Riding Class (5 page)

“Good!” Lisa said. She wanted to try this herself. “How many of us are in this stall?” she asked him.

“Four,” Toby said.

“Oh, no.” Lisa felt unreasonably disappointed. “Three, Toby. You, me, and Sam.”

Toby grinned. “You’re wrong,” he told her. “You, me, Sam, and Duchess. Four.”

“You’re right. I forgot Duchess,” said Lisa, grinning back.

“I’m right, I’m right,” Toby chanted happily.

S
TEVIE
’
S RIDER WAS
a ten-year-old girl named Claire. She was developmentally disabled, like Toby, and she was blind. Her horse stood on cross-ties in the aisle. Emily had P.C. on the cross-ties just behind Claire’s horse. Stevie greeted Emily and then got to work.

“Just watch for now,” Wendy, another volunteer, said to Stevie. Claire couldn’t reach very high, but her horse was small and she could groom most of it herself. To Stevie’s surprise, Claire knew exactly what to do. She knew where the grooming bucket was kept on the shelf, she knew all of the grooming tools by feel, and she knew where and how to
use them on the horse. Claire kept both hands on the horse’s side.

“Tell Stevie why you keep both hands on the horse,” Wendy instructed.

“So I can feel the dirt, and so I can tell when the horse moves. I don’t want to get stepped on.”

“I don’t want you to get stepped on, either,” Wendy said. “What do we do if the horse moves?”

Claire laughed. “We dance with the horse! Stevie, we just dance with the horse.”

“But no aerobics,” Emily cut in from the back.

“Ballroom dancing,” Stevie agreed. “Do you do a waltz, Claire? One-two-three, one-two-three—” Stevie could remember when Lisa had had to take ballroom dancing.

“A fox-trot,” Emily supplied. Emily and Stevie cracked up.

“Hey, Emily,” Claire said, “what’s P.C. stand for today?”

“Peanut-butter Cookie.”

D
URING THE LESSON
, The Saddle Club didn’t do much except walk beside the horses, paying close attention. The experienced volunteers led the horses and made sure the riders didn’t fall off, but the riders held the reins and told the horses which direction and how fast to go. Most of the lesson was at a walk, and most of the time was spent playing what The Saddle Club thought of as games.

First the riders walked their horses around a series of cones on the ground. Then they walked them over ground poles while standing up in their stirrups. They leaned forward in the saddle and touched their toes. They touched different parts of the horses’ bodies. They threw soft foam-rubber balls at a basketball hoop. Finally, toward the end of the half-hour lesson, the instructor, Pat, had them trot one at a time.

“That’s it, keep going, sit up!” she called as Toby bounced his way down the long side of the arena, the volunteers running alongside. “Fan
tas
tic, Toby!”

Stevie raised an eyebrow at Carole. Toby was grinning from ear to ear, but Stevie didn’t think there was much about that trot that was fan
tas
tic. Carole raised her eyebrow back in seeming agreement.

“Your turn, Joshua!” Joshua seemed to be waiting for the command, because he quickly cued his horse to trot. He sat up straight, the reins looping from his hands. Stevie nodded. Joshua’s trot was better. But still, his reins were too loose, his heels weren’t really down … Stevie knew that if she’d ever looked like this, even when she was just starting out, Max would’ve told her to correct about eight hundred different things. “Good job! Try to keep your heels down next time,” was all Pat said. Stevie wondered if this was really riding.

“Claire, how brave do you feel today?” Pat asked the little girl.

Claire looked toward Pat’s voice. “Pretty brave,” she said cautiously.

“Brave enough to trot?”

Claire’s eyes widened. “Maybe,” she whispered.

“What do you think, Claire? Is today the day?” Pat asked.

“Stevie!” Claire yelled.

Stevie jumped, startled. “I’m right here,” she told Claire.

“Can you stand by my horse, too?” Claire asked in a quieter voice.

“Sure.” Stevie moved closer to Claire’s horse.

“Okay,” Pat said, “you’ve got four people around your horse. You’re not going to fall off. Are you going to go for it?
Ba-da-da-dum-ta-dum!
” Pat made a trumpet sound. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Claire’s first trot.”

