by Kate Lattey
Holly blanched, but Lola fixed me with a determined stare. “If I can, then can I jump higher?”
“Sure,” I agreed, sure that she’d fail on her first attempt and I wouldn’t have to follow through with it. These kids could barely stay on with their stirrups, let alone jump properly without them, and I was soon proven correct as Lola slid awkwardly over her pony’s head when he refused at the third jump, although he at least had the courtesy to do it in slow-motion, so she landed unhurt.
Holly went next, and she looked nervous, but being the older of the two she clearly felt obliged to attempt whatever her friend had. Her fuzzy palomino pony wasn’t keen on jumping at all, however, and napped furiously when she tried to persuade him away from his paddock mate. With much kicking and waving of the her sparkly pink whip, Holly managed to get him to jog over the first jump, but when she turned the corner towards Lola’s little black pony, Soldier dropped his shoulder, dumped her face first into the arena sand, and cantered back to his friend with more energy than he’d probably expended in months.
I went to catch him, assuming that Holly would just get up and get back on, but she lay on the ground crying until her mother came into the arena and coerced her onto her feet, brushing the sand off her and saying unhelpful things like “It wasn’t your fault” (it was, because she should’ve been able to stick on) and “Soldier is a very naughty boy” (it was the first time he’d put a foot out of line all day) and “You’re such a good, brave rider” (obviously completely untrue). I led Soldier back to them and her mother tried to persuade her back into the saddle, but Holly started crying again and saying that she hated her pony and she didn’t want to ride him ever again. Her mother was giving me a dirty look, so before she could start blaming me for her daughter’s failure, I offered to ride the pony myself and jump the course for her, just to show that it could be done. Nobody immediately objected, so I vaulted on and wrapped my legs around his fluffy sides.
“Let’s move, pony,” I told him.
When I didn’t get a reaction, I gave him a sharp kick in the guts and he popped forward into trot, his little ears swivelling back and forth in alarm at suddenly having a rider on board who knew what she was doing. It didn’t take much to get him into canter, and I rode him smoothly around the course of not-really-jumps without any problems at all.
I was feeling pretty pleased with myself when I brought him back to halt in front of his owners and slid to the ground.
“See?” I told Holly. “He’s a really good pony, you just need more leg and more determination. Let’s see you hop back on and do the same thing.”
The kid was looking at me with wide eyes, but she had stopped crying and she nodded, then let me leg her back into the saddle. She wanted to take her stirrups back, and started sniffling when I said I already knew she could do it without stirrups, and she should try again without them.
“But I’ll fall off!” she wailed, and her mother stepped in and tried to change my mind.
“I really don’t think it’s a good idea. She’s already had a fall today and she doesn’t need another one.”
“If she doesn’t fall off, she won’t learn to stay on,” I said patiently. “She’ll be fine, trust me. Off you go, Holly.”
Holly still looked uncertain, but she managed to get Soldier trotting around the outside of the arena. Her mother stepped in closer to me and spoke in a low, stern voice.
“I wasn’t going to say this in front of Holly, but that was an incredibly irresponsible thing that you just did. Riding in front of children without a helmet, and jumping! Completely irresponsible,” she repeated. “You know these girls look up to you, and you’re setting a terrible example for them.”
I frowned, keeping my eyes focused on Holly as she let her pony meander down the long side. Her body was rigidly upright in her rock-hard back protector, her fingers in their slightly-too-large gloves were having trouble gripping the rubber reins, and her top-of-the-line helmet sat so low on her forehead that she could barely see out from under the peak. The only safety equipment she didn’t have was a seatbelt, and that was probably only because her mother couldn’t figure out a way to attach one to the saddle.
“These aren’t really jumps,” I told Holly’s mother as my irritation built. “They’re practically poles on the ground, and if Holly can’t trot her pony over these without stirrups then she has no business jumping higher. I’m not asking her to climb Mount Everest or jump a Grand Prix track here, just to have a bit of gumption and actually try, instead of sitting there like a lump of spuds and then crying because her pony can’t read her mind!”
