Horseshoe

by Bonnie Bryant

  Carole knelt in the sawdust and used the edge of her T-shirt to wipe Jessica’s face. Penny, standing warily against the back wall of the stall, came forward and began to eat hay. Carole saw what the problem was—Penny was wearing her saddle but not her bridle.

  “Penny doesn’t hate you,” she said, comforting Jessica. “She just got a little wound up today, and she’s not behaving. Here.” She walked very slowly and cautiously toward the pony’s head. Penny eyed her and began to back up, but relaxed when Carole spoke soothingly to her. At last Carole was able to grab a handful of her mane. “Hand me her halter,” she said to Jessica.

  Jessica ran to get it from its hook on the stall door. She handed it to Carole without saying a word. “Now the lead rope,” she said. Jessica gave it to her. Carole tied the other end of rope to a ring built into the stall wall for just that purpose. Penny stood quietly.

  “Now,” said Carole, “next time, take her saddle off first. That way you can still hold on to the bridle if she starts to move away from you. Or put the halter on first and tie her in the corner. Then she’ll stay put when you groom her too.

  “And don’t ever chase a pony around in its stall like that,” she added. “Penny started out thinking it was fun, but she might have decided you were scary and tried to kick you. You could have been hurt. Next time you have trouble, come get me, or Max or Red, or one of my friends. We’ll help you.”

  Jessica nodded and sucked in her breath with a quivering noise that still sounded very much like a sob. “Okay?” Carole asked.

  “I guess so.” She didn’t sound convinced.

  Carole felt sorry for her. “Jess, it wasn’t your fault,” she said. “Penny’s being uncooperative and you just don’t know all this stuff yet. You’ll learn. I didn’t know it either when I was your age.”

  Jessica shrugged. “She hates me,” she repeated, and went to get Penny’s grooming gear.

  Carole wished she knew of something to say to make Jessica feel better. Unfortunately, just as she’d understood how Jasmine felt, she also understood how Jessica felt. Carole could still remember when she didn’t know how to control a horse, and she knew that when the horses she rode misbehaved, she had sometimes felt that they had done it on purpose, because they hated her. Now that she was older, she knew that horses had good days and bad days, just like people, but she realized she probably couldn’t explain this to Jessica. Instead, she decided to talk about something else, to get Jessica’s mind off the pony.

  “Did you just move to Willow Creek?” she asked when Jessica came back. She knew Jessica had been riding at Pine Hollow for only a few weeks.

  “We moved here six months ago,” Jessica answered. “I took riding lessons for about a year where we used to live. My parents work, and for a while they didn’t have time to find me another stable.” She brushed Penny’s ears carefully and smoothed her copper mane.

  “We used to move around a lot when I was little too,” Carole said. “My dad’s in the Marines.” Only, Carole thought, her parents made sure they found her a place to ride right away, because they knew how important it was to her. Of course, Marine Corps bases often had riding stables, but still—

  “Do you have brothers and sisters?” she asked Jessica.

  “No.”

  “Me neither,” Carole said.

  Jessica continued as if Carole hadn’t spoken. “We have a yellow house with eleven rooms and 2.2 acres of land. There are three houses down the road and there are no kids living in any of them.” She was brushing Penny’s legs now. Carole rested her arms on Penny’s back and leaned over to look at her. Jessica’s bent head looked sad.

  “Who do you play with?” she asked.

  Jessica shrugged again. “Just me. I play by myself. The school bus stops at the end of the lane and I walk home from there. I have a snack usually. Sometimes I read, or watch TV. I wait for my dad—he gets home first.

  “I know lots of girls at school, but I’m not allowed to go home with them,” she continued, “because somebody would have to go pick me up, and my parents don’t have time. I can’t have anybody over at my house either, because my parents trust me home by myself but they don’t trust me home alone with friends. Now I get to come here once a week to ride. I take a different bus.” She stood up as she was saying the last part, and Carole was amazed at the soft smile that spread over her face. Clearly, riding was important to Jessica.

  “You love horses?” she asked the little girl.

