Racehorse (3 page)

“She’s about the best there is in dressage,” Lisa agreed, “and that’s really good for you.”

Stevie nodded proudly. Dressage was one of the most precise types of riding there was, and it amused both Lisa and Carole that their friend, Stevie, a very imprecise person in most ways, was the best of the three of them at dressage. Somehow, all the joking, all the wildness, all the vague schemes, disappeared from Stevie the minute she was working on her dressage. Max had bought Topside from Dorothy because she’d never be able to ride him in competition again, but he had also bought him so that Stevie would have a really good horse to work with. The Saddle Club suspected he hoped for great things from Stevie someday.

“What were you and Judy discussing about Pepper?” Carole asked. She’d been concerned about Starlight, but not so concerned that she hadn’t noticed Lisa working extra hard on the old gray horse.

“I was just worried that he seemed sort of off his feed. Judy explained that it’s just old age. I figured out that he’s almost twice as old as I am in human years, and in horse years he’s older than my grandmother. Actually, he’s about as old as my great-grandmother would be if she were still alive—and if she were, I don’t think she’d be
carrying riders around on her back. Pepper is really something!”

“Maybe he’s getting too old to be ridden,” Carole said. “It happens, you know.”

“I know,” Lisa said. “Max and I were talking. He said I should ride Comanche and get used to him because Pepper is coming pretty close to retirement.”

“Hard to picture Pepper in a rocking chair,” Stevie mused, leaning back so the waitress could give her her sundae. All three girls heard the woman grunt displeasure looking at the green-and-beige concoction. Stevie smiled beatifically.

The girls dived into their treats as soon as the waitress had gone. There was little talk for a few minutes.

When they heard a familiar voice at the take-out counter, they all looked up. There was Judy Barker, ordering a pint of ice cream to take home.

“Hi, girls!” she greeted them and then she joined them. “Great meeting today, wasn’t it?” she asked.

“It was if you don’t mind news like the horse you love is getting too old to ride,” Lisa said a little more sharply than she had meant to.

“Or if you like the idea of not being able to ride at all for two weeks,” added Carole. “What am I going to do? And even if we can figure out what I’ll do for two weeks, how on earth am I going to survive if Starlight isn’t better by then?”

“I’m sorry, girls,” Judy said. “I was so excited about Dorothy’s visit—remember we were in our beginner riding classes together at Pine Hollow more than twenty years ago—that I wasn’t thinking about your troubles. Anyway, your problems aren’t so impossible.”

“Easy for you to say,” Carole retorted. Then, realizing how sharp it had sounded, she immediately apologized.

“That’s okay,” Judy said. “I do understand. And I also have a suggestion. For you, Lisa, it’s easy. Max wants you to ride Comanche, and I think you two will get along well. Comanche is more spirited than Pepper, but you’re ready for a more spirited horse. I think you’ll like him.” She turned to Carole. “For you, it’s a little different. I could say things like you just have to get used to the fact that horses have medical problems and that’s a fact of life.”

“Oh,” Lisa said. Everybody looked at her.

“What’s the matter?” Stevie asked.

“The word ‘life,’ ” she answered. “It just reminded me that I have a paper to write for school. The subject is ‘Life.’ ”

“Yuck,” Stevie said, and Carole rolled her eyes. But the two of them were more interested in talking about Starlight than Lisa’s paper, so they continued the conversation with Judy.

“I know what you’re saying is true,” Carole said. “It’s
just that I don’t like it. I’d rather ride and tend to a healthy horse than not be able to ride a sick one.”

“Working with sick horses is what I do for a living,” Judy reminded her. “You always seem to enjoy working with me.”

“Oh, I do, but you know what I mean.…” Carole let the thought drift.

“I know what you mean,” Judy said. “And I have a suggestion. Since you can’t ride and you will be tending to one sick horse, why don’t you spend your after-school hours over the next two weeks tending to a lot of sick horses? Why don’t you work with me?”

“Could I?” Carole asked eagerly.

