Stable Manners

by Bonnie Bryant

  He smiled weakly. Then he stood up. “Back to the drawing board,” he said. “Now get out of here. I’ve got a lot of work to do. And so do you.”

  The girls shared a feeling that was hard to describe when they left Max’s office. They felt awful because they knew they’d let Max down—and Colonel Hanson, too. They felt worried because they knew there were just a few days until the Know-Down and there was a lot to learn from the study sheets that they hadn’t learned from the question-and-answer pages and they all wanted to do very well. And there was another feeling, too. They all felt relieved because they knew that, hard as it was, and as much trouble as they were causing, they felt better being honest about what had happened.

  Carole and her father walked behind Lisa and Stevie. Nobody was talking. There was too much thinking going on. It took Carole only a minute to pick up her backpack from the locker area and she met her father in the car. She pulled the door closed and prepared for a long drive home.

  Colonel Hanson started up the engine and the journey began.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” Carole said. “I didn’t mean to do it. I just didn’t think—”

  “I know you didn’t think.” The irritation was clear in his voice.

  “I really am sorry,” she repeated.

  “I know you are, honey,” he said more softly. “I know you didn’t mean to do it. I always knew you didn’t mean to. Almost, anyway. At first, I wasn’t sure.”

  Always?

  “You knew?”

  “Sure, I did,” he said. “From the moment I saw that the papers had been moved on my desk.”

  “And you didn’t say anything?”

  “What was I going to say? It was up to you to say something, not me. I knew you would, too.”

  “You did?”

  “Of course I did. You’re my daughter. You know right from wrong. Sometimes it might take you a while to figure out which is which, but I knew you’d come through.”

  Carole was simply stunned. Then another thought occurred to her.

  “Did you think we were cheating?” she asked.

  “I knew what you were up to,” he said. “You broke the rules the moment you decided to take papers off my desk. The fact that you didn’t know how much you were cheating is just a question of degree. What I was always sure of was that you’d come clean—only I didn’t know when.”

  Carole didn’t know what to say. Her father seemed to have an infinite capacity to surprise her. It made her love him all the more.

  “Thanks, Dad,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For trusting me when I didn’t deserve it.”

  He took her hand and squeezed it. “That’s what dads are for,” he said.

  They rode the rest of the way home without talking. Carole mulled over all the events of the day. She’d learned a lot. Mostly, like Lisa, she’d learned that learning itself could involve a lot more than just studying hard. Some lessons were tougher than others. Today had been full of those.

  “WHAT ARE THE five major internal parasites?” Carole asked Stevie. The three girls were sitting on bales of hay in the feed room, trying, once again, to make up for lost time.

  Stevie grimaced. “Why do you always ask me that question? It’s so disgusting to even think about those things.”

  “It’s even more disgusting if you’re a horse infested with them,” Carole said. “Then you’d really want your owner to know.”

  “All right. Here goes: botflies, bloodworms, pinworms, intestinal worms, and stomach worms. But don’t ask me how you know when your horse has them. It’s more than I can handle.”

  “I won’t,” Carole promised. “That’s what I’m going to ask Lisa.”

  Lisa was ready. “For botflies, you can spot the eggs on the horse’s coat. For the other ones, major symptoms are weight loss, a potbelly, lethargy, tail rubbing, diarrhea, and coughing. But I agree with Stevie. Those things are just disgusting and the best way to cope with them is not to get them at all.”

  “How do you do that?” Carole asked. It wasn’t an idle question. It was the next set of information on the sheet.

  “Mainly cleanliness. If there isn’t a lot of manure around, then the parasites can’t breed and you break their life cycle. Also, have horses, especially young ones, eat from a manger that isn’t on the ground where parasites breed. Keep the feed areas dry and the horses clean.”

  “Very good,” said Carole. “But don’t forget to have the horses checked and wormed regularly by a vet.”

  “Can we move on to something nicer?” Stevie asked.

  Carole nodded. “Let’s talk about equitation.” She and Cam had been talking about it last night. She wanted to be sure to cover the subject with her friends, too.

  Stevie sighed with relief as they continued their work.

  The Saddle Club had been working very hard over the last few days to be sure they would know as much as possible at the Know-Down tomorrow. Stevie had talked to Phil the night before and it was clear that he’d been studying, too. He’d managed to drop a couple of rather obscure facts on her, like the place where the first three-day event was ever held in England (Badminton). Stevie’s first reaction had been to wonder why anybody cared. Her second reaction was to wonder what other obscure information Phil might have mastered that would be just the thing to put him over the top in the Know-Down. The result of that was that she now knew that the three-day event had taken place in 1949. What she still hadn’t figured out was who cared.

  “Name the parts of a hoof visible on the underside of a shod hoof,” Carole said to Lisa.

  “The sole, the frog, and I think there’s something else, but I can’t remember what it is.”

  “Stevie?”

  “The bars.”

  “The bars, the bars, the bars. Sole, frog, and bars,” Lisa said, trying to recite the names so she’d remember them forever—or at least until tomorrow afternoon. She needed a memory trick. Stevie had one for her.

