I was ready to say all these things to her.
But, she was already gone.
Juan grinned at me. “She wouldn’t listen to you anyway. She crazy.”
I figured he was right.
It turned out that slow rides and fast rides could be equally exhilarating, though in different ways.
Kerri couldn’t come with me to Roundtree that afternoon; she had vet visits to deal with. I decided to play with the jumps again, although not quite the same way that she had done it yesterday. I just wasn’t sure if the element of surprise was the right way to teach him to jump. If I kept pulling stunts like that on a regular basis, he’d eventually take a hard stumble and get hurt—
—Or put a scratch on one of those damn poles. Sure, Jean had been bluffing when she threatened to check the jump poles for damage and send me a bill, but there was no reason to prove her right by actually damaging them. I wanted to concentrate on helping Tiger get over the poles in as comfortable a way as possible, not trick him into scrambling over them in a desperate effort not to hurt himself. Let’s do this thing with a little bit of grace, shall we?
Kelly was at the barn when I arrived, Payton in the cross-ties while she was settling a saddle on his back. She waved hello as I walked in. “Oh good, a riding buddy! I took the chance you’d be here this time of day. I heard you gave it to Jean yesterday.”
I was dying to ask exactly what she’d heard, but I remembered the sense of peace I’d felt galloping this morning. If it had inspired me to try to work things out with Mary, then I could use it to work towards peace at Roundtree, as well. I needed to let all of this conflict roll off my back, like water from a duck. “It wasn’t anything too big, not really,” I said instead. “I’m glad you’re here too! Tiger could use a work partner.”
We rode in pairs around the jumping arena for a while, an exercise which taxed Tiger’s self-control no end. He tugged at the reins whenever Payton pulled a little ahead of him, his strides lengthening as he tried to make sure he was in front. However, he didn’t flatten his ears or try to reach over and bite the warmblood, which was a significant improvement over his previous behavior with ponies. “This is incredibly good for him,” I said after a while, panting a little from all the posting trot. “He doesn’t usually like other horses around.”
“He’s mellowing out,” Kelly laughed. “He just figured out what retired means, and he likes it.”
“Hah! I wish.” Tiger snorted and tried to spook away from a palm frond lying on the ground. “See? We’re having a nice time and he’s getting bored and looking for trouble.”
“Oh, I know what he needs,” Kelly said authoritatively. “I hear you started jumping him.”
I guess that came with the Jean story. “Not exactly. He stumbled over that little x over there.” I nodded at the tiny cross-rail he’d fallen over yesterday.
“Let’s play follow-the-leader, then. You come along a few strides behind me, and let him follow Payton over fences. He’ll have to concentrate on where he’s putting his feet, so instead of wanting to race Payton, he’ll be watching him to see what to do.”
“That’s actually a really good idea.” I looked around at the other jumps. None were higher than two-six. There had been a kid’s lesson over the weekend and no one had lifted the jumps since. “Maybe after the x we can do some of the little fences, too.”
“I’ll even drop a few to eighteen inches.” Kelly looked delighted. “Wait here while I fix a fence for us.” She trotted Payton briskly over to a plain little oxer, hopped off, and started moving the rails around. Tiger watched with pricked ears, his head high for a better view, and jumped a little when one fell from its cup with a loud bang.
“You’re going to jump over that,” I told him. “You’ll love it.” He ignored me.
“All set!” Kelly slapped the dirt from her hands, led Payton over to the roll top, and used it as a mounting block. “Ready?”
“Let’s do this!” I gathered the reins again while Tiger watched Payton come back to join us, fluttering his nostrils a little. I shook my head. Half an hour and Tiger had a boy-crush on his new German friend. At least he was starting to act like a normal horse again. Maybe he could start going out with a buddy, the way he used to with Parker.
“Let’s go!” Kelly trotted around us. “Follow along!”
I nudged Tiger into a jog. He pulled at the reins eagerly, ready to get back into lockstep with Payton. Then, Payton did something Tiger was not ready for. Payton jumped over two little cross-poles, his knees tight and pretty although the fence was no higher than six inches off the ground. His fetlocks looked handcuffed together as he neatly cleared the fence.
