When we arrived at the show grounds, Squib was so excited to be somewhere new that he literally launched himself off the truck ramp, tearing the rope from my hands. Fortunately when he landed he was so overcome that he stopped to look around, and Katy quickly grabbed him, laughing cheerfully at his antics. I hurried down the ramp behind him, nursing my rope-burned hand, and tied him to the side of the truck, where he spun around and whinnied loudly.
To make matters worse, we’d parked only a few vehicles down the row from Donna, who was standing behind her float with her hands on her hips, looking at Squib with a disparaging expression. She took two steps towards me, and I hurried back up the ramp to help Katy unload the rest of the ponies. By the time I was leading Fossick down the ramp, Donna had disappeared again, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Deb was amazing. Whenever I’d been to a show before, I’d had to try and organise myself, and I never really knew what I was doing. As a result, I’d been eliminated before I’d even started more than once, and was usually either stupidly early or really late for my classes. But Deb had a whiteboard on the wall of the truck that she wrote the names of all the ponies on, with their class numbers and approximate start times. She’d gone over to the office first thing to put my late entry in, and when I was once again dressed in Katy’s borrowed riding clothes, and she led Squib up to me with his mane and tail as white as snow, his hooves painted black and his socks so blindingly clean that I could hardly stand to look at them, I almost couldn’t believe that this was my pony. With his borrowed martingale, jumping boots and saddle blanket, which Deb had shoved at me and insisted I used, the only thing letting the side down was the Wintec saddle, but once I was sitting in it, nobody would even notice that.
“He looks amazing,” I gasped as Deb gave me a leg-up into the saddle.
“He’ll look even better when he gets some proper muscle,” Katy told me as she tightened Fossick’s girth. “Once we get rid of that ugly muscle on the underside of his neck and get some real power over his hindquarters, he’ll be a completely different shape. And then you’ll really have a show jumping powerhouse.”
“I’m not sure I need any more power than I already have,” I replied as we rode towards the ring, side by side. “It’s hard enough keeping up with him as it is.”
“That’s just because he’s green, mostly. And he gets so overexcited about jumping. Once he gets more used to it, he’ll settle down and become more rideable. Besides, what a problem to have – your pony’s too talented. Poor you!”
Deb held the ponies while we walked the course for the first class. Katy had scoffed and insisted she didn’t need to walk such a baby course, but Deb had told her to go with me, so she’d reluctantly complied.
“That’s the first jump there,” I said, pointing towards the yellow and white oxer with the jump number 1 next to it. “Then the blue and white.”
I started strolling towards the second jump, but Katy pulled me up.
“Where are you going?”
“To the second jump.”
“You haven’t walked the first one.”
I looked at her, confused. “I know where it is – right there.”
A slow smile crept over Katy’s face. “Yeah, but you have to actually walk to it. Haven’t you done a course walk before?”
“Um…”
“Okay. First we find the start flags. Which are about three strides away from the first fence, so that’s easy.” Katy walked towards the yellow oxer, and I hurried to catch up. She strode purposefully towards the jump, walking right up to the middle of the pole and then turning her head towards the second fence.
“Look for your second jump from here.” She raised an arm to point towards it, then walked around the other side of the jump and stood with her back up against the back rail. She took one long stride, then four normal steps, counting as she went. “One two three four. Two two three four. Three two three four.”
I copied her as we walked the slightly bending line towards fence two. “Six strides, nice and easy. Now, where’s three?”
As we walked back through the finish flags, Katy stopped and reviewed the whole course. “One - the yellow oxer, six bending strides to two, the blue vertical. Go left around the wall to the green oxer, five strides to the planks, then it’s a right turn to the two-stride double, and that’s short and starts with an oxer so make sure you sit up and hold him…”
I’d never felt so prepared in my life as I did when I rode into the ring for that round. Deb had helped me warm up over the practice jump, starting with a cross bar and building it up to a vertical, then moving on to the oxer. Jumping and making a smooth turn in either direction, halting Squib when he got too strong.
“Don’t be afraid to do that in the ring,” she advised me. “I mean, not right in front of a jump or you’ll confuse your pony, but if you need to stop or circle, do it. If he’s on the wrong leg, bring him back to trot and fix it, don’t let him skid around the corner on the wrong lead or he won’t be balanced enough to make a good jump. This is a schooling round, we just want him to go around steadily and under control.”
It wasn’t easy, and Squib got a bit strong, but I only had to circle him twice. Once was coming towards the double, when he saw it and accelerated, but after I made him trot a circle and then cantered back towards the combination, he jumped through neatly. Although every time we circled it counted as a refusal, we didn’t knock any fences down, and I came out of the ring feeling like we’d made a real go of it.
