Second Chances (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 25)

by Claire Svendsen

He didn’t answer, just let me know when I was getting too close to his ticklish spots by stomping his foot. His hooves were looking really long and he’d need new shoes before the show. I also knew that he should have been on the farrier schedule for a couple of weeks ago so I had no idea why he’d been missed. It wasn’t like Missy to let something like that slide. I wondered if she’d done it on purpose.

  When Socks was all groomed and saddled, I took him round to our ring. I had never been so glad that we had real footing and a proper fence in all my life. Dad was right. I was going to have to be extra careful with Missy’s horse because if anything happened to him then I knew that we would never hear the end of it. And it would all be my fault.

  “What do you think?” I asked him as I walked him around so that he could see the jumps.

  He sniffed a pile of poop that Macaroni had left in there the day before and then stuck his head up and curled his lip.

  “Well you sniffed it,” I told him, laughing.

  I ran down my stirrups and sprang up into the saddle. Socks took off and I had to rein him back in and make him stand while I got myself situated.

  “We don’t do things like that here,” I told him. “You have to wait for me.”

  He shook his head, all eager and ready to go but I patted his neck and made him stand for a few minutes before I let him walk on. Dad always said that it was the little things that counted and if you let a horse get away with those because you didn’t think they were that important then before you knew it, your horse would be getting away with big things and you’d be in big trouble.

  We walked for a bit but Socks hated to walk, just like Arion. After all, he had started out his career as a speed horse and forcing him to walk wasn’t exactly going to get us anywhere. I nudged him into a trot and got him working in a frame before his boredom caused him to do something silly. After he’d warmed up, I asked him to canter on a loose rein. Socks was always faster if he thought you were going to grab hold of his mouth. I let him go around at his own pace and then cantered him over a couple of cross rails. He got a little quick after but it was nothing that I couldn’t handle and soon we were flowing over the whole course of jumps just like the old days.

  “Well I don’t know what Missy’s problem was,” I said as I patted Socks on the neck. “You’ve been a very good boy.”

  He looked pretty smug with himself. I had to wonder if he was just playing with Missy. He definitely knew how to press her buttons but it didn’t matter and I didn’t care. He was here. That was the most important thing.

  “You looked great out there,” Dad said as I brought Socks back to the barn to untack him.

  He was standing there marking out the new stalls. The fronts were coming in a couple of days with enough wood to make the partitions between them. We wouldn't be able to do the whole barn but we’d have enough for some of our horses and that was a start.

  “It was all Socks.” I grinned. “I don’t know why Missy couldn’t ride him. He was totally fine.”

  “Missy is her own worst enemy sometimes,” Dad said.

  “What does that mean?” I asked him but he didn’t reply.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When the stalls finally arrived it was clear that we were going to have a problem.

  “There is only going to be enough for six,” Dad said, looking at the stack of materials that the guy had just dropped off for us with his trailer.

  “So?” I said. “That’s still six more than we had yesterday.”

  “Do the math,” Dad said. “You now have four horses. I have one. We have a foal that really needs to be brought in if we get bad weather and we have two horses and a pony that pay full board and are entitled to a stall each.”

  “Oh man,” I said. “I forgot about the boarders.”

  Molly had been very gracious about the fact that her horses were outside. In fact she’d said that a winter outside would toughen them up, a point that I reminded my father of.

  “Yes,” he said. “She said that when we didn’t have any stalls but now that we do, how do you think she is going to feel if all our horses are snug and cozy in here when hers are out in the rain or the cold.”

  “She said that Bourbon and Bailey love the cold,” I said looking out to where the two bay Irish Sport Horses were grazing. “They came from Ireland where it rains every day and is cold and miserable all the time. They probably think they are on vacation or something.”

  “I know,” Dad said. “But she is paying full board for two horses. We need her money. What we don’t need is to tick her off so that she leaves and takes her money and her stuff with her. Don’t forget, those jumps you were jumping earlier? They belong to her.”

  “So does the footing,” I said. “But it is not like she can just scoop that up and take it away.”

  “Alright smarty pants,” Dad said. “But you know what I mean and it is the same with Faith.”

  “Faith won’t care,” I said.

  “No but her parents will. Do you think they will really be willing to hand over their board check when they finally realize that they are paying the same amount they were paying at Fox Run for half the service?”

  “Faith wanted to come,” I cried. “She was the one who begged and pleaded and lay down in front of your truck, remember?”

  “I know,” Dad said. “But we are going to have to face the fact that three of these stalls now belong to our paying customers.”

  “Well can we not get any more of those then?” I grumbled.

  “You were the one who wanted to make this a proper business,” Dad said. “You know that the clients come first.”

  “I know,” I said with a sigh.

  I’d hoped that Second Chance Farm would be a place where we could start over. A place that was ours and ours alone. Somewhere that I didn’t have to share the ring or the jumps or the stalls. Now it was like we were back at Fox Run all over again and me and my horses came second, just like we always did.