“Okay.” Claire took a deep breath and urged her horse into a trot. She held on to the pommel of the saddle and bounced. Stevie remembered how awkward riding at a trot felt before she learned to sit to it properly.

“Just relax,” Stevie told Claire. “You’re doing great.”

When Claire stopped her horse at the end of the arena, her whole face was lit with a triumphant joy. She leaned forward to hug her horse. “I did it!” she cried.

“Yeah, Claire!” Pat and all the volunteers cheered. “Fantastic!” This time Stevie agreed.

She and Lisa and Carole stood in the middle of the arena while the riders dismounted and led their horses to the stable. “That was really neat,” Lisa said. “I was … I don’t know, I was beginning to think that this wasn’t like riding, but seeing Claire trot for the first time made me think that it was.”

“Exactly,” Stevie said. “At first I was judging these kids by what
we
could do. But that’s not fair.”

“It takes a lot of guts to trot on a horse you can’t even see,” Carole said. “Particularly if you don’t know what a trot is like. Think about it, guys. Claire can’t see anyone else trot, either, so she really didn’t know what she was getting into. And the games they played did make sense. Don’t you remember when we used to do things like that?”

“Remember?” Lisa laughed. “I still try to touch my toes sometimes. Max showed me how great it is for balance.”

As they walked out of the arena, a man standing by the gate said, “Thanks for helping, girls.”

“You’re welcome,” Carole replied. “Do you know one of the riders?” She hadn’t seen this man volunteering.

“Toby’s my son,” the man replied.

“I helped him get ready,” Lisa said. “He counted all the parts of the horse.”

The man smiled. “That’s because Toby is working on
counting in school right now,” he said. “He has trouble with numbers. We told the instructors here, so they work counting into his riding to help reinforce his schoolwork. He’s more interested in counting horse parts than anything else. Toby’s a pretty big horse fan these days.”

“That’s neat,” Lisa said.

“Riding helped him learn the days of the week, too,” Toby’s father said. “He knows he rides on Mondays, so every day he would ask, ‘Is today Monday?” until he got all the days figured out.’

“How long has he been riding?” Stevie asked.

“Three years.”

The Saddle Club looked at him in dismay. Even Lisa, who had learned to ride last of all of them, had been able to trot and canter after only a few lessons. Toby hadn’t learned much in three years.

“I can see what you’re thinking,” Toby’s father said gently. “Girls, you may not realize what learning is like for someone like Toby. He takes very small steps. He’s made enormous progress here.

“When he first started coming, he was afraid of the horses. He liked the way they looked, but he didn’t want to touch them. Now he grooms them, plays with them—he even holds the reins himself when he rides. A lot of this self-confidence shows up at home and at school, too.

“The best part,” Toby’s father continued, “is that the
horse never judges him. The horse never thinks he’s too slow, and the horse never makes fun of him. He can succeed here on his own terms. For Toby, riding is a secure joy.

“Anyway,” he concluded, “I’ve never seen you here before, so I wanted to be sure to thank you for helping. It means a lot to Toby and me.”

“You’re welcome,” Carole said again. She was immeasurably touched by all that Toby’s father had said. “I didn’t think that we were helping very much, but maybe we were.”

“You certainly were.”

“Whew!” Stevie said, as they walked into the barn. “I guess it was a pretty good lesson!”

T
HE
S
ADDLE
C
LUB
helped the riders untack and put their horses away. Emily was still there and, in fact, was almost tacked up to ride. P.C. had a saddle on.

“Do you have a lesson?” Stevie asked.

“No, I’m just riding,” Emily said. “I’ve got a half hour before the next lesson starts in the ring.”

“Can we watch?” Lisa asked. “My mom isn’t picking us up for another twenty minutes. We’d love to see P.C. in action.”

Emily grinned. “He’s a Pretty Cool horse. Watch this.” She tossed the reins in the air so that they came down over
P.C.’s neck, then unclipped the cross-ties. When P.C. held his head at normal height, his chin came just about to Emily’s shoulder. Emily pulled a crop—a short, mild type of whip—off the grooming shelf and gently stroked P.C.’s cheek with it. P.C. dropped his head to his knees. Emily, leaning against his neck, began to bridle him with both hands.

