Read Online Riding Class by Bonnie Bryant - Free Book Online

to deal with her,” she said. “I’m glad you figured her out so quickly.”
    “There’s a moron in every crowd,” Emily said. “Unfortunately, I’m used to it.”
    “Unfortunately,” Lisa agreed, “we’re used to Veronica. Come on! Let’s have lunch!”

T HE S ADDLE C LUB and Emily had a pleasant lunch on the hillside behind the stables. Samson and some of the other horses played in the pasture below. “This is so nice,” said Emily, stretching out on the grass. “I wish we had this much space at Free Rein. I’d love to ride outdoors all the time.”
    “Me too,” Lisa said. “I’m grateful for the indoor arena when the weather is bad, but I’d much rather be outside.”
    “When I’m jumping indoors,” Stevie confided, “I always feel like I’m going to hit my head on the ceiling!”
    The others laughed. “The ceiling must be forty feetabove your head!” Carole teased her. “You couldn’t hit it if you grew wings!”
    “I know,” Stevie said, grinning apologetically, “but that’s how I always feel.”
    T HEY MADE A POINT of getting back to Max’s office early so that Emily could find a seat in a chair instead of having to sit on the floor for the Horse Wise meeting. The room became crowded early. Most of the riders chattered excitedly about Max’s surprise, and he didn’t disappoint them.
    Toot-to-da-doo!
Max blew on a hunting horn as he came in the door.
Toot-to-da-doo!
He strode to the front of the room and unrolled a small paper banner. It read in black marker: THE FIRST ANNUAL MAX REGNERY JUNIOR HANDY HUNTER TRAIL COMPETITION ! The riders read it in silence. Then Lisa raised her hand.
    “I understand ‘First Annual Max Regnery,’ ” she said. “That’s obvious. Same with ‘Trail’ and ‘Competition.’ And I understand ‘Junior,’ that’s any rider under eighteen. A ‘Hunter’ is a horse that jumps low fences with good style, the way a foxhunting horse should. But what’s a ‘handy’?”
    Max grinned. “Anyone have a guess?” he asked.
    Carole thought hard. “A horse that’s really listening to its rider is said to be
in hand
,” she said. “Is that sort of what it means?”
    Max nodded. “That’s right. Handy hunter classes aren’tseen very often in horse shows these days, but they used to be quite popular. They usually involved a course of fences, like a regular hunter course, but with some special instructions—for example, sometimes you had to trot over a fence instead of ride it at a canter, or halt and back up a few strides before continuing. Then there would be special obstacles, too—you might have to open a gate from horseback, ride through it, and close it again. You might have to ride your horse through water or over a bridge. The emphasis was on a horse that obeyed his rider at all times, under any circumstance, the way a true hunter should.”
    “And that’s what we’re going to do?” asked Stevie.
    “Sort of,” Max said. “I’ve changed the concept a little, because I wanted to have a single competition that would be fair to all of you. Some of you younger kids haven’t been jumping very long, for example, and it’s really not fair to put you up against, say, Carole and Starlight.”
    Carole smiled softly with pride. The younger kids looked glad that they wouldn’t be jumping against Carole, and Veronica looked annoyed that Carole had been mentioned instead of her.
    “But all of you should be able to get your horses to obey you,” Max continued. “That’s the first rule of riding, the first thing you start to learn—how to make your horse listen, and make it glad to do what you want. I don’t mean tosay that obedience is easy to come by, but it’s something all of you should be working on all of the time.
    “So here are the rules,” he said, putting down his banner and picking up a notepad. “First, this is a trail competition, because I thought that would be fun. You’ll start off one at a time, like in a cross-country