Tiger stopped dead, his entire body registering alarm, and stared at Payton as if the horse had come from another planet. Evidently he did not associate his falling-over-the-fence achievement yesterday with the smart little jump that his new friend had just displayed.
I burst out laughing. Kelly pulled up Payton and turned around. “What happened? Why aren’t you coming?”
“Tiger was so horrified by Payton jumping that he just stopped!” I shook my head. “Maybe he’s not a jumper after all.”
“You have to do it now!” Kelly insisted, turning her horse back towards us and trotting over. “Now it’s a refusal.”
We were still about ten strides away from the fence, which was hardly enough to be considered a presentation to the jump. Still, though, I saw what she meant. “You jump it a couple more times,” I suggested. “And then we’ll follow you over.” Maybe if he saw Payton hop over the jump a few more times, he would realize it was part of the game, and not a flight from danger. “He probably thought Payton was spooking or escaping something scary on the ground.”
Kelly nodded. Her face was bright and excited, as if this was the most fun she’d had all day. “Take him over and let him look at the jump too,” she said. “We probably should have done that first.”
Probably. “Duh,” I said. “What were we even thinking?”
Naturally, Tiger now refused to go anywhere near the jump—or any of the other jumps in the arena. He balked and stamped and spun and pinned his ears and swatted his tail, firmly in opposition to any plan to get him near those dangerous horse-eating fences. “Damn,” I panted, circling him for the tenth or eleventh time to try to get him to walk near the jump. “I think I might have screwed him up this time.”
“No, no, we’ll get him over it,” Kelly said determinedly. “We just need to be patient.”
“Ladies?” We turned, and when I saw Elsie watching us I felt a twinge of guilt, as if I was a kid doing something my riding instructor had firmly warned me against. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine!” Kelly announced, her face alight with joy. “Everything is great!”
Elsie looked at me.
“Fine,” I said, with less conviction. “We’re doing just fine.”
Elsie cocked her head for a moment, no doubt assessing my sweating horse, his flattened ears, his swishing tail, the tiny cross-rail. Then she nodded and waved. “Let me know if I can help.” She turned for the barn. I looked back at Kelly.
“That was embarrassing.”
“Now we really have to get him over it,” Kelly said, grinning. “Let’s do pairs. Next to each other. He’ll walk next to Payton.” She rode her horse over to us and lined up with me, boot to boot, facing the scary jump. Tiger immediately leaned over and gave Payton a love-nip on the neck. Payton squealed and shook his head. “You guys are so gross,” Kelly chided. “Quit making out and let’s get our work done.”
Payton started forward and Tiger went with him in lock-step, keeping one ear on his friend and one on the jump. Which left no ears for me, but that was fine. He’d already proven that he didn’t care what I had to say on this subject. Hopefully his crush on the handsome Payton would be more convincing than our long-term relationship was proving to be.
We were within two strides of the fence before Tiger started getting reall
y concerned. His head came up, he sucked back, and his strides felt sticky. I put my heels to his sides, but I was prepared for a stop. Prepared for failure, you might say. I just didn’t want to hit the dirt if he dropped his shoulder and ran. Elsie might still be watching from the barn.
Luckily for our future jumping career, Kelly wasn’t having any of it. Just as Tiger’s forward motion started to peter out, she leaned over and shrieked “Yeeeeee-haaaaaaaaa!” in Tiger’s pricked ears.
Tiger leapt like a deer, leaving me sitting in the middle of his back like a beginner.
I was apologizing to his poor spine and his poor mouth as soon as he landed, but Kelly was already turning Payton towards us, pushing us in a circle. “Again, again!” she yelped. “Let the lesson sink in!”
Kelly was crazy, I realized. She was bonafide crazy horse-people.
But I went with her.
By the fourth time jumping the cross-rail, Tiger wasn’t leaping six feet in the air and Kelly wasn’t yelling like a banshee at him. We were just trotting up, taking a snorty look, and hopping over the rails. It was the first time I had jumped a horse in years, and it was so, so fun.