“As long as your father agrees,” Judy told her. “I suspect he will, too, because I talked to him about it on the phone about a half an hour ago, and when I suggested that we might swap your assistance for my care for Starlight, he seemed to like the idea a lot. He said something about getting a moping girl out of his hair.…”

Carole smiled for the first time since she’d found the swelling in Starlight’s knee. That was a real solution. It would give her something concrete to do, and it would also give her a way to allay one of the unspoken problems about Starlight’s knee, and that was the expense of veterinary care. Judy was more than fair with her bills, and her dad would never complain, but the fact was injuries were
expensive. Carole was only too happy to be able to help with that. She put out her hand to shake. Judy took it.

“Deal,” she said.

“Look, I’ll check Starlight every day around three-fifteen—that’s when you get there after school, right?”

Carole nodded.

“Then we’ll leave from there. I promised your father I’d have you home in time for dinner.”

“Terrific! Now all I have to do is convince Dad to serve dinner at ten-thirty!”

Judy laughed at Carole’s joke as she stood up from the table and promised to see her on Monday.

“Well, that takes care of
your
problem,” Lisa said. “Now what about mine?”

“Pepper?” Stevie asked. “I thought the solution is that you’re going to ride Comanche.”

“Not that one,” Lisa said. “Comanche’s a nice horse. I’ll get used to him eventually. No, I mean the problem about my paper. Don’t you think the teacher’s assigned a rather large topic?
Life
?”

“It’s one of those topics where it’s sometimes harder to figure out what you’re going to leave out than what you’re going to include, isn’t it?” Carole observed.

Lisa realized, with a little prick of her conscience, that she might have hit a nerve in Carole. Carole’s mother had died a few years ago, and it was obviously still very vivid. Life and death were issues that Carole had a great
deal of reason to understand better than her friends did. Lisa was sorry she’d raised the subject.

“I don’t think it’s all that complicated,” Stevie said, keeping the topic open. “I think that some of the things that have happened today are issues of life and death. After all, look at how Pepper is getting older, closer to his own death. We’ve been thinking of it from your point of view, but of course, there’s his point of view, too. Wouldn’t that make a nice topic for the paper?”

Lisa smiled and nodded. “Yes, it would,” she said. “I think you’re really on to something and that makes this a red-letter day.”

“How’s that?” Stevie asked.

“I think it’s the first time—and probably the
last
, too—that you’ve ever actually helped
me
with my homework. Thanks.”

She gave Stevie a hug, and then they all set about finishing their ice cream.

J
UDY
B
ARKER
’
S PICKUP
truck bounced along a dirt road that snaked uphill toward a horse farm.

Carole, sitting in the passenger seat, gripped the armrest on the door to keep from bouncing right out of her seat. “Why on earth is this place so hard to reach?” she asked. Her voice sounded funny to her because she was being jostled so much.

Judy smiled. “This is nothing,” she said. “In fact, this place is easy to reach, compared to some of my clients’ places. One of the facts about the life of an equine vet is that we do make house calls—no matter where the house is—and in this case, it’s on the top of a mountain!”

Carole looked out the window and across the Virginia hills at the scenery. The land swept downward, the rich green of the fields in constant motion. A neat white
fence enclosed each of the fields, stretched along the contours of the hillside. It was Carole’s favorite kind of view. Knowing that it was all for the benefit of the horses, she didn’t mind the bouncing so much.

“Who’s our patient here?” she asked.

“It’s a mare, about to foal,” Judy explained. “She’s had trouble before. She even lost her last foal, but this time everything’s going smoothly. I don’t even really need to be here, but the owner wants to be sure we don’t slip. He loves this mare a lot. He was upset about losing the foal, but he was even more worried that something might happen to the mare. He’s a very cautious man. That’s the kind of owner I like best.”

Carole agreed with that completely. Working with Judy had taught her that too many owners waited too long to call the vet. Small problems became big ones when they weren’t attended to in a timely manner.

