nicholas took a turn over the jumps. “Watch out for him,” Jessica warned Lisa. “He’s mean.”

  Lisa smiled at the little girl. “He’s new here,” she said gently. “I’m sorry he dumped you, but I’m sure he’s just nervous and scared.”

  Jessica shook her head. “He’s nasty,” she said. “I’m never riding him again.”

  That’s right, you aren’t, Lisa thought as she checked Milky’s girth. Because he’s going to be my horse. Once he’s officially mine, no one else is ever going to ride him again unless I say so. She patted Milky’s white neck, gathered the reins, and mounted.

  At first Milky seemed upset. He ground his teeth over the bit, swished his tail angrily, tossed his head down, and bucked. Lisa, still in the process of finding her seat, nearly came off, but she threw her weight back and yanked on Milky’s head. He stopped bucking and walked forward. “That’s it,” Lisa said. “Good boy.” She shoved her heels down.

  “Trot him back and forth over the cross rail until you feel comfortable with him,” Max said. “Then you can have a go at the wall where he threw Jessica.”

  The wall was a little one, only about eighteen inches high, and Max usually put a rail or two over it to make it higher. Now he carefully lowered the rails. Lisa trotted Milky over the cross rail several times, then headed him toward the wall. She tightened her legs around his barrel and tried to give him firm, no-nonsense jump-the-fence signals. Milky trotted smartly up to the fence, lifted his forelegs to jump, and then slammed them back down to the ground. Lisa barely managed to keep herself from flying over his head.

  “Good job,” Max said. “That was a nasty stop.”

  Lisa was somewhat startled by her near fall. She’d been certain that Milky was going to jump the fence. “He must be pretty nervous,” she said.

  “Peanuts,” Max said. “He jumped it three or four times for me without acting stupid. I know he can do it.”

  Lisa nodded. She rode at the wall a second time with all the more determination. She kept her weight well back in the saddle and drove Milky forward with her heels. This time, instead of stopping, Milky left the ground early, jumping the fence with such a huge leap that Lisa nearly fell off him backward.

  “Next time, grab his mane,” Max said.

  Lisa blushed. She’d been riding Milky for exactly five minutes and had already almost fallen off three times. “Okay,” she said. Unlike people, horses don’t have nerves in the roots of their hair. Grabbing the horse’s mane wouldn’t hurt it at all. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t feel bad,” Max said. “You’re doing fine with him. Ride him around for a few minutes while I give the class another course. Then you can try the wall again.”

  Lisa trotted and cantered Milky in circles. Once he tried to buck again, and once he aimed a kick at Jasmine’s pony, but when he was paying attention to Lisa he moved well. She liked his fast trot and the way he picked his head up when he cantered. She worked him for a long time, trying to get him to settle down and keeping him out of the way of the other riders in the ring. It wasn’t easy—Milky still seemed upset about something—but Lisa persevered gladly. In a few months, she’d have Milky jumping as well as Belle and Starlight.

  Carole and Stevie arrived at the stables just as Max was ready to have Lisa start jumping again. Lisa waved to them, then turned her attention back to Milky and the troublesome wall. This time Milky jumped it as calmly as if it had never bothered him before. “Good boy!” Lisa cried. She leaned forward to pat Milky’s neck. Milky put his ears back and bucked. Lisa hung off-balance for a moment, then jerked herself back into the saddle. Milky rounded the corner at a gallop.

  Lisa grinned. That fence had been so much better! She pulled on the reins to slow Milky down. “Try the white gate next,” Max said. “Is he upsetting you?”

  “No,” Lisa said. “He’s fabulous!” She turned Milky toward the white gate. Milky eyed it, sped up, then at the last moment came to a stop. Lisa popped him on the backside with her crop. Milky bunched himself together and jumped at the last possible moment, but Lisa had grabbed a double handful of mane, and she stayed in the saddle. “Good boy!” she cried.

  Carole saw Max raise a skeptical eyebrow at Lisa’s comments. She shook her head in agreement. “I don’t know that I’d call him good,” she whispered to Stevie. “Awful is more like it.”