“When I’m standing up, I can’t lift both my hands in the air and still keep my balance,” Emily explained. “I used to have to ask someone to help me bridle my horse, but when I got P.C., I taught him this.” P.C. held his head down until Emily rubbed his cheek again.

“That is pretty cool,” Stevie said. “I’ve seen horses that were taught to shake hands and do other tricks, but this is the first trick I’ve seen that was actually useful.”

Emily led P.C. into the arena. “Maybe one of you could help me,” she suggested. “Usually I ask Pat to do it.”

“Sure,” said Lisa. “What should we do?”

“Just hold P.C. by the mounting ramp for me. He’s good about standing still, but it takes me a long time to mount and I worry about something spooking him. I could fall between him and the ramp, and I don’t want that to happen.”

“Okay.” Lisa held P.C. while Emily made her slow way up the ramp. At Pine Hollow there was a standard mounting block outside the main ring. It was a wooden cube
about three feet high, with steps on one side. A rider with a horse that was too tall to mount from the ground led the horse to the block, climbed the steps, and got on from there.

Free Rein had a mounting ramp instead of a block. The top of it was the same height as Pine Hollow’s block, and there were steps, with a handrail, on one side, but on the other side a long, shallow ramp led to the top.

“I don’t do steps,” Emily said when she was about halfway up. “I can’t lift my feet very high.”

Finally Emily made it to the top. She took off her leg braces, hooked them and her crutches over the ramp’s top rail, and gathered P.C.’s reins in her hands. She grabbed the saddle with both hands, slid her left foot into the stirrup, then leaned forward and carefully slid her right leg over P.C.’s back. She found her right stirrup and sat up.

“Thanks,” she said. Lisa moved away.

Right from the start, they could see the difference between Emily in the saddle and Emily on the ground. She sat tall and proud, her heels down and her head high. She held the reins with authority. Moving P.C. to the rail of the indoor arena, she asked him to trot, then grabbed his mane and picked up her two-point position, her seat slightly out of the saddle.

“I always do this, to give him a chance to warm up his
back,” she explained. Carole nodded. She always did the same thing.

Emily trotted P.C. in circles and figure eights, then cantered twice around the ring, still in her jumping position. She brought P.C. back to a trot and began to post. Carefully, steadily, she smoothed his trot into a quieter rhythm. Emily’s face was a study of concentration and happiness.

Carole looked at Lisa, who looked at Stevie. Stevie nodded and grinned. “Hey, Emily,” she said. “Would you like to come on a trail ride?”

E
MILY BROUGHT
P.C. to a square halt in the center of the indoor arena. “Do you mean it?” she asked. Her eyes shone and her cheeks turned pink.

“Of course we mean it,” Stevie replied. “There are tons of trails around Pine Hollow. We were talking yesterday about how we wished you’d come out there with us.”

“I’d love to,” Emily said. “I’ve never been on a trail even once. I’ve never been out of a ring. I’d really love to.”

“You’d probably want to bring P.C.,” Carole suggested. “We’ve got a lot of nice horses at Pine Hollow, but still—”

“Oh, I’ll have to take him,” Emily agreed. “Before I got P.C., I used to ride all the different horses here, but now I’d definitely rather ride him than anyone else. Besides, I can’t
not let him go on a trail ride! He’ll enjoy it as much as I will.” Emily thought for a moment. “Free Rein has a horse van, and my mom knows how to drive it—she trailered P.C. here when we bought him. I’m sure we can borrow the trailer, and I’ll get my mom to bring us.”

“We’ll have to ask Max,” Lisa said. “He’s our director, and he always wants to know before we bring someone new over to ride. But he won’t mind. He’s really nice.” Lisa dug a scrap of paper out of her pocket and Carole dug around in her own pocket and handed Lisa a pen. “I’ll write down your phone number and give you all of ours,” Lisa said. “We’ve got a lesson tomorrow. We’ll ask Max then and call you.”