Horse Care

Lisa collapsed flat on the ground on her stomach, squeezing her eyes shut tight as she waited for the shooting pains to subside again. What was she going to do? She was in a strange forest, far from any traveled trail, in the middle of a rainstorm. She couldn’t walk, and even if she could, she wouldn’t know which way to go. She buried her face in her uninjured arm and started to cry.

She was sobbing so loudly that she almost didn’t hear the sound coming from directly above her. A soft, tentative sound, almost lost in the pounding of the rain and the whistling of the wind through the treetops. A familiar sound. Lisa stopped crying. Could it be?

Gathering all her strength, she rolled onto her side and looked up. A pair of large, soft brown eyes stared back at her. Then the sound came again: a whuffling nicker.

“Tiny!” Lisa cried to the horse. “You came back!”

L
ISA
A
TWOOD GLANCED
at her watch as she hurried up the driveway of Pine Hollow Stables. “Rats,” she snapped, even though there was no one around to hear her. She broke into a jog.

When she reached the main stable building, she swung open one of the big double doors and went inside. Then she glanced at her watch again. She wasn’t going to be late for her Pony Club meeting. That was a relief. She hated being late, even for appointments she set for herself. And today she had planned to spend some time with Prancer, the mare she usually rode, before her Pony Club meeting. Why had her mother chosen this morning—right before Horse Wise—to break her rotten news?

“At least it’s not a mounted meeting,” Lisa muttered under her breath as she rounded the corner into the
U
-shaped stable aisle.

Horse Wise, Pine Hollow’s Pony Club, met every Saturday morning. The meetings alternated between mounted and unmounted sessions. At the mounted meetings, the students practiced their riding and learned new skills. At the unmounted meetings, they learned about all aspects of horse care, from grooming to veterinary care to stable management. Today’s meeting was an unmounted one, which meant that Lisa didn’t have to tack up Prancer, which meant that she still had a few free minutes before she had to head to the indoor ring.

When Lisa reached Prancer’s stall, the tall, elegant-looking Thoroughbred was munching quietly on a mouthful of hay. When she saw Lisa, she pricked her ears forward and let out a snort.

“Hey there, girl,” Lisa whispered, reaching over the half door of the stall to stroke the horse’s glossy neck. Just seeing Prancer made her feel a little calmer. She let herself into the stall and went about giving the horse a quick grooming.

A few minutes later she reluctantly said good-bye to Prancer. “Sorry to groom and run,” she told the horse with a final pat. “I’ll make up for it after the meeting. I promise.”

Lisa left the stall and went to find her two best friends.
She found them exactly where she expected to find them—in the stalls of their own horses.

Carole Hanson was spreading fresh straw on the floor of a large box stall while her horse, Starlight, waited patiently in cross-ties in the aisle. Stevie Lake was letting herself out of the stall next to Starlight’s. Stevie’s horse, a lively mare named Belle, was nibbling at her owner’s sleeve as if to hold her back.

“Stop it, Belle,” Stevie said, giggling, as she pushed the horse’s head away and swung the half door closed. “I already told you, you big goofball. You can’t come to the unmounted meeting. Not even if you sit in the back and keep quiet.”

Despite being distracted by her own worries, Lisa couldn’t help smiling at the image of Belle sitting on a bench in the indoor ring, listening to a lecture on horse-manship. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “Maybe if you put one of those fake-nose-and-glasses disguises on her, Max might think she was just a visiting student from another stable.” Max Regnery was the owner and manager of Pine Hollow, as well as the girls’ riding instructor. He definitely was
not
the type of person who would fail to notice if a horse showed up where it wasn’t supposed to be, disguise or no disguise.

Stevie looked up. “Hi, Lisa. Hey, that’s not a bad idea,” she said with a grin. “Come to think of it, I have one of those disguises in my cubby.”

Carole rolled her eyes. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Stevie’s sense of humor was legendary. She loved to play pranks and practical jokes of all kinds.

