Flame and the Rebel Riders (15 page)

“But we have a contract,” Ginty spluttered. “I’m in charge of Flame’s training…it’s always been my plan to bring him on slowly.”

“Oh, really?” Cassandra said. “You told me that he’d be ready to compete in the North Island Championships. That’s just two weeks away, and this horse appears to be getting worse, not better.”

“We’ve had some setbacks,” Ginty stammered. “My…my head groom left and—”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Ginty,” Cassandra said dismissively, “I don’t want excuses. I want results. Anyway, I don’t see why you’re so bothered. It’s only one horse. You’ll hardly miss him. I don’t need to remind you that I have at least another twenty horses still stabled with you, so unless you want all of them to be moved immediately I don’t think there should be any talk about my contractual obligations, do you? I’ve made up my
mind. I’m giving Flame to Avery. Just to see what sort of a job he does with him. Perhaps I’ve had all my eggs in one basket for too long.”

As Cassandra walked away from the horse truck, Ginty managed to keep a pleasant smile fixed on her face, but the moment the millionairess was out of sight, she rounded on Avery like a vicious pitbull.

“Very clever,” she growled at Tom, “manouevring your way in like that with Cassandra, trying to ruin my business.”

“I’m not doing this to spite you, Ginty,” Avery replied coolly, “I’m doing this for the good of the horse. Not that I expect you to understand that concept.”

“Well, good luck to you and your rebel riders!” Ginty snarled as she handed him Flame’s lead rope. “You’ll have your hands full with that can of pet food!”

“She’s got a point,” Issie said as she walked back with Avery, leading Flame to his horse truck. “Maybe we are out of our depth. Cassandra said she’s expecting Flame to compete in two weeks at the North Island show, but it’s impossible to have him ready in time. You haven’t seen what Flame is like in the show ring. Last time he completely demolished half the jumps!”

“It’s a tight deadline,” Avery admitted, “but I wouldn’t have agreed to it if I didn’t think we could do it. This horse is the son of Brilliant Fire, Isadora. Look at his conformation — the strength in those haunches and hocks, the athletic slope of his shoulder. It’s his birthright, it’s in his blood. That amazing jump is inside him somewhere. All we need to do is convince him.”

Beside them, Flame raised his head up high and looked around the showgrounds. His eyes widened and his nostrils flared as he let out a shrill whinny. It was a clarion call, the kind that a stallion makes when he is preparing to fight, and Issie suddenly found herself having to grip tightly to Flame’s halter to hold on to the gelding.

“Easy, Flame,” Issie said, trying to calm the big chestnut horse. “Not today, but soon, I promise. We’ll come back and we’ll show them what you can really do.” She turned to her instructor. “When do we start?”

Avery smiled. “How about straight away?”

All the way home, Avery questioned Issie about Flame. He insisted that Issie go into great detail describing the rapping sessions. He also wanted to know everything about the horse’s care at Dulmoth Park — from the feed and tack that Ginty used to the studs that Flame wore in his shoes when he jumped.

“I don’t see why you need to know all of this,” Issie said at one point.

“If we’re going to fix Flame, then I need to know what broke him in the first place,” Avery said matter-of-factly.

By the time they had arrived at Winterflood Farm, Avery was fully briefed and ready to hit the ground running.

“Normally I’d give a new horse a day to settle and let him loose in the paddock to get used to the place,” Avery told Issie as they unloaded Flame from the horse truck. “But time is a luxury we don’t have. We need to get this horse working and thinking positively again straight away.”

He handed Issie the lead rope. “Take him over to the first loose box in the stables and put on the old Pessoa jumping saddle that’s in the tack room — it should fit him nicely.”

“What about a bridle?” Issie asked. She had only just realised that they didn’t have the Dutch gag. “We left all of Flame’s gear with Ginty.”

“It’s all right,” Avery said. “We won’t be using the gag bit. You put on the saddle. I need to unearth a rather special piece of equipment that I haven’t used for quite some time.”

Flame was intrigued by his new surroundings and held his head high, sniffing at the air, but he was reassured by the sound of Issie’s voice and stood still as she tacked him up. She had the Pessoa saddle on Flame’s back with the girth done up and was busy adjusting the stirrups to her length when Avery returned to the loose
box. In his hands he held what looked like a bridle. But this wasn’t like any bridle that Issie had seen before — there was no bit!