  “I love all animals. I love horses best.” Jessica took the grooming bucket away from Carole. They untied Penny and shut her stall door, and Jessica went to put the grooming bucket away.

  “Thank you—thank you for helping me,” she called back to Carole. “I hope I didn’t bother you too much.”

  AS SOON AS Lisa had finished making Delilah comfortable, she went to check on May. As she expected, May was cheerfully grooming Macaroni. Lisa admired the pony which May had just gotten. She had out-grown her old, smaller pony, Luna.

  “I like Macaroni an awful lot,” May confided. “I loved Luna, but do you know what?”

  “What?” asked Lisa.

  “Last Saturday I went to visit Luna in her new home. I met the little girl who owns her now, and do you know what?”

  “What?” Lisa smiled.

  “She loves Luna already almost as much as I do. So I know Luna will be okay. Hey, Lisa, I’m almost done. Why don’t you go help Michael? He keeps asking me where to put things.”

  Lisa willingly went looking for the new boy, Michael Grant. She found him in the tack room, holding his horse’s bridle and looking confused. “Can I help?” she asked him.

  “Yeah.” Michael held up the bridle and smiled. “I can’t remember where this goes. I know it was one of these hooks—” He gestured toward the forty or so bridle hooks that lined the walls.

  Lisa showed him the correct place, then helped him put his saddle and grooming bucket away. She was just thinking what a nice person Michael seemed to be, and how nice it was to have one boy at Pine Hollow who wasn’t infatuated with Veronica diAngelo, when he said, “Can I ask you one more question?”

  “Sure,” said Lisa.

  “Who was that good-looking girl with the black hair in our class? Veronica Somebody—what’s her last name?”

  Lisa shook her head in disbelief. It was inevitable. “I didn’t realize you noticed her,” she said.

  “It was hard not to notice her!”

  “Right,” agreed Lisa, “she’s the one who was rude about CARL and fell off her horse.”

  “I think she’s wrong about CARL,” Michael said. “I think we’re performing for a good cause. But no, I meant it would be hard not to notice such an attractive girl. And she was certainly well dressed—I mean, her breeches weren’t the cheap kind, if you know what I mean, and her boots looked like they were custom-made. And the way her shirt and earrings coordinated and everything—I really admire a girl with a snappy wardrobe.”

  Lisa looked down at her own clothes. Snappy they weren’t. She wore boots and breeches to riding class, but the breeches were old and stained with grass and dirt, and the boots hadn’t been polished in—well, in longer than they should have been. Plus she was wearing the MANURE MOVERS OF AMERICA T-shirt her dad had given her for Christmas last year, and it had green stains on her shoulder from where Prancer had nuzzled her. Still, how could Michael judge someone by her wardrobe? It was the sort of thing only Veronica would do. Perhaps, Lisa thought, he and Veronica actually deserved each other.

  Michael leaned against a tack trunk and smiled at her. He had a nice smile and good teeth, and he had nice brown hair. It was too bad, thought Lisa, that he was beginning to give her the creeps.

  “I have a theory,” he said grandly, “I think it’s just as easy to love a rich girl as a poor girl. What do you think?”

  Lisa smiled but gritted her teeth. “Her name’s diAngelo,” she said. “Veronica diAngelo.”

  “DiAngelo,” Michael repeated t
houghtfully. “Almost aristocratic, wouldn’t you say?”

  Lisa made herself smile once more before hurrying away. Yuck! She couldn’t wait to tell Stevie and Carole about him!

  STEVIE FUSSED OVER Belle until the mare’s coat was shining. Seeing a piece of hay floating in Belle’s water bucket, Stevie fished it out and brought Belle fresh water and scrubbed the bucket out while she was at it. Once Belle was completely cooled from her ride, Stevie gave her a bucket of grain. Then, sure there was nothing more she could do for her horse, Stevie headed toward Max’s office for the Horse Wise meeting.

  Halfway there, she stopped and spun on her heel. That Veronica! Stevie wouldn’t have believed her eyes, except that it had happened so many times before. Garnet stood in her stall, steaming, sweating, and fully tacked. Her water bucket was empty and she hadn’t been given any dinner. Her hayrack was empty too.