As it turned out, people’s mothers don’t like being spoken to like that. Moments later, Holly was being dragged out of the arena, crying yet again, by her furious mother, who yelled over her shoulder at me that I was the worst instructor she’d ever come across, and they were never coming back for any more of my so-called teaching. Lola sat haplessly on her black pony, looking from me to the woman and then back again, then tentatively asked if she could jump the course one more time.
I told her only if she promised not to fall off, and she said she’d try, then set out. It wasn’t pretty, but she got over all of the jumps on her first attempt, and was grinning as she jogged her pony back over to me.
“Solid effort,” I told her. “Practice that at home, lots of riding without stirrups to give yourself a strong seat and good balance. Then when you can jump wee courses like this easily with no stirrups, jumping higher will be no big deal and you won’t fall off as much.”
“I will,” she promised as we walked back to the gate, where Tayla was riding up on Gully with Mum walking alongside her. She let Tayla into the arena and told the girls to walk their ponies around the outside while she spoke to me for a moment.
I rolled my eyes and waited until the girls were out of earshot “Before you say anything, that woman needs a serious reality check.”
“Did you really ride her daughter’s pony without a helmet?”
“Yeah, but…”
“We’ve talked about this!”
“You’ve talked about it,” I corrected her. “I pretended to listen.”
“Katy, I’m serious. Haven’t there been enough serious head injuries around here lately, without you trying to add yourself to the critical list?” I blushed at the reminder as she carried on with her lecture. “And quite aside from all that, if you’re going to be taking money for coaching then you have to hold yourself to a certain standard, and getting on children’s ponies for demo rides without a helmet is not responsible.”
I huffed out a sigh. “Why did I even sign up for teaching? This sucks.”
Mum clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s not an easy job, but somebody’s got to do it.”
“Can that be somebody else?” I asked quietly, looking at Tayla as she rode Gully past me with her hands way too high. Gully laid his ears back and tugged at the bit, and she shortened her reins, irritating him even more. “Why don’t you take this lesson? I resign.”
“No way,” Mum said. “You signed up for this, you go through with it. I’ll get Lola out of your hair, and go back to calming Holly’s mother down. And try to be polite, would you? I know it doesn’t come easy, but it’s kind of important.”
“Yeah yeah,” I muttered, turning towards my next victim and vowing to myself that this would be the last lesson I would ever teach as I mentally struck giving lessons off my list of possible ways to earn money. This was a mug’s game, and so not worth it.
Tayla’s lesson wasn’t, thankfully, a complete disaster. After the first few minutes she stopped trying so hard to impress me and settled into getting some positive work out of Gully, and I felt myself soften towards her. She did work hard, and it was rewarding to see her improve. But it only took a second’s recollection of the disaster with her friends to steel me to my convictions that I was not cut out to be a coach. And there was another small bonus, which was that Tayla’s mother had transported her friends’ pon
ies here in their float, and was now engaged in dropping them back home, while I gave her daughter a lesson. I had quickly come to realise that mothers were a whole lot more trouble than their daughters.
I’d just put all the fences up a few holes and given Tayla a course to jump when I heard the rumbling of a large engine, and turned to see a big green horse transporter driving into the yard, kicking up a cloud of dust.
My heart started pounding excitedly as I watched Tayla out of the corner of my eye, cantering Gull over the last low fence before coming back to a raggedy trot.
“Who’s that?”
“My new horse.” With an effort, I turned back to face her. “That was better, but remember that when your course is done, you don’t stop riding. Back to trot and get a quality trot, back to walk and get a quality transition before you start slopping around and throwing the reins away. Especially if you’re doing Show Hunter, when you’re being judged from the moment you ride into the ring to the moment you leave, but also when you’re show jumping, just because…well, it’s the principle of the thing. Don’t get sloppy. Not a good look.”
