by Kate Lattey
I looked over at her, and noticed that although her sleek bay pony was beautifully groomed, Katy was riding in dirty jeans and a t-shirt with a rip in one shoulder. Clearly her impeccable turnout was saved for public outings, and I felt a bit better about my own scruffy jodhs.
“We’ve got heaps of bits in the tack room, you can try something on him later if you want,” Katy offered. “I’ve got to get Molly worked, but you can chuck Squib in one of the boxes for a bit if you want, then we’ll have a play with him.”
“Okay.” I slid to the ground in embarrassed relief as Katy clicked her tongue at her pony and rode through a nearby gate and into an arena.
“Just put him in here,” Deb told me as she opened the door to a nearby loosebox, and I led Squib in behind her.
The large outbuilding had a corrugated iron roof and walls, but the boxes were open at the front and sides, with wooden walls between them at human chest height. I took Squib’s saddle and bridle off and he walked in a few circles, dug up some bedding, then charged to the front of the box and let out an ear-splitting whinny.
Katy’s pony answered, and Deb shook her head. “She’s not going to get any schooling done if Molly starts fretting. I’ll bring one of the other ponies in to keep your boy company.”
I felt my cheeks redden, and apologised again. “Sorry. He’s such a pain sometimes.”
Deb smiled at me. “He’s just being a pony. None of them like being all alone in a new place.” She pulled a halter off a nearby hook and handed it to me, then pointed at the paddock next to the house. “Pop in there and grab Robin out, he’s the chunky bay with the blue cover on. Whip his rug off when he comes in, then throw them a biscuit of hay each.”
She motioned to the stacked bales of hay at the other end of the outbuilding before striding off to help her daughter.
As I caught Robin and put him up next to Squib, I couldn’t help wishing that I’d grown up like Katy, with ponies on my back doorstep and a mum who knew all about riding and schooling and could fix all the ponies’ problems. I stuffed the hay into the feeders, then discovered that Squib only had a third of a bucket of water, and Robin’s was empty. After a quick scout around, I found the water tap on the side of the building, and filled them both up with the hose. I took Robin’s rug off and gave him a quick flick over with a body brush that was sitting on the divider between the boxes, then with the ponies both happily munching on their hay, I wandered over to the arena and watched as Katy cantered the pony in smooth circles while her mum coached her.
“More inside leg, really ask her to bend through her ribcage.”
Katy shot her mother a look. “I am using my inside leg.”
“Well, you’re not using it enough.”
“Would you like to get on and do it better?” Katy snapped in response as she cantered past, and Deb threw her hands up and turned away.
Seeing me standing at the gate, she smiled again and waved me over. “Could you give me a hand with these poles?”
Soon we had a bending line of three jumps built, with placing poles between each one, and Katy cantered the pony carefully down the line and back up again. Her riding still appeared flawless to me, but her mother had a few comments to make, most of which were met with eye-rolling from her daughter.
“She’s still a bit lazy behind,” Deb said.
“So put the jumps up then, give her something to think about,” Katy replied, then looked at me. “AJ, can you put the middle one up three holes?”
I looked at the jump then back at her, wondering if Deb was going to contradict me. The jump was already big, and putting it up three holes was going to bring it to around my shoulder height. But nobody seemed to think it was an outrageous request, so I walked over to the jump and raised the cups on both sides.
Deb walked over and adjusted the slanting rail beneath it. “Put it up four holes and teach her a lesson.”
She wasn’t kidding, but then Katy called that she was coming and we moved to the sides of the jump as she approached. Molly cleared the first fence, cantered the three strides to the tall vertical, jumped it effortlessly and cantered on to the last, taking it in stride as well.
“Better,” Deb said mildly as Katy brought her pony back to a raking trot and shot a triumphant look at her mother. “Walk her off, then you can take Robin out for a hack.”
Katy groaned and dropped the reins onto Molly’s damp neck. “Do I have to? Can’t AJ ride him? She said she would.”