Just about as fun as working a fast horse, in fact.
I thought I’d tell Alexander so, just to annoy him.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Days turned into weeks, winter turned into summer (or so it felt like some days, as the “spring” sun heat the days up into the eighties), and Tiger turned into a quieter, gentler version of himself. Well, at times. He still did mad Tiger things like attack his hay, and bite the frame of his stall door when he thought dinner was late, or that I was dawdling in the aisle chit-chatting with Kelly or Kerri instead of getting him out and riding him. He still thought digging down on the bit and bursting into a short, choppy gallop was an excellent boredom-release mechanism. He still went over fences with more gusto than skill, and I was hard-pressed to regulate his canter stride well enough to bring him to a jump at the correct moment. His long legs would suddenly lengthen the stride from collection to full gallop in a matter of seconds, and he’d ruin the perfect presentation I’d been laboring over and find himself either having to jump from a ludicrously long spot or from an eyeball-popping short spot.
“But it’s not the worst problem in the world,” Elsie said gently after we had somehow toppled over a small upright fence looking like we were involved in desperate last-ditch cavalry charge down a rocky mountainside. “Right now, the jumps are to keep him interested. As you grow more skilled and consistent in his flatwork, you’ll be able to add gymnastics in order to teach him that he must be careful about where he puts his feet, or he simply won’t be able to get over the fences.”
Gymnastics—I knew what that meant. A series of fences in a straight line, mostly bounces or one-strides, with a few longer distances scattered within, to keep a horse sharp and focused. They’d been the scourge of my hunter/jumper childhood, riding a school pony up to a gymnastic, holding my breath, hoping for the best…
What Elsie considered a simple gymnastic could be a terrifying thing indeed. I’d watched some of her students leap through the gymnastics she set up—one had been seven fences long and involved nothing more spacious than two strides between fences. If you muddled up the first jump, you muddled up the entire series of jumps—that made for a lot of messy spots, rattled poles, and scary moments.
I was thankful she didn’t think we were ready for gymnastics yet, or that they were even necessary at the moment. I wanted to keep things as light and fun as possible. Elsie had become our unofficial trainer, though. I was waiting for the day she pointed to an impossible series of bounces and said, “Go trot over those.”
Elsie, who had evidently heard that Jean and I had finally had our ultimate fight, had started contriving to be at the barn whenever I was, saying “Why don’t I just walk down to the ring with you,” as I led Tiger out of the barn. It had become pretty obvious that she had decided to use Tiger and I to show Jean who was still boss of the barn, but I was perfectly happy to be used in such a manner. The coaching Elsie gave was invaluable, and the good rides we were starting to achieve had given me my old confidence back. I was remembering how to ride off-track Thoroughbreds, turning them from racehorses into show horses. It wasn’t exactly a reversal of the work I did at the training track each morning, but I guessed it was pretty close.
After a ride, we would sit in the barn office and drink coffee and I’d listen while Elsie told me about the Thoroughbreds she’d had in the past. “The bravest and noblest of breeds,” she’d say, nodding gravely. “And still bred to compete. Sometimes I think what I like best about Thoroughbreds, is that they aren’t bred for temperament.”
“What?” That was a bombshell of a statement. Breeding nasty horses to nasty horses because they were both athletic was one of my primary pet peeves in life. “But don’t you think breeding bad tempers becomes a problem genetically?”
“If you don’t have the riders to ride them, it does,” Elsie conceded. “But if you’re breeding kind, giving horses to kind, giving horses and don’t leave in the fire, where is the horse’s competitiveness going to come from? Where’s that last burst of energy that gets a horse through when he thinks his reserves are all used up? That ‘look of eagles’ the old horsemen used to talk about, that didn’t come from being a gentle old sheep. That came from pride, and power, and a rejoicing in one’s own strength. Puppy dogs are lovely, but they don’t have that spark. The allure of the Thoroughbred, now, that was always his fire. Your job is to harness that fire, show the horse that he should trust you, and make sure he’ll do anything for you.”