Deb congratulated me on my good riding, and Katy high-fived me on her way into the ring on Fossick. I walked Squib back and forth along the edge of the ring, watching Katy ride. Fossick was excited too, but much more controlled than Squib, and Katy jumped an easy clear round. She didn’t get to rest on her laurels for long though, because as soon as she was out of the ring on Fossick she was swapping onto Forbes, and warming him up. I took Squib back to the truck and unsaddled him and left him with a haynet before going back to watch Katy ride again.
She got both ponies into the jump off, and I was holding Forbes while she got Fossick ready when Donna walked up to me.
“I see you’ve made friends in high places.”
I looked over at her. “Yeah, they’ve been really helpful.”
She scanned me from head to foot, and I knew she was taking note of the fact I was wearing someone else’s clothes.
“I see they finally got you to put a martingale on that pony of yours. I have been telling you that for months, you know.”
Yelling at me to tie that damn pony’s head down and get it under control isn’t quite the same as explaining why I should use a piece of tack and letting me experiment with it, I wanted to tell her, but I bit my tongue. Donna had a lot of influence in the Pony Club, and I needed the grazing that they supplied. It was the cheapest around by a long shot, and I couldn’t afford to make her mad, as much as I wanted to give her a piece of my mind.
Then Deb came over, and Donna turned into sweetness and light, thanking her for taking me under her wing, and saying how marvellous it is to have her helping out at grass roots level.
“I wouldn’t call AJ ‘grass roots’,” Deb said calmly. “She’s a very competent rider, and has been a great help to Katy, getting all her ponies worked this weekend. She’s got the makings of a super groom too, now that she’s learning the tricks of the trade.”
I flushed with pride under her praise, and watched Donna quickly backtrack and agree that I was doing very well with a difficult pony and (in hushed breath) “limited family support.”
“Well, we’re not all lucky enough to have parents who have the time and money to invest in the sport,” Deb replied. “My parents didn’t know the first thing about horses, so I learned it all the hard way and just absorbed information like a sponge from everyone I met. Katy’s had it a bit easier, but ponies like this keep her honest,” she added, motioning to Fossick bucking her way around the corner in the jump-off. Katy had to use all her skill to get her straight to the planks, but she managed it somehow and Fossick jumped cleanly over before galloping to the last and clearing it easily to notch up the winning time.
“First again,” Katy said with satisfaction later that morning as she rode back to the truck on Robin, her feet dangling from the placid pony’s stirrups. “Not that there’s much competition out there, and Robin could jump that course with his eyes closed.”
“Behave yourself,” her mother scolded as Katy jumped to the ground and pulled the red ribbon off Robin’s neck.
It fluttered to the ground at the foot of the ramp, and I slid down and picked it up, running the red satin through my fingers. I’d never won first place at a show in my life, but to Katy it was nothing. She tied Robin to the truck and loosened his girth, then ran up his stirrups and removed his bridle.
“Right, Mr Plod. You can stand here and go to sleep for a while until the Championship starts. Who’s on next?”
“Forbes in the metre,” Deb told her. “Squib too. But you’ve got time for a sandwich first, if you want one.”
“Yeah, okay.” Katy climbed the ramp into the truck and walked through into the accommodation, flopping down on the sofa and stretching her long legs out in front of her. “Ham and cheese, and some of that pickle spread if we’ve got any left.”
“I think you ate it all at Hawera last weekend.”
Katy pulled a face at her. “You should’ve said, we could’ve restocked.”
“Oh well, you’ll live. AJ, are you hungry?”
The course for the metre class wasn’t as straight-forward as the ninety, and had a one-stride double, which I’d never attempted before on Squib.
“Take a hold coming into it, you’ll be fine,” Katy assured me. “Just don’t let him run at it, or he’ll probably try and take it as a spread! Just sit up, lots of half-halting on the way to it, then let him do his job.”
It sounded easy, but it wasn’t. The rest of the course had disappeared behind us with relative ease, and I hadn’t even had to circle him yet, but when we came to the double Squib took hold and tried to rush towards it. I did my best to steady him up, but he fought against me, and it was suddenly too late to turn away and circle. I let him go, hoping for the best. He flung himself into the air over the first, jumping it much bigger than he needed to, and landed way out. I put my leg on and he took one stride, but we ended up much closer to the second fence than we’d planned. Squib baulked in astonishment, and I thought he was going to refuse. Good job, AJ, now you’ve made your brave pony have a refusal. Squib had never in his life refused before, and my heart sank. But Squib wasn’t going down without a fight. He sank back onto his hindquarters, then launched himself into the air, trying to clear the jump. Unfortunately, he had enough height but not the width, and he landed in the middle of the wide oxer. The poles crashed down around us and Squib stumbled, pitching me forward onto his neck. I lost a stirrup and clung tight as he scrambled through the falling poles, eventually regaining his balance. I was still swinging around his neck, and totally fed up with my inept riding, he threw a huge buck and sent me flying onto the ground.
