Show Horse by Bonnie Bryant Read Free Book Online Page B

Stevie, and Lisa continued cantering, Max gave his full attention to Veronica’s stirrups.
    Stevie found this exercise a breeze. Topside was an extremely well-trained horse. He’d belonged to Dorothy DeSoto and had ridden in many, many horse shows. He automatically maintained an even pace at any gait because he’d been so thoroughly trained to do so. Stevie thought she could be doing this in her sleep.
    Carole was having a wonderful time, too. When she’d first gotten Starlight, she’d known that he was a young horse who hadn’t finished his training. She’d spent hundreds of hours since his arrival last Christmas working on the basics. It was important to have a horse who responded to your commands, especially if you expected to go far with the horse. Carole definitely expected to go far with Starlight, starting at the Briarwood Horse Show.
    The only problem Carole was having, in fact, was with Lisa. Every time she looked at Lisa, she grew more concerned. It was bad enough that Lisa had trouble with Prancer when they were working on maintaining a smooth gait, but it got a lot worse when they started to practice jumping.
    Prancer could jump all right. The problem was, Prancer couldn’t wait to strut her stuff. Lisa was asking her to go over some very low jumps, mostly two or two and a half feet high. The height of the jumps wasn’t meant to be a challenge to the horses. The jumps were simply part of the exercise of hunter-jumping competition, which showed the judges how a horse could maintain a smooth gait even while jumping.
    Prancer, however, was interested in the height of the jumps. Without any signal from Lisa, she took off way too far in front of the two-foot-high jumps. She fairly flew into the air, soaring over the low jump. Lisa was as unprepared for the landing as she had been for the takeoff. She had to grab on to Prancer’s mane just to keep from falling off. While Lisa was startled at first, the feeling of flight was simply exhilarating. The fact that her horse wasn’t doing just what she ought to be doing seemed insignificant compared to Prancer’s incredible strength. Lisa sighed happily after the first jump and couldn’t wait until the second.
    “Lisa!” Max cried out.
    “Isn’t she something?” Lisa asked, grinning proudly.
    “Well, I think she needs a little bit more work,” Max stammered.
    “Oh, of course she needs more work, but she’s so wonderful! All her great qualities are going to come out in competition, don’t you think?”
    Max waited a few minutes before answering the question. “Maybe,” he said finally. “Just maybe.”
    Carole and Stevie exchanged glances. Theycouldn’t believe how oblivious Lisa was to Prancer’s need for more training.
    During the next half hour, Max took the group through the rest of the skills he thought they would need to work on before going to Briarwood. Since all of his riders had extensive training in grooming, he wasn’t at all concerned about the Fitting and Showing class. He was, however, a little worried about Equitation and spent most of his time working on that.
    Lisa listened to everything he said, and she tried to do everything he told her. With every word, though, she was convinced that the reason he was giving her more advice than he was giving her friends was that he believed Prancer was going to win, and he wanted the others to know how hard she had worked for it.
    Lisa was still on cloud nine when she took Prancer back to her stall for her final grooming of the day. It was also Lisa’s final chance to practice grooming for the show. She wanted to make her horse look perfect.
    Stevie finished grooming Topside before her friends were done. She went to Starlight’s stall to give Carole a hand with Starlight—and to talk.
    “We’ve got to do something,” she said.
    Carole didn’t need to ask what she was talking about. The problem was Prancer. She was a wonderful horse, but she wasn’t ready for a horse show and Lisa seemed