  “I’ve got it. Remember that you want to stay out of the bar that serves filet of sole and frog legs,” Stevie suggested. “It’s not a place you want to go to while your horse is getting new shoes.”

  “I think that’s longer and more complicated than remembering sole, frog, and bars.”

  “Whatever,” Stevie said.

  The girls continued working until they each thought facts would be floating out of their ears. Finally when their minds were fully stuffed with everything there was to know about horses, they all went home.

  It didn’t stop there, though. Stevie spent the rest of the afternoon and evening trying desperately to memorize every obscure fact Phil might know that she didn’t. Lisa worked on everything she thought Stevie and Carole already knew because they’d been riding so much longer than she had. And Carole tried to master everything she thought was most important for a good rider, trainer, breeder, and vet to know.

  That night Carole called Cam. She always enjoyed talking about horses and she always liked talking with Cam. Talking about horses with Cam was a great combination. Together, they went over some of the study sheets. Carole tested Cam and then Cam tested Carole. Carole thought they both did pretty well. It was a nice thought that helped her fall asleep easily.

  WHEN CAROLE WOKE up the next morning, it took a minute for her to remember why she had butterflies in her stomach. Then it came to her. This was The Day. It was the Know-Down, but it was also the day that Cam was coming to Horse Wise. They had talked a lot—including last night—but the last time she had seen him was when they’d competed against one another at a horse show and now they would be competing in the Know-Down. That wasn’t what was on her mind about him, though. What she was really thinking about was what a nice boy he was, how great he was with horses, and how good-looking, too. No wonder she had butterflies in her stomach!

  Carole hopped out of bed, washed up, tidied her room, and got dressed quickly. Since she hoped to be able to ride with Cam after Horse Wise, she put on her riding cloth
es. She took an extra amount of time with her hair. She wanted to look her best.

  Carole and her father arrived at Pine Hollow right before Cam’s mother dropped him off. Carole felt a delightful little tingle when she saw him. She admitted to herself that she’d been nervous about meeting him face-to-face again, but once he arrived, she knew there wasn’t anything to be nervous about. She was glad he was there. He was going to enjoy the day as much as she was.

  Stevie was waiting for Phil to arrive. She waved cheerfully at Cam and Carole and then Carole took Cam on a tour of the stable.

  “I’ve been studying those sheets you mailed me,” Cam said as they walked around. “I hope I’ll do okay.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Carole assured him. “You know so much more than I do anyway.”

  “You think so?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “It seems to me that you know a lot more than I do, not the other way around.”

  Carole hadn’t expected that at all. She smiled with pleasure, then said politely, “Well, what matters is to know enough to take good care of the horses.” They both agreed on that.

  In another part of the stable, Stevie was quizzing Phil. “What Olympics inspired the first three-day event in England?” she asked.

  He grinned at her. There was a twinkle in his eye. “I want you to know that I know the answer to that. But I’m not going to tell you because I think you don’t know the answer and you’re just trying to worm it out of me so you’ll know, too.”

  Stevie was in a quandary. She did know the answer. But maybe Phil didn’t know it and he was just trying to get her to tell him. Then she started laughing. The possibility that Max would ask such a silly question was just about zero. She continued with the game.

  “Of course I know,” she said. “But you’re not going to get me to do your work.” She looked at him and smiled brightly. One of the things Stevie liked the very most about Phil was that they understood a lot of things about each other without having to explain. Teasing each other was lots of fun.

  Stevie took Phil’s hand. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go to the tack room where we can talk a little bit. I think you could use some brushing up on the three main types of coughing in horses.”

  “Oh, wow,” Phil said. “I can hardly wait. Then can we do external parasites?”

  “Definitely!”

  In another part of the stable, Lisa was by herself. She’d seen Phil and Cam and she’d said hello. Both Carole and Stevie had invited her to come be with them and she knew they’d meant it, but she also knew it was a good time for Stevie and Carole to be with their boyfriends. Besides, she had something she wanted to do. She wanted to visit with the mare. She’d been so busy studying for the Know-Down that she’d almost forgotten the mare who she’d thought was going to have her foal two weeks before. Lisa shook her head. How little she seemed to know!

  The mare raised her head anxiously when Lisa approached. She laid her ears back and then flicked them up again. Her tail swished. She was anxious, just the same way she had been two weeks ago. Lisa held her hand out in greeting. The mare ignored it. That was odd. A horse used to being around people usually wanted to sniff an offered hand, particularly if there was any reason to think that hand might hold some sugar or a carrot.

  “It’s okay, girl,” Lisa told the mare. “I don’t have anything for you anyway.” She reached to pat the horse on her neck.

  The mare stepped back from the pat.

  Lisa looked at her watch. It was five minutes to ten. The Horse Wise meeting was about to start. She said good-bye and left the mare, who seemed as uninterested in Lisa’s departure as she had been in her arrival.

  “HORSE WISE, COME to order!”

  There was a rustle of excitement and then quiet. Max welcomed everybody to the open meeting and then asked all the members to introduce themselves to the visitors. Three other Horse Wise members had invited friends to come to the meeting, so there were almost thirty young riders in the room.

  Max explained the rules of the Know-Down.

