Beginner's Luck (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 18)

by Claire Svendsen

  “Who did you get this time?” I cried.

  “You’ll see,” he said with a wink.

  I dashed around the back of the trailer, trying to see inside and generally getting in the way and when he finally opened the door I strained into the dim trailer to see which horse was in there. I could make out the faint outline of a pale rump.

  “Is it him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” Dad said.

  He went in and untied the horse and then backed him out down the ramp. There was that sweet eye and unusual colored coat.

  “It’s him,” I cried. “It’s the roan. Number four.”

  “Yes but we can’t call him that,” Dad said. “You are going to have to pick out a new name for him.”

  “But why?” I said as we let the horse graze on the grass.

  He was acting like he’d never seen grass like that before, which maybe he hadn’t. The dingy farm he came from had been grazed down to weeds and stubble long ago.

  “Why do you have to pick out a new name?” Dad said. “Because Four is a stupid name for a horse, that’s why.”

  “No,” I said. “Why did you go back and get him?”

  “I don’t know,” Dad said. “I just couldn’t stop thinking about him.”

  “Me either,” I said, reaching out to pet his dirty coat.

  “And that Tracy woman left me a message saying that she hadn’t been able to sell any of the horses so she was going to ship them all off to the auction and he just seemed too good for that.”

  “Well now I wish that we could have bought all of them,” I said.

  “All of them would have been a nightmare to train.” Dad shook his head. “One unbroken horse is enough, don’t you think?”

  “He’s not really unbroken though, is he?” I said. “When I rode him it felt like he’d been taught really well, it was just that he was super rusty, like he’d forgotten a lot of stuff.”

  “Exactly,” Dad said. “That’s what I thought too.”

  “So when do we start?” I asked eagerly.

  “Well first let’s get the vet out to check him over and give him his shots. Who knows how well that awful woman kept up with all that stuff and have you seen his feet?”

  I looked at the overgrown, unshod hooves of the roan horse. They had cracks and flares and chips all over.

  “They are pretty bad,” I agreed.

  “Okay so put him out in the back paddock, just in case he’s contagious with something and we’ll get him sorted out over the next few days with the vet and farrier and then you can have at him.”

  “Really?” I said as Dad gave me the lead rope.

  “Really.” He smiled back.

  I was walking away with the roan gelding when he called out after me.

  “Just remember,” he said. “He’s a sale horse. Your sale horse. Your summer project. You won’t get to keep him forever.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Do you?” he asked, walking up to me. “Do you truly understand the implications?”

  “Yes.” I nodded.

  “Good because think of it this way, if you train him up and sell him for a profit then you’ll have money to buy another project and if you’ve done a good enough job, you’ll even have money left over for showing your other horses. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

  He slapped me on the shoulder and walked off seemingly pleased with himself. I didn’t know why he was doing this. It wasn’t like him to go out of his way and spoil me but it wasn’t really spoiling. It was going to be really hard work and I knew that a hard lesson would come at the end of it. A horse that I had lovingly trained would have to be sold and it would be heartbreaking but it could also be the start of a business that would fund my future in showjumping. Campaigning on the A circuit was expensive and so were the Olympics. Horses weren’t a cheap sport and I needed a source of income. My father was right. This did seem like a good way to get one.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  The roan horse was cleared by the vet and had all his shots and a coggins pulled. Then the farrier came out and got to work trimming his feet. Four didn’t like that very much. He fussed and fretted and tried to pull his feet away so many times that our normally very patient farrier started to get mad. I held onto the end of the lead rope with my fingers crossed, hoping that we would just get through it without anyone getting hurt. I talked to him and rubbed his face and then gave him treats when he stood quietly for a little while.

  “That should do it,” the farrier finally said, standing up and rubbing his back. “He might be sore for a few days. There was a lot of old hoof to trim off and don’t be surprised if we have to put shoes on him when you start working him. Those feet are not in good shape at all.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But do you think that maybe he won’t need them?”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” he replied.

  Dad had given me a spreadsheet to put all the horse’s expenses in. He said that you couldn’t tell if you were making a profit when you sold a horse if you didn’t know how much you had spent on him in the first place.

  After the initial purchase price, which my father had paid this time, there were a million other things that would add up over time. Things like tack and supplements and shoes. A lot of the stuff he would need we already had lying around the barn but shoes were an expense that I was hoping to avoid if I could.

  Dad said that I might as well learn the business side of horses if I wanted to be in it for the long haul. He said that too many people went into it with blinkers on, completely unaware of the money pit that horses were. He didn’t need to tell me how much keeping horses cost. I already knew. But Four didn’t seem to care that he’d already racked up a vet and farrier bill. He rubbed his face on me and left a smear.

  “You are getting a bath today mister,” I said.