  “You poor horse,” Stevie muttered. “You don’t deserve her—she doesn’t deserve you. One of these days you’ll get tangled up in the reins, the way she just dumps you in your stall.”

  While she talked, Stevie had been rapidly untacking the mare. Garnet sighed in relief when Stevie undid the tight girth, and nosed Stevie’s arm while Stevie unbuckled the bridle.

  “You sweet mare,” Stevie said. She gave Garnet a vigorous if quick grooming, and refilled her water and hay. Lastly, she gave Garnet the same amount of grain she had just given Belle.

  Garnet drank some water and slobbered on Stevie, as if in appreciation. “I get so mad at her when she does this to you,” Stevie told her. “Honestly, I wish I knew a way to pay her back.”

  A FEW MINUTES later, the last members of Horse Wise were crowding into Max’s office. Standing at the front with Max was a tall, dark-haired woman they’d never seen before. Max smiled as Stevie, the last rider inside, shut the door and squeezed herself onto a space on the floor in between Carole and Lisa.

  “I had to take care of her horse for her!” Stevie hissed indignantly. Her friends nodded sympathetically. They knew without asking who Stevie meant.

  “Come to order,” Max said, and the riders quieted. “Today I thought we should see firsthand why we’re performing this drill. We’ve all worked hard for the past few weeks, and now here’s our chance to see what it’s really about. It’s my pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Takamura, from the County Animal Rescue League.”

  The woman smiled and stepped forward. “Most people just call me Doc Tock,” she said, smiling at her own funny nickname. “It’s really a pleasure for me to come here today. I always enjoy getting a chance to tell people about the work we do at CARL, but I enjoy it even more when I’m talking to a group of young people who love animals as much as I know all of you do.

  “I’m a veterinarian—a small-animal veterinarian. That means that I limit my practice to animals like dogs, cats, rabbits, and guinea pigs. Because of CARL, I also work with quite a lot of small wildlife, such as raccoons, squirrels, and foxes. I do some work with birds, but I’m not qualified to take care of protected species like eagles or falcons. We have another vet who does that at CARL. I also don’t do exotics like zoo animals, nor do I treat large animals like horses or cows.”

  May Grover raised her hand. “Do you know Judy Barker? She’s our vet.” Judy took care of all the Pine Hollow horses.

  Doc Tock laughed. “Yes, Judy is a friend of mine. Like me, she has her own practice, but volunteers once a week at CARL. Judy’s our equine expert. We always call her whenever we get a horse in—which isn’t often. Let me tell you about the sort of animals we usually see. Could somebody please turn off the lights?”

  Lisa jumped up to hit the switch, and Max pulled down the window shades. Doc Tock turned on a slide projector. The first picture was one of a small redbrick building. “This is the home of the County Animal Rescue League—better known as CARL. We’re fortunate to have our own site, with two acres of outdoor cages, dog runs, and a small paddock. Inside the building”—she switched to a slide of a young woman holding a cat outside a row of cages—“we have a reception room, several treatment and holding rooms, and a full small-animal surgery. The whole facility was funded by donations over several years, and we continue to rely entirely on donations of time, goods, and money.

  “Many people volunteer at CARL,” she said, smiling at the group. “Many companies give us medicine and vaccines at cost or free, and a local grocery store chain keeps us supplied with dog and cat food. But we still need cash donations to maintain and run the facility.

  “That, of course, is not the important thing about CARL. The important thing is the animals we help. Let me introduce you to a few friends of mine.” She clicked the slide projector again, and a picture of a yellow dog with a bright, happy face appeared on the screen.

  “Ohh!” said several members of Horse Wise.

  “This is Champ. He’s our mascot,” explained Doc Tock. “Champ has been living at CARL for six years, ever since he was badly injured in a car accident and left on the roadside to die. One of our volunteers found him and brought him in. He’s perfectly healthy now, and we could easily find him an adoptive family, but his recuperation took so long that we all fell in love with him and none of us wanted to give him up. He’s the only permanent resident at CARL. He’s a real sweetheart.