  “Well you know Socks needs a stall,” I said. “You were the one who said that we couldn’t have him running around and hurting himself.”

  “Agreed,” Dad said. “Socks definitely gets a stall.”

  “So then who will get the other two?” I asked eagerly, hoping he would say Arion and Bluebird. I was so sick of grooming their messy butts already.

  “How about we decide after we’ve got them up,” Dad said diplomatically.

  But I knew that he was just trying to put me off because I knew that he had two people coming to look at our place for boarding. People that we’d met at the schooling show. Nice people who would pay us a big fat monthly check that would put food on our table and hay in our horses bellies and would mean that all my horses would be living outside all winter because really Socks wasn’t mine anyway.

  “Fine.” I sighed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Putting the stalls up took a lot longer than I thought it would. Jordan came over every afternoon to help my dad and they banged around in the barn for hours. I mostly stayed out of the way. It wasn’t like they needed my help and besides, I had a show to get ready for. But it turned out that Socks was already ready. I schooled him lightly but everything that I needed was there just waiting for me to ask him for it and it was such a change from riding my other horses that I almost felt bored when I rode him.

  Looking for a challenge and maybe a little adrenaline rush, I decided to take Arion out for a trail ride.

  “Can I come with you?” Faith asked.

  Her mom had just dropped her off and when she saw me getting Arion tacked up and asked where I was going to ride, I had stupidly told her.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Please?” she begged. “Macaroni and I will be good, I promise.”

  “Let me think about it,” I said.

  I thought of all the things that could go wrong. Riding out on the road was nothing like going on a trail ride back at Fox Run where you were in the woods and there was no traffic. If Fai
th fell off, Macaroni would probably gallop down the road until he met a car and I had nightmares about that sort of thing as it was.

  “Of course she’ll take you,” Dad said, glaring at me.

  He was in the corner of the barn working on the stalls. They were coming together nicely and I was still hoping that the two empty ones would go to my horses and for that to happen I had to stay on my father's good side.

  “Fine,” I said. “You can come but you have to wear your vest. Okay?”

  “But it's all bulky and uncomfortable,” Faith said, wrinkling her nose.

  I knew what she meant. The vests that protected your spine and all your vital organs from being crushed if you took a hard fall weren’t exactly the most comfortable things in the world. They were hot and tended to pinch in all the wrong places but like helmets, sometimes they were a necessary evil and sometime they might even save you from ending up in a wheelchair.

  “Emily is right,” Dad said. “You are riding out on the road. You need to wear your vest.”

  “All right,” Faith said looking gloomy.

  But I knew that she wouldn’t disobey my father and she wanted to come with me more than she didn’t want to wear the vest.

  “You’d better make sure nothing happens to that kid,” Dad said under his breath as Faith went out to catch Macaroni.

  “You were the one who told her she could come,” I said.

  But I knew that if anything happened to Faith, it was going to be my fault. Perhaps craving adrenaline wasn’t such a good thing after all.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I was starting to wish that I’d tacked up Bluebird. He was safe on the trail and out on the roads. I knew that he would never do anything silly to hurt me and would be a good influence for Macaroni. Arion, on the other hand, would be nothing but a bad influence. He was already excited just going down the drive and away from the farm. He jigged at the walk and acted all spooky and silly at a bush that he’d already seen about ten times before. He shied to the right and bumped into Macaroni who pinned his ears and kicked out, narrowly missing my gray horse’s leg.

  “Maybe you should be wearing a vest too,” Faith said, looking all smug.

  “Maybe,” I replied, hating the fact that she was right.

  I didn’t feel safe up there at all but if Arion was going to be a well-rounded horse he was going to have to get used to things like this. Show life was one thing but I couldn’t just have a horse that only went in the ring. He’d got used to the trails at Fox Run and he’d just have to get used to the trails here.

  Luckily the grass verge was wide enough that we could comfortably ride our horses side by side. I kept Macaroni next to the hedge and we were next to the traffic just in case. Not that there was any. Our road eventually ended in a dead end and so there were never very many cars on it, for which I was very grateful.

  “Wasn’t that the way we went when we did the hunter pace?” Faith asked, pointing to a vague trail that went off over the fields.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think so.”

  “Can we maybe go on it a little bit?” Faith asked.

  “All right,” I said as I heard a car in the distance.

  I still wasn’t that keen for Arion to meet a car, especially if it was one of those that zoomed past with no regard for horses at all and might even honk the horn just to see our horses freak out.

  “Let’s get off the road,” I said.

  We turned our horses onto the muddy track. It had rained and the ground was wet and sloshy. I was sure that we were trespassing on private property. I remembered having to get permission from the various farmers and landowners when we’d ridden in the hunter pace but now I couldn’t even remember who they were. Whoever they were they probably wouldn’t be too happy to find two girls riding all over their grass and messing it up. But as a car sped past behind us, I was just happy to be off the road and if that meant dealing with an angry farmer then at least it was better than dealing with an angry driver behind the wheel of a steel death trap that could easily kill us and our horses.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Do you miss Fox Run?” Faith asked as we walked along.