  Stevie nodded. “He’s jumping terribly,” she said. “Do you think Lisa doesn’t notice?”

  “I think Lisa’s glad he’s jumping at all,” Carole said. “And I guess that’s saying something. I mean, he just got here and all.” Carole hated to criticize Lisa’s new horse. Not every horse could be like Starlight.

  “Yeah,” Stevie said. “You know, maybe he hasn’t had much experience. Or maybe he’s just a nervous type of horse. It might take him a while to get used to Pine Hollow.”

  “And to Lisa,” Carole agreed. It made her happy to think of a logical reason why the horse was acting poorly. In the ring now he was cantering too fast. When Lisa pulled on the reins to slow him down, he put his ears back and swished his tail angrily. Carole shook her head. She really hated to sound rude, but … “Does he look like Lisa’s type of horse to you?” she asked Stevie.

  “I was just thinking that he doesn’t,” Stevie admitted. “I mean, probably he’ll get a lot better once he’s been settled here awhile, and Max is a really good trainer, but …” She found it hard to say exactly what she meant. Milky didn’t impress her, but she couldn’t say why he didn’t.

  “Prancer’s kind of excitable,” Carole said, “but most of the time she tries hard to please Lisa. This horse …” Like Stevie, Carole couldn’t quite put what she meant into words. Milky didn’t look like a friendly horse, and she thought Lisa ought to have a friendly horse. But she was afraid that was a silly thing to say.

  Lisa trotted Milky up to her two friends. “What do you think?” she asked them, her eyes aglow. “Isn’t he gorgeous?”

  “He’s very handsome,” Carole said honestly.

  “He needs to behave better,” Lisa said. “But he got a lot better in just a little while here. I can’t wait to see what a week or two will do.” She leaned over to stroke Milky’s neck. “I just love him,” she admitted in a whisper. “I mean, thinking about having him for my own …” She shrugged and grinned at her friends.

  “It’s the best feeling in the world,” Stevie said. She remembered the day she got Belle. “Lisa, we’re so happy for you. And we’ll help you train him, you know that.”

  Max finished talking to the younger riders and walked over to The Saddle Club. “So, you weren’t too upset by him?” he asked Lisa.

  Lisa grinned. “No. He really got a lot better. And he’s got so much talent, Max, once he gets over his nervousness.”

  Max looked the gray horse up and down. “He is beautiful,” he said. “I’m glad he didn’t frighten you, Lisa. He didn’t act much better with you than he did with Jessica, but you didn’t let it rattle you.” Max shook his h
ead. “He was a lot better this morning, or I wouldn’t have let Jessica on him in the first place.”

  “I really like him,” Lisa assured Max. “I’d love to keep riding him.”

  “Okay,” Max said. “If you want, you can ride him the way you would normally ride Prancer.”

  Lisa, Stevie, and Carole all grinned at each other. Max was certainly good at keeping Mrs. Atwood’s secret.

  “That would be super,” Lisa said.

  Max held up his hand. “One thing, Lisa. We don’t know this horse very well. I want you to report to me with any problem you have. Any little thing. Understood?”

  “Of course,” Lisa said. She reached down to pat Milky again. One thing Lisa knew for sure. She might ask Max for help training Milky, but she certainly wasn’t going to complain herself out of owning a horse.

  ON FRIDAY AFTER school Carole threw her backpack into her cubby at Pine Hollow with undisguised relief. “It’s the weekend,” she said to Stevie and Lisa, who were changing into their riding clothes.

  “We know that,” Stevie answered with a grin.

  “How was your French class?” Lisa asked. Carole had had a dialogue due that day. Judging from her smile, Lisa guessed it had gone well. “Did having the tapes help?”

  Carole stretched her arms over her head, then reached for her old baggy sweatshirt to cover her school blouse. “They’re helping,” she said. “But what really made today fantastic was the surprise assembly this afternoon.”