I sipped at cold, bitter coffee and thought about the truth in her words. I had never for a moment thought of it like that, but all the things that made my beloved horses so singular to me, whether it was Tiger or Luna or Personal Best, was surely wrapped up in their faults just as much as their attributes. Perhaps more so. Wasn’t that the damnedest thing, I thought.
“But not everyone can ride that sort of horse,” Elsie sighed. “Now more than ever. When you lack horsemen, you lack the capability to ride a horse with a mind of its own. Then you need the gentle old sheep.”
“There aren’t enough riders for Thoroughbreds, you mean.”
“That’s a fact. Look at my barn now. Nice, comfortable warmbloods, for nice, comfortable part-time riders who lack the seat and the skill and the desire to stick to a Thoroughbred who gets an idea in his brain. Good horses, sweet horses, kind horses. Sheep.” Elsie shook her head. “Even my horse is a warmblood these days. But I’m too old to get into a fight and fall off. That’s another story altogether. And he’s a very nice horse. I couldn’t help but fall in love with him, and he’s taken care of me ever since.”
I nodded. I understood that. I’d had plenty of days where I hadn’t expected a fight, but the horse had brought me one anyway. There would be a limit to how much of that I could physically handle some day… but that day wasn’t here yet. I could still devote years yet to riding Thoroughbreds. “I guess I never realized the problem is so multi-faceted.”
“What problem is that?”
“The retirement problem. Making sure the horse is retired sound is one thing. Making sure he’s trained well in a new discipline, another thing. But making sure there are enough riders to be able to want them and ride them… that’s a whole other thing, isn’t it?”
Elsie nodded. “We have to make more horsemen, but what we are making the most of, is part-time riders.” She reached over and patted my hands. “You worry about your end of the business, and I’ll worry about mine. That Jean… I should put her on a few Thoroughbreds, teach her that not everything is as dangerous as her aunt’s horses. Jean has had a few bad experiences. The Thoroughbreds she rode as a child were made dangerous through poor handling and unsoundness. But they were free, and she loved horses so much, she couldn’t help herself. She kept getting on, and she kept getting hurt. By the time she could get a job as a working student, she’d
sworn off racehorses. I could never get her on one. But she does well with my students, she runs my barn well, she has picked some good sales horses… I’ve let her run a little wild with the place, I suppose.”
“It’s a shame about her… her aunt’s horses, did you say? Her aunt had racehorses?”
Elsie smiled sadly. “Her aunt has racehorses. Her aunt is your friend Mary Archer.”
I sat back in the folding chair so hard that it nearly tipped over backwards. “You’re kidding!”
“Just a funny coincidence… but imagine if you had to try to learn to ride on one of Mary’s poor, beat-up horses.”
Ugh. Poor Jean. Now I was feeling sympathy for Jean. Elsie was some kind of wizard-trainer, for both horses and humans. Well, if anyone could fix Jean’s anti-OTTB hysteria, it had to be Elsie. “If you want a good Thoroughbred, I can connect you with my friend Lucy,” I said. “She has to have something that you could use for a lesson horse… or that Jean could turn into a show jumper.”
“Maybe we’ll do that. And maybe we’ll come down to your Thoroughbred Makeover so that she can see what you have done with Tiger. You need a cheering section, don’t you?”
I grinned. “Well, cheering might not be the greatest idea if we want Tiger to hold it together in one piece. But… yes, I’d love for you to come.”
Elsie smiled happily. “We need more retired racehorse advocates—I’ll see who else in the barn I can get to come. You’ve reminded me, dear—you’ve reminded me that Thoroughbreds need people who are willing to stand up and shout about what wonderful horses they are. We have to create demand for them—and that’s my job, as a riding instructor. It’s your job to retire them safe and sound, and get them to the right trainers, so that they are ready for their new careers.”
I nodded, my face serious again. That was my job. If Elsie was going to be an advocate, I was going to have to be an advocate, too.
Turning For Home (Alex and Alexander Book 4) Page 26