“Have you ever ridden in a hackamore?” Avery asked her. Issie looked at the strange contraption and shook her head. “What is it?”

“It’s a bitless bridle,” Avery reached up and slipped off Flame’s halter and put the contraption over the horse’s head.

Issie felt the knot of nerves in her tummy tighten as she watched Avery adjusting the noseband and the reins. “You mean there’s no bit at all?” she asked. It was hard enough to stop Flame when he had the powerful Dutch gag in his mouth to hold him back — and now Avery was putting a bridle on the horse that seemed to be nothing more than reins and a noseband!

“I don’t get how I’m supposed to keep him under control with nothing,” Issie said. She was trying to trust Avery and not question his methods, but how could she believe that this was going to work?

Avery sensed her reluctance and tried to reassure her. “Don’t be fooled by the lack of metal in the horse’s mouth,” he said. “Hackamores can be very powerful.
This one is a Blair Hackamore. It’s the exact same bridle that I used in the showjumping ring on Starlight.” Starlight was Avery’s former world-class eventing mare. “She was a brilliant jumper in her day,” he continued, “but so strong! She would almost wrench my arms out of their sockets…until I put her in this bridle.”

He had finished doing up the hackamore and led Flame out into the arena next to the stables, with Issie walking by his side. “Gag bits are all well and good and some horses do need them, but it’s not the solution for Flame’s problem.” Avery gave Issie a leg-up on to Flame’s back. “It’s no use getting into a tug of war with this horse, because he’s much stronger than you. He could throw you across the arena with his head if he wanted to, so you have to convince him in other, smarter ways to do what you want.”

Issie nodded. “So what do you want me to do?”

“Take a couple of laps to warm him up at a trot so he can get used to the feel of the hackamore,” Avery told her, “and then I want you to ride him over this small fence here in the middle of the arena exactly the same way that you’ve been riding him over the jumps when you train with Ginty.”

As she rode around the arena, Issie had to admit that the hackamore certainly seemed to exert control over the horse. She only needed to put the lightest pressure on the reins and Flame would slow down or halt. After a couple of laps, he was trotting quite nicely and Issie turned down the centre of the arena to face the jump.

As soon as Flame caught sight of the fence and realised what was about to happen, his attitude totally changed. He began to canter up and down on the spot, crab-stepping and holding his head high in the air just as he always did when he faced a jump at Ginty’s.

With the hackamore on him, Issie was able to hold Flame back and keep him contained tightly, but she was wrestling with him until the last very minute when she could see the stride ahead of her. At that moment she suddenly dropped the reins, letting Flame go, and the horse shot forward like a skyrocket and flew the fence.

“Good boy, Flame!” Issie was smiling as she brought Flame back to Avery. But there was a dark frown on her instructor’s face and he was anxiously raking his brown curly hair back off his face with both hands, as if something was bothering him intensely. Issie knew that things were very, very wrong.

“So this is how Ginty has been training you to jump him then?” Avery shook his head in disgust. “Well, it’s worse than I thought. She’s ruined a perfectly good horse and we’re going to have to start right at the beginning.”

Issie’s face fell. She knew that Flame was behaving badly, but up until now she had been convinced that the problems could mostly be blamed on him. It was clear that Avery didn’t see it that way at all.

“Let me ask you this,” he said to Issie, “when you turn him round to face the jump and he begins to crab-step like that, what do you think is going through his head?”

Issie frowned. “I suppose he’s over-excited? He’s dying to jump…”

Avery groaned. “Showjumping riders often say that their horses
love to jump.
They think that’s why their mounts pull like mad, canter on the spot and charge at the fences.” Avery shook his head. “These are not signs that the horse is happy to jump. Quite the opposite. The horse is stressed. The reason he begins to pull and canter sideways like a crab is because he’s having a panic attack about what is to come. And you’re the one that’s causing it!”

“Me?” Issie was taken aback. “What am I doing?”

“Holding him back like a cork in a champagne bottle that’s ready to pop!” Avery said. “I know, I know, that’s the way that Ginty has trained you to jump him. That’s how all her riders do it, holding their horse back until they can ‘see the stride’. It’s disastrous and it makes the horses panic.”