That wasn’t quite what I’d said, and we both knew it, but Robin had seemed like a sweet pony to me. “If you want me to, I don’t mind.”
“Awesome! Give me ten minutes to walk this one off and I’ll grab something else in for me to ride.” She took Molly to the gate and leaned down, grabbing a halter and lead off the fence. “I’ll go get Puppet, he could use an adventure.”
She rode off down the raceway between their paddocks as Deb and I went back to check on the ponies. Squib had finished his hay and was leaning over the divider between the boxes, licking his lips and watching Robin methodically chew through his own rations.
Deb laughed at him. “He looks like he enjoys his meals.”
“Food is all he lives for,” I confirmed to her. “He’ll do anything for a carrot or a bucket of feed.”
“Speaking of that, Katy said you’d had some trouble getting him on a float,” Deb said, stopping in front of Squib’s box and rubbing his ears when he came over to say hi.
“Yeah, he hates it.” I explained what had happened with Donna that day, and Deb shook her head.
“One bad experience counts for a lot with horses. Being prey animals, they’re genetically hard-wired to remember negative experiences where they feel as though their life was endangered, and it can take a long time to break through that barrier.” My heart sank, but she smiled reassuringly. “I said a long time, not never. Wait there.”
She went into the room next to the hay, and came back with a rope halter and long leadrope.
“Let’s pull him out and do a quick bit of ground work with him while we wait for Katy to get back,” she said decisively, stepping into the box with Squib and knotting the halter onto his head, then leading him out behind her.
A few steps across the yard and she halted, but Squib kept going.
“Hmm.”
Deb applied pressure to the leadrope, and Squib pulled against it, then turned in a half-circle around her before halting facing her, his small ears pricked forward.
“Hasn’t had much ground work, has he?” she asked as she went to his shoulder and flicked the end of the rope towards him.
I knew what she was doing, because I’d seen people do it in YouTube videos. She wanted Squib to make a small circle around her, but he threw his head up instead and pretended he didn’t know what she was on about, pivoting on his forelegs every time she tried to make him step away from her.
“Sorry,” I found myself saying, and she looked over at me.
“Don’t apologise. If you don’t know something then you can’t be expected to teach him. Grab Robin out of his box for a minute, and I’ll show you what I’m trying to achieve.”
When Katy got back, still riding Molly and leading a slender black pony off one side of her, I had Robin walking and trotting in circles around me on the end of the long rope. When I stepped towards him he would stop and turn towards me, and when I clicked my tongue and stepped to one side he’d walk off on a circle in the opposite direction. I could get him to back up just by walking straight towards him and if I walked backwards, he walked towards me, stopping as soon as I did. It was an amazing feeling, and I started to appreciate just how much easier things were if your pony was this attuned to you. I could imagine that if I walked up the ramp of a horse float right now, Robin would follow me without hesitation.
Katy slid to the ground and rolled her eyes at me.
“More rope-twirling,” she teased her mother, who shook her head at her briefly, her attention focused on Squib.
“You only thin
k it’s a waste of time because I do it all for you,” she told her daughter matter-of-factly. “If I didn’t do all this groundwork with your ponies, they wouldn’t be nearly as manageable as they are.”
“If you say so,” Katy shrugged, leading the ponies up to the boxes. She flipped the leadrope over the black pony’s neck and slapped him gently on the rump as he approached an open stable door. “Go on then, Pups. You know where the food is.”
The pony walked willingly into the box and immediately started sniffing around in the corner for some hay, while Katy led Molly into the box next door.
“If you’re done playing horse whisperer, I’ll show you what tack to use on Robin,” Katy called to me as I watched her mother work with Squib.
I was actually finding it all pretty interesting, but I wanted to ride Robin too, so I led him back to his box and shut him in again. Katy came out of Molly’s stable with an armload of tack and kicked the door shut behind her.
“This way.”