Carole and Lisa weren’t nearly as mischievous as Stevie most of the time. But that hadn’t stopped the three of them from becoming best friends and forming The Saddle Club. The group had only two rules: Members had to be horse-crazy, and they had to be willing to help each other out however and whenever help was needed. Sometimes the girls’ different personalities meant they provided different kinds of help. Stevie was always ready to suggest impulsive solutions to problems. Lisa usually had sensible, well-thought-out ideas. And Carole, the horse-craziest of the three girls, almost always managed to involve horses somehow.

“Come on, let’s get to the meeting,” Carole said, glancing at her watch. “I want to get a good seat.”

“Do you know what it’s about?” Stevie asked, latching Belle’s stall door.

“Max didn’t say last week.” Carole led Starlight back into his stall. Then she leaned out to add, “But a little bird told me Judy’s coming to speak.”

Judy Barker was a local vet who took care of the Pine Hollow horses. Carole sometimes volunteered after school as her assistant, accompanying her on her rounds of the area’s stables and farms.

“Did she tell you the topic?” Stevie asked, reaching
into Belle’s stall to tickle the mare playfully in her favorite spot.

Carole shrugged as she emerged from Starlight’s stall and closed the door. “No,” she said. “She says it’s a surprise. But she promised it would be interesting.”

“Maybe I should have asked Phil to come this week,” Stevie mused. Horse Wise members were allowed to bring guests to unmounted meetings, and Stevie sometimes invited her boyfriend, Phil Marsten, who lived about ten miles away and rode at a different stable. “That reminds me,” she said with a sudden frown. “I was all set to beg Max to make a special exception so that Phil could come to next week’s mounted meeting. But before I could come up with a good story, Phil told me he can’t make it.” She shrugged, looking annoyed. “Something about his sister’s birthday party.”

“What a silly excuse,” Carole said jokingly. But she could understand why Stevie was disappointed. Max had already announced that he would spend next week’s Horse Wise meeting working with the more advanced older riders on the pirouette, a challenging dressage move, while the younger riders worked with Red O’Malley, Pine Hollow’s head stable hand and a great rider and teacher in his own right. All three members of The Saddle Club were excited about improving their pirouettes, in which the horse must complete a full circle with its front hooves while keeping its back hooves in
one spot. Stevie was the most excited of all. She was very interested in dressage and loved to practice it. “And how inconsiderate of his sister,” Carole went on. “What nerve, being born on the same day as a Horse Wise meeting.”

Stevie was still looking grumpy, but she couldn’t help laughing. “Ha,” she said. “Very funny.”

Carole winked at Lisa, then turned back to Stevie. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Once Phil hears you’re working on a pirouette at the walk, he’ll find a way to work on it himself and do it at the canter. Just to make sure your relationship stays interesting.”

Stevie grinned. She and Phil were both very competitive, a trait that had almost ruined their relationship more than once. But by now they had learned not to take things so seriously—most of the time, anyway. “Very funny,” Stevie said again, sticking out her tongue at Carole. “You don’t know what it’s like. Just wait until you have a boyfriend. A very busy boyfriend who never has time for you.”

Carole laughed. She could tell Stevie was joking. “Hey, no problem,” she said. “As long as what he’s busy with most of the time is horses, I’ll be satisfied.” She glanced over at Lisa for support, but Lisa was staring blankly at Starlight.

Stevie noticed, too. “Uh, Lisa?” she said. “Earth to Lisa! Come in, Lisa!”

Lisa blinked, then glanced at her friends. “Oh!” she
said. “Sorry about that. When you mentioned next week’s meeting, I guess I kind of spaced out.” She took a deep breath. “You see, I just found out I won’t be able to make it.”

“What!” Stevie exclaimed, knocking over Belle’s grooming bucket. She hardly noticed when the brushes and rags and currycombs scattered across the floor. “What do you mean, you can’t make it?” Such a thing was unheard of. Nothing short of a major vacation or serious illness kept a member of The Saddle Club away from Pine Hollow on a Saturday morning.