This was the third day Carole and Judy had been working together. She was having so much fun and learning so much that it almost made up for not being able to ride Starlight. Each day after school, she headed for Pine Hollow, removed Starlight’s bandages and ran water on his leg to stimulate the healing, and then rebandaged it. Carole felt that Starlight missed their daily rides as much as she did, but he also seemed to like the attention he was getting. From a medical point of view, the good news was that the swelling wasn’t getting any worse. Judy felt it
would still be a while before they would see any improvement. So far, she was pleased with what
wasn’t
happening.

The truck took a final bounce and then the road turned up to the left. There were the barns and stable. Judy drew her traveling hospital to a halt, checked her book, handed the mare’s file to Carole, and the two of them stepped out of the truck.

As soon as Carole saw the mare, she knew why the owner cared so much about her. She was a chestnut with a pretty face and a sweet disposition. Fortunately she also had a healthy pregnancy going on, and it took Judy only a few minutes to assure the owner there were no problems developing. Judy told the owner that she would be back in a month, and within a matter of minutes they were again bouncing on the dirt road—this time downhill.

“One of my favorite kind of vet calls,” Judy remarked. “I
love
to visit a healthy horse.”

“Particularly one as sweet as that,” Carole echoed. “So what’s next?”

“A horse of a different color,” Judy said.

That turned out to be an understatement. Their next call was at a breeding stable nearby. The stable’s stallion seemed to be having a problem, and the owner wanted Judy to check him out.

Carole didn’t get to see too much of stallions. Most male riding horses were gelded, which made them unable
to breed but gave them better dispositions and made them calmer and more reliable. Stallions tended to be high-spirited, temperamental, and unpredictable. The stallion they were visiting was all of those things, and then some, because he wasn’t feeling well.

Judy checked him over, being careful of the horse as well as herself. She had him cross-tied at the back of his stall and never let herself get blocked from the doorway. A high-spirited horse, especially one who wasn’t feeling well, could be very dangerous.

Judy wouldn’t let Carole into the stall, but she did let her hold the needle and the vials she used to draw blood. Carole wasn’t sorry to be kept out of the stall. Normally she wasn’t at all afraid of any horse, but in this case she made an exception. It made her think about the fact that a vet was often at risk when working with a horse like that stallion. She was still thinking about it when Judy’s visit was all done and they were on their way to the next call.

“Aren’t you afraid sometimes?” Carole asked as they drove away.

“All the time,” Judy said. “I wouldn’t still be on my feet if I weren’t. The minute I stop being afraid—well, maybe ‘alert to danger’ is a better term than ‘afraid,’—is the minute I’ll be in real trouble. Horses are big animals. They are bigger than I am, that’s for sure. I have to respect that. Of course, the thing I never do is let the horse
know I’m afraid. That’s even more trouble than not being afraid. You know how competitive horses are. They are always trying to get the upper hand.”

Carole knew that was true. Horses seemed to have a way of sensing people’s fear and taking advantage of it. Their natural competitiveness made them constantly sensitive to vulnerability in others, even people. It was a quality Carole loved and admired in horses. She also respected it.

“Speaking of horses that are competitive, our next stop is going to be a change of pace for you. Most of my clients have regular riding horses, jumpers, show horses, and hunters. This one is different. He’s got racehorses.”

“Thoroughbreds?” Carole asked.

“Very,” Judy said.

Horse breeds were interesting to Carole. Each different breed was known for different characteristics. Arabians, for instance, were known for their beauty and endurance. Quarter horses were famous for their bursts of speed in short sprints. The “quarter” in their name referred to quarter miles, which was about as long as they could race flat out. Standardbreds trotted fast; Morgans were both strong and fast. Draught horses, like the famous Clydesdales, were incredibly big and strong. No breed, however, was better known, or more admired, than Thoroughbreds. These were the horses of racetracks. Many horses used for routine riding, jumping, showing, and
hunting, were also Thoroughbreds, or had Thoroughbred blood in their family trees, but the best and the fastest of them were the most valuable and went to the racetracks to run for money.