Katy’s head appeared in the doorway of the ambulance, and she looked at me in concern.
“You okay?”
I nodded as the paramedic strapped my aching wrist. “Just a sprain.”
“No more riding today though,” the medic insisted, and Deb nodded.
“I think we’re done for the day. Never mind,” she said, patting me on the shoulder sympathetically, and I tried not to wince, knowing I would have a decent bruise there by tonight.
“Is Squib okay?” I asked Katy.
“Yeah, he’s fine. Stuffing himself with hay, none the worse for wear.”
“I feel terrible,” I confessed to her as we walked back towards the truck, finally dismissed by the paramedic. “It was my fault that we crashed.”
“Not really,” she contradicted me. “You tried to tell him to slow down, but he wasn’t listening. Probably should’ve circled though.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought for a second he was going to jump it as a bounce,” Katy grinned. “That would’ve been epic.”
“I just feel bad that he’s ending the day with a bad experience,” I told her as we came in view of my pony, happily munching on hay at the side of their truck. My heart swelled at the sight of him, despite the pain in my arm. It wasn’t his fault that I hadn’t set him up properly.
“I’ll ride him if you want,” Katy offered suddenly.
“Really? You’d want to?”
“Are you kidding? I’d love to. I’ve been dying for a sit on him since I first saw him jump.”
I grinned at her, overwhelmed by her generosity. “That’d be great! I’m sure he’d love that too.”
Later that afternoon, I stood with my arm in a sling and watched as Squib trotted into the ring for the metre-five speed class.
“Last to go, Katy O’Reilly and Squirrel Nutkin,” the announcer said, and rang the bell to start.
Katy sat down in the saddle and Squib leapt into his bounding canter. I’d never seen him being ridden by anyone else before, except when we’d first gone to look at him before he was mine, and I was overcome with pride as my gorgeous pony cantered through the start flags and leapt over the first jump, clearing it with masses of air.
I laughed. “He jumped that one huge!”
Deb looked at me with a smile. “He always does that.”
“Does he really?”
I knew that he jumped high, but I’d never realised until now just how much energy and power Squib put into jumping. He was even more impressive from the ground than he was from the saddle, and I grinned as Katy rode a clear round. She even made it neatly through the one-stride double, carefully holding him back all the way from the turn so that his stride was shorter and more contained all the way to the jumps. He jumped neatly over the first, took one stride, then she let him go and he exploded over the second, clearing it by miles.
I laughed again. “He’s so ridiculous.”
“He’s amazing,” Deb said. “You’ve got yourself one hell of a pony right there.”
Even though Katy hadn’t been riding for time, there weren’t many entries in the class, and Squib was the only one who jumped a clear round, so he ended up winning. I couldn’t believe it as I watched Katy canter the lap of the ring, laughing at Squib as he tried to get his head down so he could buck. The red ribbon looked glorious against his dark grey coat, but as proud as I was of my pony’s efforts, I couldn’t help feeling a bit jealous. Katy won so effortlessly – she’d literally won every class she’d entered today, including a purple sash for taking out the Show Hunter Championship on Robin – but she didn’t seem to care much about the ribbons.
That afternoon as the ponies were being prepared for the trip home, Katy was in the truck counting up the prize money.
“Eighty-five bucks,” she declared. “Not bad for entries that cost less than half that. Oh, here.”
She handed me a small brown envelope, and I looked at it in confusion. 1.05m Pony 1st was scrawled on the front in blue ballpoint, and I realised that it was Squib’s winnings.
“I can’t take that.”
“You paid the entry.”
“Yeah, but you won the class. Plus you brought me here and had Squib overnight, and he’s already eaten his weight in hay since he got to your place yesterday.” I shoved the envelope back at her. “Seriously. Keep it.”
Katy shrugged. “Okay. A hundred and five bucks. Even better.”
I reached into my pocket then, and pulled out the red ribbon I’d removed from Squib’s neck. “Oh, and here. You should have this too.”
Katy looked at it in surprise. “I don’t want it.”
“But you won it.” I laid it on top of the pile of red ribbons sitting in the truck.
“I’m about to take all these back to the office,” Katy told me. “Ribbons are expensive, and when we come to little shows like this we often donate them back to the club. Especially ones like this,” she added, tugging at the tasselled end of the purple sash Robin had won. “They’ll only end up in a box under my bed otherwise.” She grabbed up the ribbons in her fist and started down the ramp, and I spoke before I could stop myself.
“In that case, give us Squib’s one back. It’s the first time he ever won anything, I might as well keep it for posterity.”
Katy held the fistful out to me, and I grabbed one of the red ribbons and pulled it free from her hand. I had no idea if it was the one he’d actually won, but it was good enough. I shoved it back into my pocket, the whole situation feeling weirdly anticlimactic.