Starlight Christmas (5 page)

“Oh, definitely,” Elaine said. “And you deserve it anyway. After all, you’re a
much
better rider that Carole.”

“Really?” Veronica purred.

“Of course you are,” Elaine replied. “After all, you have your own horse. Everybody’s always a better rider on her own horse. You’re one of the best!”

“Yes, I guess you’re right,” Veronica said.

Stevie clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle the laughter that threatened to explode out of her. Next to her, Lisa’s face was bright red, deepening to beet-colored. Lisa began to rise. Stevie knew what her friend was going to do. Lisa was going to tell Veronica diAngelo exactly what she thought of her, and of her dumb club, and of her nasty pranks, and of her stupid admirers.

The last thing Stevie wanted was to let Veronica know that they knew exactly what she was up to. With an effort, she swallowed her laughter and yanked at Lisa’s sleeve. When Lisa glared at her, Stevie shook her head vigorously. She put her finger over her mouth. Lisa eased herself back onto the straw.

“We’ll have to get here early, won’t we?” Diana asked.

“Yes, but not too early. You only have to walk the horses out the nearest door, there, and free them. That’s it. You don’t want to be seen by anybody, understand?”

“Definitely,” Elaine agreed. “I don’t want anybody to see that.”

“All right, then, it’s settled,” Veronica said. Both Stevie and Lisa could hear the triumph in her voice. “Now, let’s go to the tack room. I’ll show you where Garnet’s saddle is kept so that when you come for class on Tuesday, you can soap it and saddle up my horse for me.”

Stevie and Lisa heard the clumping noise of three pairs of booted feet going to the tack room. The girls were gone.

“I can’t believe it!” Lisa said indignantly, rising up out of the straw.

Stevie stood up as well. “You mean you think that a dirty, nasty, rotten, low-down trick like that is beneath Veronica?”

Lisa couldn’t help giggling. “No, of course not. Nothing is beneath her. She’s lower than a worm. But
this sets a new record. So why wouldn’t you let me tell her off?”

“Well,” Stevie said, handing Lisa the brush she’d dropped in the straw and resuming brushing Pepper, “how about: Forewarned is forearmed? Victory is mine—I mean, ours!”

“What are you talking about?” Lisa asked.

“See, now we know what Veronica has in mind. If we told her we knew, she’d find something else to do, and it wouldn’t be any nicer than what we overheard. But now we know exactly what she wants to do, so we can think up a plan to fix her. I’m not sure yet what it is, but it’ll be good. And I can promise you that it will not only wreck her plot to keep us off the Starlight Ride, but it will also somehow cleverly manage to keep
her
off it, instead!”

“Stevie, I love the way your mind works!” Lisa said, truly admiring her friend.

“Me, too,” Stevie said. “I’m always glad that I’m on my own team!”

J
UDY
B
ARKER PUT
her blue pickup truck in reverse and backed out of the Pine Hollow driveway. Carole sat proudly in the seat beside her. Somehow, she felt very tall in that seat. Maybe it was because the pickup was old and built high up off the ground. Or maybe it was because being a vet’s assistant made her feel very tall.

“First stop is a breeder-trainer by the name of Michaels,” Judy said, checking her list. “He’s got a mare that won’t carry a foal. She’s probably got an infection that’ll clear up with some medicine, but until we know what the infection is, we won’t know for sure how to treat it. While we’re there, we’ll be checking a mare who’s due to foal any day now, as well as some horses with sore legs and feet.”

Judy swung the truck out onto the highway and concentrated
on her driving, giving Carole a few minutes to look around her. She’d been in Judy’s truck before, but she’d never taken the time to notice very much.

On the floor, between them, was Judy’s car phone. Everything Judy did was important, but sometimes time was the most important thing. Carole knew that in the case of a horse with a life-threatening illness like colic, sometimes a few minutes could make a difference. Car phones were a great help to somebody like Judy.

Most of Judy’s medical tools were in the back of the pickup, but the cab held racks filled with empty tubes and containers, which were designed to hold lab specimens. A small cooler lay by Carole’s feet. Judy told her that it contained vaccines for injections.