She led me down to the enclosed room at the end of the row of boxes, and I looked around at the saddles and bridles neatly hanging from the walls. A big shelf on one side of the room held brushes, saddle blankets, hoof oils and all kinds of other things, and a row of big wooden pegs with covers hanging from them filled the far wall. Katy slung Molly’s saddle onto a nearby saddle rack, yanking the damp saddle blanket out from underneath and throwing it into a pile on the floor near the door.
“Mum needs to hurry up and do the laundry,” she muttered. “Now, Robin.” She grabbed a saddle and snaffle bridle down and handed them over to me, then added a girth and a faded red saddle blanket.
“Here you go. Match your shirt,” she said cheerfully, before digging some bright red boots out of a box under the bridles and adding them to the gear in my arms. “Brushes are already out there somewhere. Go nuts with whatever you can find.”
She turned away from me then and surveyed the wall of saddles with narrowing eyes. “Hmm, what will fit Puppy…” she said, speaking more to herself than me. “Maybe Forbes’s saddle.”
I had to ask. “How many ponies do you have?”
“Um. Six at the moment.” She glanced at me as she turned to grab a bridle off the wall, and laughed. “Too many, really. I’m hoping to get some sold in the holidays, though as soon as I do Mum will just buy more. She can’t help herself.”
“How do you find time to ride them all?” I had enough trouble fitting Squib in sometimes, what with school and hockey and netball, plus I had been considering getting back into competitive swimming this year. I mentioned this to Katy, and she shrugged as we walked out of the tack room, loaded up with gear.
“I don’t really do anything else,” she replied. “Just ride. Mum will usually lunge one a day, and they’re all trained to pony off each other, so I can hack one out and lead another one which cuts it down big time. They all have Mondays off, that’s recovery day from the shows. We go away competing almost every weekend.”
It sounded wonderful, but crazy at the same time. “What about your social life?” I asked her. “When do you hang out with your friends?”
Katy slung the saddle across the wooden door to Puppet’s box. “At the shows,” she said, as though it was obvious. “I don’t have any non-horsy friends.”
I was surprised by that, though it did make sense. After all, if you were away competing every weekend, your friends back home were going to get pretty sick of hanging around waiting for you to spend time with them.
“What about over winter, when there aren’t so many shows?”
Katy frowned at me. “What is this, twenty questions?”
“Sorry. I was just curious. I haven’t really met anyone who competes so much before.”
She shrugged as she unbuckled Puppet’s fly sheet and pulled it off him. “I get as much schoolwork done as I can, so that I don’t fall behind during the season. Because once the three-day weekend shows start, I don’t really go to school on Fridays, but it’s important to keep up. I’ve already passed most of my subjects this year, just need a few more Art credits and then that one will be knocked off as well.”
I couldn’t imagine my parents letting me skip that much school, but I supposed that’s what it took to get to the top. I was starting to quickly appreciate just how close to the top of her game Katy really was.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I don’t get how you don’t compete,” Katy said as we rode out across the paddocks a few minutes later. “What’s even the point of riding if you’re not going to shows?”
“I like riding,” I said, feeling defensive. “And I’m not good enough to compete much anyway.”
“Whatever,” Katy said dismissively. “You ride fine and your pony is amazing. If I had a pony like him, I’d be taking him out every weekend.”
“Yeah, well it’s not that easy. Even aside from how hard it is to get him on a float, Squib gets a bit mental at shows.”
“Does he do that running away thing on you?”
I nodded, and she looked thoughtful. “Let’s try him in a copper roller this afternoon, and a running martingale. That might help.”
I hesitated for a moment, then voiced my concerns. “But shouldn’t I just work on schooling him more instead of using gadgets to get him to behave?”
Katy shot me an amused look. “Has schooling worked so far?”
