Riding Class by Bonnie Bryant Page A

a donkey. Stevie turned in the saddle and glared back at her while they rode away, but Veronica was talking to her chauffeur by then and didn’t seem to notice.
    As soon as they were away from the stable, Emily’s embarrassment vanished. She drew a deep breath of the fresh spring air and looked around appreciatively at the open fields. “We’re going to take the path along the creek,” Lisa informed her. “There’s a rock where we have picnics sometimes, and we want you to see it.”
    “Most of the trail is flat, and in many places it’s wide enough that we can ride four abreast,” Carole added. “It’s really a pretty trail. How do you feel so far?”
    “Great!” Emily looked totally at ease. The Saddle Club had carefully arranged it so that when they were riding single file, Carole led on Starlight. Emily rode next, then Stevie and Lisa. They didn’t want P.C. to feel that he had to compete with too many horses, and Starlight was a steady leader. When they rode side by side, they were sure to keep Emily in the middle.
    The first spring wildflowers were starting to bloom. The air blew softly through the leafless branches and the short, newly greening grass. It was, Stevie decided, as nice as any trail ride she had ever been on. Part of the joy was being able to share it with Emily.
    “Does P.C. feel nervous at all?” she asked. “He looks great.”
    “Placid and Calm,” Emily said, laughing. “He’s P.C.”
    They took a winding path through the woods until they got to the edge of the river. There was a wide, smooth place there, and Carole tentatively suggested that they try a trot. Emily agreed wholeheartedly. P.C. pulled ahead, steady and quiet.
    “Good boy,” she said to him, pulling him up where the trail began to narrow again.
    “I saw you use your crop on him when we started trotting,” Carole said. “I use mine to get Starlight’s attention when he’s ignoring me, but I know P.C. wasn’t ignoring you. Do you use it for a different reason?”
    Emily nodded. “You might have noticed me using it when I was riding at Free Rein, too,” she said. “I always do. I sit comfortably in the saddle, but I really can’t use my legs the way you guys do. I can hold them still, but I can’t signal my horse with them—not very well, anyway. So I use my crop, not to punish P.C, but to tell him what to do.” She laughed. “I call my crop my third leg,” she said. “It works better than my other two.”
    “That’s really neat,” Carole said. She was always interested in horse training. “Did P.C. understand that when you got him, or did you train him yourself?”
    “Neither. My parents and I looked for a very well trained, quiet, happily obedient horse, and then we had him trained some more so that he would be good for me. The farrier who comes to Free Rein trains horses on the side, and he rode P.C. and got him used to being signaled with a crop instead of leg commands. Then the instructors at Free Rein put him through the training program they have for all the therapeutic horses—getting him used to the mounting ramp, getting him used to being whacked by my crutches—”
    “Getting him used to girls falling between his legs …,” Stevie supplied, grinning.
    “Exactly. It only took him a few months to learn everything. He’s so good.”
    “He doesn’t mind that you don’t use your legs?” Carole asked. Carole had always thought of her legs as her most important aid. She couldn’t imagine not being able to use them when she rode.
    “No, he doesn’t seem to,” Emily said. “We knew it could be done. I know a girl—well, she’s almost a grown-up now,—but she rides regular dressage and she only has one leg. She had cancer and they had to amputate the other. And there was another dressage rider from Denmark, back in the 1950s, named Lis Hartel. She got polio and was permanently paralyzed from both knees down. Then she won twoindividual silver medals at the Olympics. She’s the