“That keeps the vaccine fresh and keeps the bottles from rattling around and breaking. Actually, though, I usually try to warm medicine to room temperature before I give an injection. The horses are less likely to notice that way.” Carole had watched Judy give injections to the Pine Hollow horses many times. She wished her own doctor gave them as painlessly as Judy did.

Judy pulled the truck up into the stable driveway. Mr. Michaels appeared at the entrance and waved a welcome to Judy. Then he returned to the stable while Judy and Carole got the necessary items from the truck. Judy had a little case, which she used to carry tubes, sample containers, syringes, and medicine for each stop. She assembled
the things she needed and they entered the barn.

Judy introduced Carole to Mr. Michaels. Carole liked him the instant she saw him. He looked like a man who loved horses.

“This old gal’s the one that’s giving me trouble,” he said, pointing to a bay mare.

“Well, let’s see what kind of infection she’s got,” Judy said. She asked Carole to check the horse’s heart and respiration rate, handing her the stethoscope. Carole gulped.

She was going to ask Judy what to do when she saw that Judy was deep in conversation with Mr. Michaels about the mare’s symptoms. Carole realized that Judy expected her to know exactly what to do. It frightened her a little, but of course, Judy was right.

Carole stuck the earphones of the stethoscope in her ears and put the other end against the horse’s chest behind the elbow on the left-hand side. That was what she’d seen Judy do in the past. At first, Carole couldn’t hear anything except muffled rumblings. She moved the head of the stethoscope around until she could hear better. There it was! The mare’s heartbeat was strong and clear as a bell, lub-dub, lub-dub. Carole could begin taking the animal’s pulse, but her watch didn’t have a second hand. She had to have a second hand to figure out the heart rate.

“Uh, Judy, can I borrow your watch?” Carole asked sheepishly. Without comment, Judy slipped the watch off her arm and handed it to Carole. Carole made a note to herself to borrow her father’s old watch with a sweep second hand the next time she came out with Judy.

Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub. She counted carefully for a full minute, just to be sure, though she knew the faster way was to count for half a minute and double the number.

“Thirty-three,” she announced. Judy nodded. Then Carole stood back and watched the horse, counting the number of times her nostrils expanded to breathe in. Carole did that for a full minute, too. The mare breathed in twelve times in a minute. That was perfectly normal. Carole told Judy, who jotted down the information on her patient’s chart.

Then Judy began her own examination. Carole held the horse and talked to her soothingly while Judy poked and prodded. The mare was very sweet. She didn’t seem to mind at all. Carole hoped that whatever was wrong, it wasn’t serious. Such a nice gentle horse shouldn’t have to be sick!

Next, Judy looked in on the mare who was about to foal.

“She’s got a couple of days to go,” Judy said. “She seems fine. Keep a close watch on her, though. Call me when her labor begins, okay?” Mr. Michaels said he would.

The next horse they checked was a feisty stallion. Judy clipped on a lead rope, held him with one hand, and drew the blood samples with her other hand. It only took a few seconds, and like the mare, the horse barely seemed to notice.

“I’ll show you how to do this,” Judy told Carole. “But I’m not going to start you on a stallion. They tend to be much more high-strung than geldings and mares. You’re a good, healthy assistant. I’d like to keep it that way!”

Carole smiled. Judy handed her two tubes with the stallion’s blood samples. “Mark the horse’s name, the stable, and the date on each of them,” Judy said. Carole had to borrow her pen to do it. She made a note to remember one of those next time, too. The last thing she wanted to be was a nuisance!

Carole watched as Judy came out of the stallion’s stall. Judy moved the stallion up to the door of the stall, clicked off the lead rope, and backed out quickly.

“Never turn your back on an unfamiliar horse, especially one who has flattened his ears and showed the whites of his eyes,” Judy remarked. “Don’t give him a chance to hurt you. He might just be frightened enough to do it.”

Mr. Michaels nodded in agreement. “Old Admiral here has done it more than once,” he said. “He’s got a nasty temper, but his bloodlines are impeccable and he sires the most wonderful foals!”