It wasn’t the best or most concise feedback I’d ever given, but Tayla nodded, lapping it up.
“Sorry, I won’t. Should I go again, or do you have to go see your horse?” She stood in her stirrups and looked over the flax bushes that blocked my view. “Your mum’s there,” she told me. “She’s talking to some guy, I think he’s the driver.”
I couldn’t just stand here and let them unload my new horse without me.
“I better go and make sure everything’s all good,” I told Tayla, starting towards the gate. “Sorry to cut your time short, but you can come ride Gull again tomorrow if you want, or whenever.” It wasn’t like she was paying me, after all. I wished she’d just bite the bullet and buy the pony, because she clearly liked him and he went well for her, but it wasn’t up to me to make that decision for her.
Tayla looked disappointed. “Can’t I just keep riding while you’re gone?” I must’ve looked dubious, because she started pleading. “I’ll just walk him around. I won’t jump or anything. But maybe once your new horse is settled in you could come back and we could do some more jumping? Because I wanted to go a bit higher, that’s all.”
I had my hand on the gate, could hear Mum talking, followed by the unmistakable sound of a horse truck ramp being lowered and crunching into the gravel.
“Sure, why not. No jumping,” I said firmly. “I’ll be back soon.”
I slipped through the gate, latched it behind me and set off at a jog along the short track to the yard, where I could see Mum standing at the bottom of the truck ramp with her hands on her hips, staring up into it. There was a clatter of hooves, and the driver shouted something R-rated before being dragged down the ramp by a huge black horse with a white blaze. He had a chain over her nose, and as I watched, he delivered a sharp yank to the leadrope, making her throw her head up in alarm.
I marched angrily up to him and reached for the lead.
“I’ll take her.”
The man looked at me dubiously. He was taller than me, solid-built with a thick neck and muscular arms. Tori plunged forward towards me and he hauled her back again as I stepped hastily out of the way to avoid being trampled.
“Better just tell me where she’s going and I’ll put her away for you,” he said patronisingly as Tori looked around, her head high and ears pricked forward. She looked huge, much taller than her barely-sixteen hands, and I wondered if I’d bitten off more than I could chew.
“Turn her out in the old orchard,” Mum said to the driver, overruling me. “It’s just over here, I’ll show you.”
I shook my head, determined to stand my ground. “No, put her in the stables next to Lucas. I’ll groom her and turn her out myself.”
The driver frowned. “You sure about that?”
“Yes, I am,” I said emphatically. “We need a chance to bond.”
In the back of my mind I wondered if it wouldn’t be better for Tori to just go out in the paddock and stretch her legs after being on the truck for several hours, but I wanted her to get to know me before I turned her loose. She’d have plenty of time to run around later, and I wouldn’t keep her in there for long.
The man still looked dubious, but he followed me towards the stables where Lucas was watching intently. He whuffled his nostrils at Tori, who laid her ears back at him and snaked her neck in his direction. I opened the stable door next to the chestnut pony, but the truck driver hesitated again.
“Better not put her right next to the other one,” he told me. “She’s very aggressive to other horses, been taking chunks out of the others the whole way down and I’ve had to keep a space between them, even though that woman only paid for one. I wouldn’t want your pony to get hurt.”
I was a bit unnerved by how difficult Tori had apparently been, but I deferred to him.
“Okay. Put her in here, then.”
I opened the stable door next to the tack room and he led Tori in, turned her around, unclipped the chain and backed up fast, as though he was scared to turn his back on her. I latched the door behind him while Tori paced one full circuit around her new perimeter, then let out an ear-splitting whinny.
Gully responded from the arena, and Mum’s head snapped around in that direction.
“Where’s Tayla?”
“Still riding,” I said, my eyes fixed on Tori. She was wired and anxious, but she was so beautiful that it was taking my breath away. Her eyes were bright, the muscles rippled under her glossy coat, and her mane lay like silk against her damp neck.