Issie thought back to her first day at Ginty’s stables. Avery was right. She had never ridden like that before with tightened reins, holding the horse back, until Ginty had forced her to do it. She had become accustomed to Ginty’s techniques — even though she knew all along in her heart that they were wrong.

“So how do we fix it?” she asked.

“We go right back to the beginning,” Avery said. He walked over towards the jump in the middle of the arena that Issie had just taken Flame over a moment before and began dismantling it, taking away the poles and the jump stands. “We have to unlearn his panic behaviour.”

“Unlearn?”

“That’s right,” Avery smiled at her. “Flame needs basic retraining to erase all that nonsense that Ginty has put into his head.”

Avery had been lugging away the posts and rails of the showjump piece by piece as he spoke. He finally moved the last jump stand away from the middle of the arena so that there was nothing left except a single painted pole lying on the ground.

Avery rolled the pole and arranged it into position. “Get him settled into a rhythmic, active trot and then when he’s ready, bring him over the pole.”

“A pole?” Issie screwed up her face. “You want me to trot him over a pole?”

“What’s the problem?” Avery asked sarcastically. “Do you think it’s a bit much for you to handle?”

“Tom!” Issie argued. “In two weeks’ time I’m going to be riding Flame at the North Island show. The jumps are going to be a metre twenty! I don’t see what good trotting over a lousy pole is supposed to do.”

“I tell you what,” Avery replied, “if you can you trot him perfectly over the pole with no fuss and no rushing, I’ll raise the bar immediately to one metre twenty. OK?”

“Sure,” Issie agreed. This was ridiculous! Flame could trot over the pole easily!

As it turned out, the pole was far more of a challenge than Issie ever thought it would be. The very first time
she turned Flame to face it he completely freaked, tried to charge at the pole and leapt about a metre high over it as if he were jumping in the World Cup! It took Issie a whole lap of the arena to settle him down again afterwards.

“You see?” Avery said. “It’s not the size of the fence that rattles him. It’s the very idea of jumping. It’s like the chicken and the egg. He panics because he’s held back, and he’s held back because he’s panicking.” Avery looked at Flame’s legs. “Ginty would have made the situation worse when she started using the capsaicin. For horses who are confident, established jumpers, capsaicin might encourage them to pick up their feet a little more carefully. But for a horse like Flame who is green and terrified by the whole prospect of jumping, putting capsaicin on his legs is utterly cruel. He associates painted poles with pain. Just the sight of them makes him scared.”

Issie nodded. “OK, so you’re right. It’s back to square one. So what do we do now?”

“The next time you approach the pole, I want you to keep Flame on a loose rein. In fact, hold the rein all the way back at the buckle. Do you think you can do that?”

Issie boggled at this. “I don’t think so. He’s going to bolt.”

Avery disagreed. “He won’t bolt. If you keep your body position entirely still and don’t change a single thing then he should stay calm. Try it.”

As Issie rode Flame at a trot around the arena, she focused hard on doing nothing at all, staying perfectly still and letting the chestnut gelding relax on a loose rein. As soon as she turned to face the jump, though, Flame began to speed up.

“Stay perfectly still! Don’t change your position!” Avery shouted at her. But it was too late. Flame was already in a mad gallop heading for the pole on the ground and Issie was snatching back her reins.

“I told you to stay still!” Avery shouted afterwards.

“I did stay still!” Issie yelled back.

“You moved,” Avery said. “You leant forward and you snatched at the reins. Try it again, but this time, do it at a walk.”

Issie couldn’t believe she had been reduced to this. Flame was supposed to be a world-class jumper, and her training instruction was to make him walk over a pole on the ground! But she could understand Avery’s
methods now. They would not be raising the rail to one metre twenty today. Instead, she would have to take things slow with this horse. Flame had to unlearn all the problems that Ginty had created.

“Steady, Flame,” she cooed to the big chestnut as she walked him back towards the pole on the ground. She was trying to keep her position utterly immobile as she asked him to keep his rhythm and step over the pole without a fuss. This time, Flame relaxed, kept a steady stride and stepped over the pole. Success! Issie was suddenly quite pleased with herself — even though all she’d done was walk over a pole!