“Really?” Carole asked. She knew that horses were
bred in the hopes of accentuating the good characteristics of their sires and dams, or fathers and mothers. A breeder might, for example, cross a good jumper who had a bad disposition with a good-natured horse who was a mediocre jumper in the hopes of getting a foal who was both a good jumper and good-natured. It didn’t always work that way, though. Sometimes what they ended up with was a moody foal who couldn’t jump for beans!

“Are any of Admiral’s foals here?” Carole asked curiously.

“Oh, sure,” Mr. Michaels said. “Let me introduce you to one. Judy, you should take a look at this fellow anyway because I’m about to sell him and I’ll want you to certify that he’s sound.”

Judy and Carole followed Mr. Michaels down the row of stalls. There, in the last stall, was a big bay gelding with a dark mahogany coat and a lopsided six-pointed star on his face.

“Oh, he’s beautiful!” Carole said.

“He is that,” Mr. Michaels agreed. “And he’s going to be a champion one day, with the right rider.”

“Bring him out, Carole. Let’s have a look at him,” Judy said.

Carole stepped into the stall and took a close look at the horse. He took a close look at her as well. She couldn’t help smiling. He seemed so curious, almost puppylike. She clipped a lead onto his halter and scratched his face, right below his eye, to reassure him. He nuzzled
her neck. It tickled. She was having such a nice time with him that she almost didn’t want to take him out of the stall, but Judy and Mr. Michaels were waiting. She clucked her tongue and brought the bay out to an open area in the hallway.

Judy made a thorough examination of the horse’s soundness, running her hands along each of his legs, checking his hooves, and examining his mouth. She asked Carole to take him out into the arena and jog him around so she could watch how he moved. After he exercised, she checked his heart and respiration rate.

“Everything looks okay to me,” Judy announced at last.

“I thought so,” Mr. Michaels said. “I just wanted to be sure. The last thing I need is an unhappy buyer. I rely on repeat business.”

That made sense to Carole. But one look at that horse and she knew that whoever bought him was going to be happy. “What’s his name?” she asked.

“Pretty Boy,” he told her. “At least that’s what I call him. I don’t know if the new owner will use that or rename him.”

Pretty Boy.
It was a nice name and fit him, but it wasn’t what Carole would have called him. It wasn’t special enough for such a fine horse.

Carole returned him to his stall, bolted it shut, and returned to help Judy give the inoculations to the other horses. Judy showed Carole how to put the alcohol on
the horse before administering the shot and even let her put on the alcohol twice. That was fun, but it wasn’t as much fun as trotting around the ring with Pretty Boy.

Soon after that, Judy and Carole were on their way, headed for another stable where, Judy told her, there was a lame horse that needed some attention.

“Ninety-five percent of lameness is in horses’ feet,” Judy said. “We all assume that things will go wrong with their legs because they’re slender and they don’t
look
strong enough to hold up all that body. That’s partly true and it’s one of the things that makes horses beautiful to us, but the feet are where the problems really begin.”

The horse they looked at, a chestnut mare, was no exception. She had bruised the frog of her foot, which is the pie-shaped section extending from the heel to the center of the bottom of the hoof. It is the part of the foot that strikes the ground, and as long as it was bruised, the mare would favor that foot.

“Keep her quiet, no riding, for about ten days,” Judy instructed. Then she handed the owner some medicine. “You can give her some of this if she seems uncomfortable. It’s probably best to let nature do the healing, but she shouldn’t suffer in the meantime. I’ll be back to check up on her progress.”

The owner was very grateful for Judy’s advice and looked relieved that the problem was minor. Often lameness wasn’t minor and took a lot longer than ten days to heal.

When Judy and Carole climbed back into the truck, Judy gave Carole some more information about the mare and her owner. “That wasn’t a problem,” Judy commented. “If that owner had more experience, he would have known that it wasn’t. I’m not complaining, though, and it doesn’t have anything to do with charging him a fee for the visit. I would always rather have an owner ask me to look at a horse when they’re not certain that it’s a problem than to have them wait until they know darn well that they’ve got a serious problem. A lot of the time, success in healing depends on early diagnosis.”