  Lisa shook her head. “Fantastic? That was so boring.” It had been about some fund-raiser to upgrade the computer lab. Lisa had spent the hour drawing pictures of Milky in her science notebook. “You’re not seriously interested in selling coupon books, are you?”

  Carole grinned. “No—but because of the assembly, they canceled French class! My dialogue won’t be until Monday!”

  Lisa laughed. Stevie said, “That’s great. You’ll be really good at it by then.”

  “I hope so,” Carole said. “You don’t mind if I bring my tape recorder to the sleepover, do you?” They were all spending the night at Stevie’s house.

  “Of course not,” Stevie said. “We’ll listen and see if we can help you.”

  “I feel so good!” Carole exclaimed. She pulled on her boots. “Even though I’ve studied a lot, and I can tell that I’m improving, I was really dreading that class. Let’s take a trail ride. What do you think?” She looked out the window of the locker room. The day before, it had rained. “I think it’s been windy enough today to dry the trails.”

  “Sounds great,” Stevie said. “I can tell Belle is sick of being cooped up in a ring. Lisa?”

  Lisa shrugged. “Sure. Only … it’ll be Milky’s first trail ride. I mean, his first one here. I don’t know how much he’s been ridden on trails, if at all. He might get kind of nervous.”

  “We’ll stick to a slow walk,” Carole said. “We won’t go any faster unless you want to. Belle and Starlight will give him good examples. He’ll be okay.” She could see that Lisa was also a little nervous about going on a trail ride. Milky would probably be fine, but Lisa usually took a while to adjust to change. Carole guessed it was difficult for her, riding a different horse than Prancer.

  “Thanks,” Lisa said. Cautiously she added, “It should be fun.” If only Milky behaves, she said to herself. She wondered why she was feeling so apprehensive about riding Milky outside the safe confines of the ring. After all, she went on trail rides with Prancer all the time and loved them, and so far Milky hadn’t behaved too badly.

  Not too badly, Lisa repeated to herself as she got Milky’s saddle out of the tack room and went to get him ready to ride. Not too badly, but not too well, either. She stopped outside Milky’s stall. “Hello, boy!” she said in her most cheerful voice. Milky raised his head from the pile of hay he was eating and looked at her calmly. He didn’t seem glad to see her—why should he, after all? He hardly knew her.

  But he didn’t seem to want to know her. That, Lisa thought, was part of the problem. She wasn’t sure what the rest of the problem was. In fact, she couldn’t say for sure that there was a problem. She only knew that somehow the last few days with Milky had been difficult. The lesson on Wednesday had been his worst time, but Thursday hadn’t been much better.

  In fact, the joy she’d first felt when she thought Milky was hers had been tarnished somewhat over the past two days. Milky didn’t seem glad to see her the way Prancer always did and always had. Milky usually did what she asked, but he did it reluctantly, almost grudgingly, as though he was responding from habit but not inclination. From riding Prancer, Lisa was used to a horse that seemed to look upon every ride and every jump as a new adventure. Milky either did what he was told to do or he didn’t, but he never seemed excited about it. He had bucked both times she rode him, and though the bucks weren’t hard and she’d stayed on, they seemed to come out of nowhere in a most disconcerting way. Prancer was unpredictable; Milky was more so and in a totally different way. Lisa didn’t know how to handle him. She had a lot to learn.

  She sighed. She was still very excited about having her own horse, and of course she and Milky would get used to each other in time. She dug a carrot out of her pocket and fed it to him. Then she fastened his halter around his head and carefully began to groom him.

  ON THE TRAIL, the thin November sun shined palely through the bare branches of the trees. The ground underfoot was damp but firm, and the air was warmer than it had been in several days. Stevie breathed deeply. “Ahh,” she said. “This is fabulous. Not quite as fabulous as it is in midsummer, but still fabulous.” She turned in the saddle to grin at Lisa, who was riding between her and Carole. “How’s Milky?” She knew that Lisa had been worried before.

  Lisa smiled. “He’s doing pretty well,” she said. “He’s not acting afraid of anything. And I think he likes being out with Belle and Starlight.”

