Horse Sense Read Online Free PDF

something a little different,” Max began. “I’m thinking of starting a drill team. This isn’t exactly a tryout, but I want to see howwell each of you can follow the orders and control your horse. Both of those are extremely important for drill work.”
    Lisa’s heart sank. She was sure she didn’t have the knowledge or experience to be able to do this at all. She’d seen drill teams doing their exercises. In fact, she’d seen an exhibition of it on television not long ago. It had looked just about impossible, considering the skill needed for such precision, but it also had looked wonderful. Lisa’s fear was so mixed up with her excitement that she wasn’t sure which she should be feeling. She looked over at Stevie and Carole, paired together on the other side of the ring. The looks on their faces answered the question for her: She should be excited.
    “Listen up!” Max called. “I want a single line, evenly spaced. Get your horses trotting and maintain a trot throughout this exercise.”
    Usually Max didn’t use a riding crop when he was teaching, but today he was strutting around, slapping the riding crop against his leg and the palm of his hand. He looked very stern. It made Lisa more nervous than usual.
    “Up! Down! Up! Down! Pay attention, now, Lisa. You know how to post better than that!” Max yelled as they all started trotting.
    So even when Max was looking like a movie director, he was still paying attention to every single mistake Lisa could make. Her heart sank. If she couldn’tkeep up with his instructions, she’d never make the drill team!
    “Heels down!” Lisa pushed down on her heels as hard as possible. “Much better now, Betsy,” Max continued. “But you must
remember
to keep your heels down.” Lisa realized that she was getting so paranoid that she assumed Max was
always
criticizing her. “Look at Lisa, Betsy,” he said. “She’s got her heels way down. You want yours like that, too.” Lisa smiled to herself.
    Quickly, however, she found that sitting properly on her horse, with her heels down, wasn’t going to be her only problem. The real trick of this exercise was to keep her horse at a dead-even pace—and aligned with all the other horses. If one horse speeded up, its rider had to slow it down, or everyone
else
had to speed up. The most important thing was unison.
    “Now, down to a walk,” Max said. Lisa reined in on Pepper. He seemed only too happy to walk. She patted his neck, rewarding him for keeping up his trot so nicely. “We’ll try this once at a walk, and then we’ll be back trotting,” Max said. Then he described how they were to walk their horses in a figure eight across the center of the ring, alternating sides at the crossing point in the middle of the eight. If they messed up and let more than one horse pass at a time, the figure would be uneven.
    Lisa was sure she’d be the one to mess it up. That made her all the more determined to do it right.
    She was following Betsy Cavanaugh, who still wasn’t sitting properly on her horse, Barq. He couldtell it, too, and was giving her trouble, breaking gait and sort of sidling off course.
    “Look straight ahead, Betsy,” Max said. Betsy turned her head and focused on her lane with determination. In response, her horse got back where she wanted him. But Lisa was still worried; if Betsy lost her concentration, it could make Lisa mess up as well.
    And, of course, it happened. When Betsy got to the cross in the eight, she was so busy looking to her right to see if the other horse was coming that Barq, confused by her different signals, came to a sudden halt. Two horses went past him before she could get him back into gear and across the middle of the eight.
    Lisa wasted no time in making up her mind. She urged Pepper in front of the next horse—Comanche, with Stevie on board—and hurried across after Betsy. Lisa’s maneuver left Stevie groaning at her, since she was all ready to go across the path, but it kept