“Well…”
“Look, I’m not saying you should tie his head to his chest or put him in a double bridle or something. A copper roller’s a good bit for a pony like him, it works pretty much like a snaffle but he can’t hold onto it and run through your aids. And until you get him properly between your hand and leg, the martingale will help if he tries to throw his head up and run away from you. It doesn’t mean you can’t go back to milder gear later on when you’ve got more control, but not every pony is going to go perfectly in a loose-ring snaffle and cavesson noseband.”
“Yours all do,” I said, looking at the ponies we were riding. I couldn’t remember seeing her ride in anything other than a plain snaffle, on any of her ponies so far.
“Yeah, but they’re all either babies or super established. Well, other than Mr Plod over there, but he doesn’t have enough spunk to even try and run away or do anything bad.”
I gave Robin a sympathetic pat as he ambled along beside Puppet. “He’s a sweet pony,” I said in his defence.
“He’s fine, he’s just boring. I like to have to work a little bit, you know? I’ve got him entered in the Show Hunters this weekend, I reckon he’ll clean them up and then we can sell him to some uninspired kid who wants to canter slowly over eighty centimetre jumps for the rest of their life, and I won’t have to ride him ever again.”
“Poor Robin. Why’d you buy him if you hate him so much?”
“Mum bought him, because she felt sorry for him. Believe it or not, he was skinny when we got him. He was quiet so Mum figured if we put some food into him he might liven up enough to be worthwhile, but you could pump him full of oats and he’d still just plod along. I’ll show you. Let’s canter.”
She urged Puppet into a canter, and the young pony shot forward and threw his head around for a moment before settling into his stride. Robin walked placidly until I urged him to follow, then cantered ponderously up the hill behind the black pony.
“I see what you mean,” I told Katy as I kicked Robin along to the summit, where Puppet was waiting with his ears pricked. “He’s not exactly enthusiastic.”
“Nope, and he’s exactly the same when he’s jumping. I shouldn’t complain really,” she said as we walked the ponies along the ridgeline. “Because ponies that are as dead to the world as him are actually worth a lot of money, because they’re quiet and parents want them for their wimpy children. Once he’s got a competition record, he’ll be a cash cow and the money can all go into the fund to buy me a quality Young Rider horse.”
“You’re really lucky, you know,” I told her as she leaned down to open a gate. “My parents are
n’t even interested in ponies, let alone willing to take me to shows.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that?” Katy asked, waiting for me to ride Robin through the gate before shutting it behind us. “Is your mum scared of horses or something?”
I shook my head. “Mum’s a police detective. She’s not much scared of anything. But I’m one of five, so really I’m just grateful that they bought me a pony at all.”
“See, but you’re the lucky one,” Katy argued. “I hate being an only child. It’s so boring, especially since it’s just me and Mum. If we didn’t have the ponies we’d probably have killed each other by now.”
“Hmm, I guess. But this way you get all the time and attention. And all the money spent on you,” I added. “Everything we have has to be split between the five of us, and most of it goes to Alexia. We fight over what’s left.”
Katy turned in her saddle to look at me as Puppet led the way down the narrow track. “That sucks. Why’s Alexia the favourite child?”
“She has Asperger’s,” I explained, wishing I hadn’t brought this up. “It’s a form of autism. So she struggles with some stuff, and my parents have had a really hard time keeping her in school, because although she’s super smart she’s kind of difficult to deal with sometimes, and none of our schools are funded enough to cope with it all. So she gets a bunch of extra tutoring and special help and things. Mum works all kinds of crazy hours in her job, so Dad’s usually running the household and the rest of us have just learned to be pretty self-sufficient.”
Katy didn’t say anything as the ground levelled out and she nudged Puppet into a trot, heading along a winding track between two hills. Robin meandered along behind casually and I urged him to keep up, watching Puppet spook and shy at silly things, just like Squib would. I never thought I’d be bored while riding, or miss my crazy pony, but Katy was right about Robin. He was dull as ditch water, and I couldn’t wait to get back on Squib again.
Katy pulled up at another gate, and as I rode through it behind her, she asked another question.