“You left her alone?” Mum was furious, but I blocked out her tirade as I stared at my new horse, only vaguely aware that her voice was receding as she marched off to check on Tayla.
“That’s a lot of horse for a kid like you,” the driver said, as though I’d asked for his opinion, which I certainly had not.
“Don’t worry about me,” I told him firmly. “I’ve had tough horses before, I know how to handle them.”
He shrugged and walked away, and I leaned on the stable door and stared at Tori as she pawed irritably at her bedding. I hadn’t been lying exactly – I’d had plenty of tough ponies – but I’d never handled a horse as big and strong as this. Tori looked massive, more like seventeen hands than sixteen, and I hoped she’d settle down and become a bit more manageable before long. I stood and gazed at her as the truck driver put his ramp back up, made a twenty point turn in our small yard, and drove away in a cloud of diesel fumes.
“There’s hay in the corner,” I told the mare, who glared at me for a second before going to the edge of the box and leaning towards Lucas, who was watching her with great interest. “That’s Lucas. You wanna make friends?”
I wondered whether I should move him into the middle box so that they could socialise. I didn’t like the idea of keeping her too isolated from other horses. Horses as a species are social animals, and one of the cruellest things you can do is to keep them locked in stables all the time and not allow them any social contact with friends. When Robin was in the box next to Lucas, they spent half the day hanging out next to each other, leaning over each other’s partitions and grooming one another’s withers and necks, until I’d had to start putting a rug on Lucas because Robin was getting so enthused that he was pulling half of his buddy’s mane out with his teeth.
Mum seemed to have the Tayla situation under control, because I could hear her calling out advice like “Look up” and “Much better” so I figured I would leave her to it since I still had two ponies to ride that afternoon and a new horse to acclimatise. Lucas was right there and all he was allowed to do was walk around the yard anyway, so I haltered him and brought him out of his box, tying him up next to Tori so she could say hello while I got him ready.
Lucas stood placidly where he was tied, but Tori had found her hay by this time and ignored his encouraging looks. I left them alone as I went to fetch Lucas’s saddle, but the moment I stepp
ed into the tack room, all hell broke loose. It reached me in a cacophony of sounds that you never want to hear as a horse owner – squealing, clattering, grunting, the skittering of hooves on concrete, the unmistakable snap of baling twine. I ran out of the tack room to see Lucas cantering across the yard with his head and tail in the air, his leadrope dangling around his legs as Tori continued to lunge at him, despite the fact he was several metres away now and well outside her reach. She looked vicious and downright scary, with her ears flat back against her head and her nostrils wrinkled up to bare her teeth. I gave her a wide berth as I hurried over towards Lucas, trying to get him to calm down.
“Woah pony. Easy there.”
I was sweating at the sight of him cantering, which he was definitely not supposed to be doing, and when he came back down to a trot I watched him carefully to see if he looked unsound at all. He wasn’t showing any signs of it, much to my relief, and I managed to get up to him and grab his leadrope, then rubbed his forehead reassuringly.
“Easy buddy. You’re okay.” I looked over my shoulder at Tori, who had gone back to eating her hay as though nothing had happened. “Don’t worry, I won’t tie you up next to her again.”
“Is everything okay?” Mum was back, but as the responsible adult, she also had Tayla right behind her.
“Fine. Lucas just got a fright, that’s all.” I led him back and tied him outside his box. I don’t know why I didn’t want to tell her what had happened. Maybe it was something to do with the look in Mum’s eye as she glanced at Tori, as though she didn’t quite approve of my new horse.
Tayla, however, was smitten. “She’s gorgeous! Is she really yours? You’re so lucky!”
“Thanks,” I said as I slung Lucas’s saddle onto his quivering back. “She’s a bit unsettled still though, so tie Gull up over here and just leave her alone for a while.” I didn’t want the kid going in for a pat and getting her hand – or her head - bitten off. “How was the Seagull?”
“Awesome! We jumped over a metre, it’s the first time I’ve ever jumped that high and Gully was perfect!”