  “We do sometimes get called to take care of a domestic animal who’s been injured, like Champ, but more often our dogs and cats are actually brought in by their owners. Sometimes people overestimate the amount of attention and care a pet needs. Or they buy a cute puppy, but they aren’t prepared when it grows up to be a hundred-pound dog.”

  Doc Tock showed a slide of a mother cat surrounded by kittens. “This cat is a perfect example,” she said. “She’s a very nice cat, but the owners never had her neutered, and they let her out to roam every night. She’d had kittens five times, they told us, and this time they brought her in to CARL to give birth because they were so tired of her having kittens. It never occurred to them to do something about it before she became pregnant!

  “The cat had six very cute kittens. We managed to find good homes for them all, but it wasn’t easy—there are too many kittens born around here and not enough people that want to keep them. The cat’s owners then came and wanted her back, but we made them agree to neuter her and we performed the surgery before we gave her back to them.”

  Meg Durham raised her hand. “Doesn’t neutering hurt the cat?” she asked.

  Doc Tock shook her head emphatically. “No. The animal doesn’t understand what it’s missing, and the surgery is routine and very safe. Look at it this way. Thousands of unwanted cats and dogs are put to sleep every year. By neutering your pet, you are actually saving lives. Does that make sense?” The members of Horse Wise nodded.

  “Good. Neutering and vaccinating pets are both very important, and we try hard to educate the public about these procedures. That’s one of our many goals. But CARL is the County Animal Rescue League. A lot of what we do involves actually rescuing animals from dangerous or abusive situations. Some people”—her voice tightened—“some horrible people should never be allowed near animals. Here’s a dog that was brought in six months ago. He was removed from his home when a neighbor called the sheriff about him. We get a lot of cases that way.”

  The photograph made the Pony Clubbers gasp. The dog, a long-haired Irish setter, was nothing but skin and bones. His ribs showed plainly under his thin, matted coat, and his dark eyes looked toward the camera with despair.

  “He’d been kept chained in a concrete pen that was never cleaned. His water was soiled and he was hardly given enough food to keep him alive. You can’t see by the picture, but his feet and haunches were covered with open sores from lying in filth for so long. The owners weren’t trying to punish him—they just didn’t bother to take care of him.”

  Carole felt tears come to her eyes. She couldn’t believe that anyone would allow a helpless animal to suffer so. She glanced at Stevie, who looked horror-struck. “Unbelievabl
e,” Stevie whispered.

  “We can’t save every animal that we find,” Doc Tock said. “Unfortunately, some die despite our best efforts, and others reach us in such bad shape that the only merciful thing to do is put them out of their misery. But this dog had a happy ending.”

  She switched to the next slide. The same dog, his coat grown full and luxurious, romped on a grassy lawn with two small boys. His tail was a wagging blur and his eyes were bright with joy—as were the eyes of the two little boys.

  “After two months in our care he was released to a wonderful family,” explained Doc Tock. “At the time he was still timid and rather withdrawn, but after another two months the family sent us this picture. This dog is an example of the sort of thing we do best: rescue an animal from a harmful situation and give him a chance to live out his life the way he should.”

  Lisa felt a great lump in her throat. She had never seen an abused animal before—looking at the “before” and “after” pictures of the Irish setter made her realize for the first time that the work CARL was doing absolutely needed to be done.

  “We also take care of injured wild animals,” Doc Tock continued. “Here, for example, is a picture of a turtle who was hit by a car. The family that hit it didn’t mean to hit it, and they brought it in to us right away. Fortunately, we were able to heal him and release him back into the wild.

  “And this slide shows a family of baby birds. These infants—robins, although you can’t tell in the photograph—were left helpless when their mother was killed by a cat. We were able to raise them and later release them outside our facility. We still see them flying around occasionally.”

  Doc Tock showed them several more slides of different animals brought in to CARL. She explained in detail the care each received. “That’s all I have to show you,” she concluded. “I hope this gives you a little taste of what we do at CARL. Thank you for your attention, and remember, all of you are welcome to come visit us at any time. We’re open every day until seven P.M. We’ve always got a vet on call for after-hours emergencies.