  “There are a lot of different ways you can do this, but here’s how we’re going to do it. I’ve made you into teams. There are seven teams of four members. I’ve tried to balance the teams so that they will all be relatively equal in riding experience.”

  That meant that he’d split up The Saddle Club. The girls knew it and were disappointed, but it was sort of a compliment. It meant that Max knew they had a lot of experience and he was pretty sure that they’d been working extra hard to do well to make up for causing him trouble, and he thought that if they were one team it wouldn’t be fair to others. When Max named the teams, they learned that Stevie and Phil were on one team, Carole and Cam were on another, and Lisa was on a team with May. May seemed so happy about that that Lisa couldn’t be upset about the fact that she’d been separated from her best friends. Each team had been named after one of the stable’s horses. Carole’s team was “Barq,” Stevie’s was “Topside,” and Lisa’s was “Comanche.” Within the team, each player was assigned a number and the questions would go from team to team, number by number, so that the number one Barq player would answer a question, then the number one Topside player, then the number one Comanche player, and so on. When all the number ones had answered a question, it would be the number twos’ turns. It seemed complicated, but Lisa was pretty sure she’d get the hang of it.

  “All right, here we go,” Max announced. “As I explained to most of you earlier, each question has an assigned value. You get to choose the level of difficulty—from one to four. If you get it right, you get it all right. If you get any of it wrong, you get it all wrong and the next person up will finish the question, having the benefit of knowing what was right and what was wrong about your answer. The disadvantage there is that the next person has to answer the level of difficulty chosen by the person who got it wrong. Everything clear?” The riders nodded. “Are you ready?”

  “Ready!” they called out.

  The Know-Down began.

  Most of the riders wanted to start with pretty easy questions.

  “What is a ‘hand’?”

  “Four inches.”

  “What side of the horse do you generally mount and dismount on?”

  “Left.”

  “How do you change diagonals at a rising trot?”

  “Sit two beats.”

  Then it was Stevie’s turn. She decided to try for more and asked for a three-pointer.

  “Where is the Spanish riding school?”

  This was a trick question. If it had been a one-point question, it was possible that the answer might be Spain, but as a three-point question, it couldn’t be an easy answer. Stevie scrunched her eyebrows in thought. Then it came to her.

  “Austria,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Max.

  “Nice,” said Phil, and he clapped her on the back. Stevie actually blushed. Lisa saw it. She looked around to see if anybody else noticed. Nobody else seemed to. There was, however, an odd look on one person’s face and that was Veronica’s. The look was confusion. That was not an emotion Veronica usually either had or showed. Lisa wondered what she was confused about. She didn’t have time to wonder for long, though, because it was her turn.

  “Two points, please,” she said, feeling bold.

  “What steps should be taken to prevent tetanus?”

  “Vaccination,” she said. Then she paused. Was there something else? The question asked for “steps,” not “step.” She decided it needed more answer than she’d given. “There are a lot of things you can do to minimize exposure to tetanus, like cleaning stalls and the stable area, but wherever there are horses, there is tetanus, so horses should be vaccinated regularly, beginning at three or four months of age. Mares should be vaccinated before foaling so that the babies have immunity from her when they are born and any horse who gets a puncture wound should be vaccinated with an antitoxin. In addition, all riders and anybody who works around horses should be immunized regularly. Is that en
ough answer?”

  There was a moment of quiet. Lisa wondered what she’d done wrong. It turned out she hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “It’s enough answer,” Max assured her. “In fact, I think it was a four-point answer to a two-point question, so that’s what I’m going to give you. Nice work, Lisa. And anyone else can earn extra points that way, too.”

  Lisa’s teammates gave her high fives.

  The next person up was Veronica. “Two points,” she said. That made sense. Veronica was pretty smart about horses. She shouldn’t begin with a one-point question.

  “What should be your first action if your horse refuses his feed and appears dull and listless?” Max asked.

  Lisa thought that was an easy question and should have been a one-pointer. If a rider suspected a horse was ill—and those were certainly signs of illness—the first thing to do was to check the horse’s temperature.

  “Call the vet,” Veronica said. Lisa stifled a snicker. Veronica thought everything having to do with horses, except the actual riding, was something she had to get somebody else to do. Naturally, she would call the vet.

  “Wrong,” Max said. The question went to someone else who answered it correctly.

  Then it was Cam’s turn. He asked for a two-pointer as well.

  “What are three places for feeling a horse’s pulse?”

  “Under and inside of the jawbone; in the cheek—that’s above and behind the eye; and on the inside of the foreleg, by the knee.”

  “Good,” Max said.

  Phil then also asked for a two-point question.

  “On a double rein, what are the two reins called and what’s the difference between them?”

  Phil had to think for a minute. “The bridoon and the bit reins. The bridoon is wider and longer.”

  “Good,” said Max. He was smiling, obviously pleased that his riders and their guests had worked so hard and learned so much.

  “You know, I have to say something. You all have obviously been working very hard and you’re probably sitting there thinking that it’s wonderful that you’re doing well in this Know-Down, but the fact is, what you’ve worked on over these last two weeks isn’t just for the Know-Down; it’s for the horses and it’s for life. Good job.”