  Arion was being really good. His ears were pricked and his head was high as he took in his new surroundings but for now he didn’t feel like he was going to do anything stupid. Macaroni just plodded along with his head down. In fact he was the one who was being a good babysitter for my horse. Go figure.

  “No, I don’t miss it,” I said.

  “Not even a little bit?” She pressed me to admit my feelings. Sneaky little kid.

  “Fine, yes I miss it a little bit but not a whole bunch. I mean sure I miss the barn and the rings and having loads of places to ride and the fact that everything was all nice and fancy. But now we have our own place and we can make it whatever we want. I think I hadn’t realized it but it was time for us to branch out on our own. Missy just gave us the push that we needed.”

  Faith was quiet for a minute.

  “I think you are right,” she finally said. “And I like the fact that there aren’t a million people here all the time. Fox Run was getting too crowded. The last time I tried to school over the jumps, some other kid yelled at me that she was using them, even though I was out there first. She tried to jump them at the same time as me and we nearly crashed.”

  “You should have told my father,” I said. “He won’t stand for that kind of thing.”

  “I know,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter now.”

  But I felt bad for Faith, knowing that whoever the other kid was, they thought they were better than Faith because they had a hundred thousand dollar pony and she had a mismatched cheap one. Never mind the fact that Faith’s pony could out jump nearly every pony that was back at Fox Run. She’d proved it at the last show that we’d been too. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, her position natural, her hands relaxed and her legs hanging down below Macaroni’s stomach. Dad was right. She was outgrowing him and whereas I would probably always be able to ride Bluebird because he was almost a small horse, Macaroni was just a little pony and there was no way that Faith would stay small enough to ride him forever.

  “So what have you asked Santa for?” I asked her, hoping that she would say a bigger pony.

  “I can’t tell you,” she said. “Otherwise I won’t get it.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said.

  But if she was anything like me, which she was, I knew that she would never ask for a new pony because she would be stubborn enough to believe that she could ride the one that she had forever. To her he wasn’t just a pony, he was her best friend and she loved him just like I loved Bluebird.

  CHAPTER TEN

  We rode up a small hill and then down again. At the bottom there was a stream and on the other side there were some cows.

  “Should we cross it?” Faith asked.

  “We’d better not,” I said as Arion snorted at the cows in the distance like maybe they were some kind of horse eating monsters. Macaroni just looked at them and then at Arion like he was crazy.

  “We don’t want to get into trouble,” I said.

  “Why would we get into trouble?” Faith asked.

  “Well what if the cows stampede or something?” I said.

  “Do cows do that?” She looked at me like I was some kind of paranoid old person.

  “Let's just follow the stream for a while on this side,” I said. “Want to trot?”

  And I kicked Arion into a trot before she could answer just so that I didn’t have to answer any more of her questions. I liked Faith a lot but her incessant chatter could be kind of exhausting.

  We trotted until we reached a hedge with a gate that was open.

  “Do we go through?” Faith asked but I already had.

  On the other side was a wide expanse of woods and a winding trail that led through them.

  “I think this was where we rode through for part of the hunter pace,” I said as Arion stood there snorting at the dark wo
ods. “I think I remember riding through here.”

  We may have ridden through there once upon a time but now we were spoiled. These woods were claustrophobic and damp. They were nothing like the Fox Run woods that were open and inviting. They looked like they had all kinds of dangers lurking within them and I wasn’t too keen to go in, even though Faith was.

  “Maybe another day,” I told her.

  “You’re no fun,” she said, sounding huffy.

  “You’re lucky I brought you at all,” I told her. “We can’t explore everywhere on our first trail ride.”

  “I suppose,” she said but I could tell she was kind of mad that I wouldn't let her go in there.

  The kid had no fear and sometimes that was a good thing but at other times it wasn’t so much. Bad feelings tended to keep you out of places that were dangerous, like dark woods.

  “Did you have a good ride?” Dad asked as we walked our horses back down the drive.

  “Emily wouldn’t let me canter,” Faith moaned as she jumped off Macaroni. “And she wouldn’t let me go into the woods.”

  “The woods?” Dad asked.

  “There is sort of a partial trail. We went on it back at Sand Hill when we put on a hunter pace,” I said, still sitting on Arion.

  “A hunter pace?” Dad said. “That sounds like fun.”

  “It was,” I said. “But those woods are creepy. The trees are really close together and it is damp and kind of dangerous.”

  “Well it’s a good job you didn’t go in them then,” Dad said.

  Faith looked at the ground, her face red. I think she thought that maybe my father would take her side but she should have known that he was always on the side of safety first.

  “I think I’m going to take Arion into the ring and jump a few fences,” I said.

  After all, he hadn’t exactly had much of a workout on our impromptu trail ride and other than snorting at the cows, he’d actually been a very good boy.