  He still wasn’t cleared to go into the barn so I tied him to an old oak tree and dragged the hose over. I spent an hour scrubbing at his coat and when all the bubbles had cleared, I stood back and looked at my new horse, who it turned out wasn’t roan at all. He’d just been a really dirty dark gray.

  “Well that’s disappointing,” I said.

  He looked at me and curled his lip.

  “Okay, I still think you’re cute,” I told him. “And you’ve been very good.”

  Because the truth was that Four had settled in at Fox Run like he’d always belonged there. He hadn’t freaked out and run around like crazy when I first put him in the paddock and he had been very well behaved as I’d taken him for walks and hand grazed him late in the evening when everyone else had gone home. I’d worked on picking up his feet and touching him all over and other than one spot on his side that he wasn’t too keen to have touched, he mostly didn’t care what I did to him. I backed him up and asked him to trot and he never acted silly or tried to rear or get away from me. I even took him in the ring and walked him over some poles on the ground. It was all going well, at least for now anyway and he seemed to tie just fine. I didn’t know why Tracy had said that he wouldn’t.

  “Ready for a lesson on the new guy?” Dad said the next day.

  “Really?” I said.

  “Sure, I have time.”

  My father had been making a lot of time for me lately. In fact, the more time Missy spent with Dakota, the more time my father spent with me. I wasn’t sure if it was out of guilt or if they were having some kind of competition. I already had a sneaking suspicion that Dakota would be going to the schooling show too. She was Missy’s new prodigal student and I guess after her failures at the last show with both Socks and Ballycat, she was eager to prove herself. Well that was just fine but I wasn’t going to let her prove it at my expense and apparently neither was my father.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  I was a little nervous about riding the new horse. I’d ridden him o
nce before but considering the conditions at the run down farm and the state that Four had been in, that wasn’t saying much.

  “Which bridle should I use?” I asked my father.

  “Let’s go with this one,” he said, handing me a supple bridle with fancy stitching. It didn’t have a flash or figure of eight noseband, just a plain one and the bit was a thin loose ring snaffle.

  “He’s used to going in a western bridle and bit so his mouth might be a bit dead,” Dad said. “We’ll just have to see how he gets on with it.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling even more nervous than I had before.

  I wasn’t sure why. I loved riding new horses. Trying to figure out what made them tick and ways to ride them that got the best out of them because all horses needed a slightly different touch and figuring out what they liked and didn’t like was part of the fun.

  The ring was empty so there was no one around to watch me fail. I checked my girth one last time, ran down my stirrups and hopped easily into the saddle. Four looked at me as if to say, what are you so worried about?

  “You can’t fool me with those puppy dog eyes,” I told him. “I know what you could be capable of.”

  But the new horse wasn’t bad at all. He walked, trotted and cantered one way and did the same in the other. The only time he resisted at all was if I tried to take up too much contact on the reins. Or at least what he considered too much contact, which was hardly any contact at all. Then he tried to rear.

  “Leg,” Dad called out as Four tipped up on his back feet and almost smacked me in the face.

  I wasn’t used to horses that reared. I’d ridden buckers and bolters and spooky horses but I’d never really been on one that actually went vertical, only ones that had threatened to.

  “If he rears, what am I supposed to do?” I asked Dad as I halted in front of him.

  “Are you scared?” Dad asked, leaning back against the fence and crossing his arms.

  “No,” I said defensively.

  “Good. Then you lean forward and don’t grab his mouth. The last thing you want is for him to flip over and take you with him.”

  “Could he do that?” I said.

  “Maybe, just don’t let it get to that. Think forward all the time.”

  “I am,” I said.

  “Good, now trot him again.”

  I did but there were butterflies in my stomach that hadn’t been there before. Training a new horse to sell had sounded exciting and adventurous and a way to flex my horse training muscles. But getting injured by a rearing horse was not on my to-do list. I had a full summer of shows ahead of me and the Talent Scout series. I couldn’t do any of that if I got hurt.

  “Should we call it a day?” I finally called out.

  “Fine,” Dad said. “And let’s get the dentist out to check his teeth. That could be part of his issue.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I couldn’t help thinking that a visit from the dentist would take another couple of hundred dollars off the profit from his sale. But things like that had to be done. If we bought the horse and didn’t take care of him then we were just as bad as Tracy, trying to pass him off to someone else, a problem that no one wanted and would eventually end up at the auction, just like the other numbered horses she’d owned.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  Working with the new horses took my mind off everything else, like Dakota and Summer and Jordan, who was still missing. I was eating breakfast at the counter in the kitchen the next day when the news came on and I saw his picture flash across the screen.

  “Turn it up,” I shrieked.

  But Missy was in the middle of giving Owen a diaper change on the floor in the living room and didn’t have a free hand to spare and by the time I’d launched over them to grab the TV remote, Jordan’s picture had gone.

  “Did you see that?” I said.