  “Good,” Stevie said. “Our horses have to be friends, you know, just like we are.”

  “Of course,” Lisa said. “I think Milky can hold up his end of the bargain. Give help whenever help is necessary—”

  “And be totally people-crazy!” Carole said with a laugh. It was a parody of The Saddle Club rules. Carole was riding behind Lisa, so she didn’t see Lisa’s face fall, but Stevie did.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Lisa? Is something wrong with Milky?”

  “I don’t know,” Lisa confessed. She reached down to stroke Milky’s neck as she talked. “So far we’re not doing very well together. He hasn’t done anything outrageously bad, but something about him never feels quite right to me.”

  “Is he lame?” Carole asked. She watched Milky’s feet; they seemed to hit the ground evenly.

  “No, that’s not what I mean,” Lisa said. “It’s just—I’ve spent a lot of time with him over the last few days, and it’s as if he doesn’t care. When I ride him, he doesn’t seem to like it. When I groom him, he doesn’t seem to like it. It’s really starting to bother me.” The trail widened, and Lisa and Carole rode up so that The Saddle Club was three abreast. Stevie and Carole looked at Lisa with concern.

  “Does he seem to dislike it when you ride him or groom him?” Carole asked.

  “No. Well, sometimes,” Lisa said. “It’s like most of the time he’s okay with whatever I’m doing, or he’s neutral about it—not pleased, maybe, but he accepts that I’m grooming him or asking him to trot in a tight circle, or whatever—and then once in a while, without warning, he seems to get upset. It’s almost as if he’s angry at me, but it never seems to happen for the same reason twice.”

  “Hmmm.” Carole thought hard, but she couldn’t remember any horses that had ever acted that way around her. “I’m sure he’s not actually angry at you,” she said. “You know horses don’t have emotions the same way we do. And it’s not like you’re beating him up or anything.”

  “Of course I’m not beating him up,” Lisa said. “He’s my horse! But his ears go flat back against his head.�
� In the wild, that was how horses signaled to each other that they were prepared to attack. Lisa knew it was an extreme sign.

  Carole glanced at Stevie behind Lisa’s head. They exchanged smiles. Both of them noticed that Lisa called Milky her horse. Certainly Lisa wasn’t too upset over Milky’s behavior.

  “He feels unpredictable,” Lisa continued. “He’s not like Prancer at all.”

  Again Carole looked at Stevie, and Stevie nodded. That must be the root of Lisa’s frustrations. Milky wasn’t like Prancer, and Lisa loved Prancer.

  “You know,” Stevie said as they crossed a field where the winter grass lay in dry brown heaps, “when I first got Belle, it took me a long time to adjust to the ways she was different from Topside.” Topside was the lesson horse Stevie used to ride.

  “Really?” Lisa asked eagerly. “I never thought that about you. You always acted like making the switch was no big deal.”

  “That’s because I was so happy to have Belle,” Stevie said. “I mean, it was fantastic to have a horse of my own. Belle was pretty great, and I knew we’d learn to work things out together. Topside and I weren’t supercompatible the moment we first met, either.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that,” Lisa said. “I kept thinking I really shouldn’t be feeling so negative about Milky. I was beginning to wonder what was wrong with me.”

  “Nothing’s wrong with you,” Carole assured her friend. “Don’t you remember when we first met Prancer, at the racetrack?”

  “Of course,” Lisa said. “I’ll never forget watching her run.”

  “But even then her personality was out of the ordinary,” Carole said. “Remember? She loved it when we groomed her and fussed over her. She loves being around people. She’s excitable, but she’s a very affectionate horse, especially with young riders.”

  “She seemed nicer than every other horse at the track,” Lisa remembered. “I forgot, because now I’m so used to her.”

  “So if Milky’s not a very affectionate horse, he probably seems a little standoffish,” Carole guessed. “Think about Danny. Around Veronica, he acts like he doesn’t like people at all.” Danny was a superexpensive show horse that belonged to one of the worst snobs in the barn.