  “See what?” Missy looked at me like I was kind of crazy.

  “Jordan was on the news,” I said. “He’s officially a missing person now.”

  I sunk onto the couch, feeling a little sick. It had been easy to imagine that Jordan had just run off with his friends and was having a good time. Easier to think that he’d forgotten about me instead of what I really feared, that something bad had happened to him. Accidents happened all the time. I knew that better than anyone. An accident had claimed my sister’s life. What if some random accident had done the same to Jordan?

  “It’s a good thing,” Missy said, picking up Owen and throwing him in the air.

  The baby giggled, making it almost impossible to remember that when he’d first been born, all he’d done was scream.

  “How can it possibly be a good thing?” I said.

  “Because people will be looking for him now. Police and people who watch the news will know his face. There is a good chance that they’ll find him.”

  “Not if he’s dead,” I mumbled, looking at all the toys strewn across the floor like some kind of baby obstacle course.

  “He’s not dead,” Missy said.

  “But how do you know?” I asked her.

  “I just don’t feel like he is,” she said vaguely. “I have a sort of sixth sense about these things.”

  I wasn’t sure whether I believed her or not but after she had gone to put Owen down for his nap, I sat there and closed my eyes, trying to feel Jordan’s presence. It wasn’t there. I felt nothing at all, unlike the way I now felt about Summer, which was that her ghost was hiding around every corner, waiting to jump out at me. I didn’t think that Jordan was dead either but that didn’t mean that he was okay.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “I saw the news,” Mickey said.

  She’d rushed over to me as soon as she got to the barn. I was in Arion’s stall giving him a good groom. Dad said that he’d give us another lesson. Well, technically he said that if we still wanted to go to the show we needed another lesson. I thought he was right. Arion was only going to compete in the baby jumpers but that didn’t mean it was going to be easy getting him over a course of jumps in one piece.

  “Yeah?” I said, trying not to seem like I cared.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” she said, leaning closer into the stall. “I really thought he’d just run off and done a guy thing. You know, been all irresponsible and careless and stuff. I never imagined for a second that he was actually missing for real.”

  “I told you he wasn’t the kind of person to just dump me like that,” I said.

  “I know you did,” Mickey said.

  I knew what she wanted. She wanted me to forgive her. To say that I was fine with the fact that she’d not only thought badly of the guy I liked and who I thought maybe liked me but had also just ditched me in favor of a shiny new friend when I didn’t agree with her. I tried to hold out an olive branch and she’d thrown it back in my face. Maybe she deserved the same. But maybe she didn’t.

  I felt like since I quit school and started studying online, all the stupid stuff that kids did there didn’t seem to matter to me anymore. Every day it had been a drama fest of who wasn’t talking to who and which girls were being shunned from the cool group. Since I was never technically in the cool group I didn’t really care but that didn’t stop me from getting slammed into the lockers a few times and having food from the cafeteria dumped on my head. Kids were harsh but now I felt like I’d put all that behind me. I was living in the real world where I had adult responsibilities like paying for my own horses and starting a training and resale business. I was working on my career, inching closer to the end game. The Olympics. I may have been moving at a turtles pace but at least I was heading in the right direction. I didn’t have time for Mickey’s games.

  I put down the soft brush I was using and turned to face Mickey.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Just forget about it.”

  “Really?” she said, looking surprised. “You don’t want to yell at me and tell me what a bad friend I’ve been? I don’t mind if you do. In fact it will make me fe
el better.”

  “I’m not here to make you feel better,” I said. “And I have to get Arion tacked up for a lesson.”

  “Alright,” she said. “Okay then. But you’re sure we are fine? We are good now?”

  “Of course,” I replied.

  But there was still the unspoken matter of Dakota, the girl that Mickey had used to get back at me. I knew that was what it was. I’d figured it out late last night while I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling. That was just how Mickey was but to be honest part of me didn’t even blame her. I’d quit school and left her behind. I couldn’t expect her not to make new friends. That was ridiculous.

  “Maybe we could ride together later?” Mickey called after me as I went into the tack room.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I promised Faith that I’d ride with her.”

  “Well some other time then,” Mickey said.

  “Sure.”

  And it wasn’t a lie. I had promised Faith that I would ride with her. She was getting all excited about the show and was completely over the moon that I’d sort of taken her under my wing.

  “I’m really not mad or anything,” I said again to Mickey who was standing out in the barn aisle looking like a lost puppy.

  “But everything is not really fine is it?” she said. “Because Jordan is actually missing and he’s not fine at all.”

  “I know,” I said. “But there is nothing that I can do about that right now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Faith had seen the news. Everyone had. But it turned out that she was a lot more mature about it than Mickey was.

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” she said as we rode out under the trees.

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “You must be really sad. Wasn’t he like your boyfriend or something?”

  “Why would you think that?” I asked her.