Free Chasing Gold by Catherine Hapka Page B

boy!”
    â€œExcellent!” her instructor called from the center of the paddock Haley used as a riding ring. “You’re looking good today—both of you.”
    â€œThanks!” Haley brought Wings back to a walk and gave him a pat, feeling pleased. Jan Whipple was only in her midthirties, but she definitely took after the old-school horsemen who’d taught her when she was Haley’s age. That meant she wasn’t the type of instructor to give compliments unless she meant them. The first time Haley had attempted the lengthening, all Jan had saidwas, “Hmm. Again.” But this time, a wide grin split her tanned, freckled face beneath its battered old Wisconsin Dairy Association ball cap.
    â€œOkay,” Jan called out. “Now pick up left lead canter at A.” She winked. “Well, where A should be, anyway.”
    Haley had moved all the jump rails and standards out of the paddock a couple of days earlier after their last show jumping school, but she hadn’t had time to lay out a real dressage ring, with letters marking the spots where transitions were supposed to happen. But that didn’t really matter. They weren’t practicing tests today, just schooling various movements.
    And so far, Wings was doing great! When he’d first come to live with Haley, learning to jump had come easily to him. But he hadn’t had much patience for the slow, intricate dressage work she’d started asking him to learn as well. In his old life with the neighbor’s daughter, he hadn’t been asked to do much other than run and circle around the barrels—turn and burn, as some barrel racers called it—with a little easy trail riding in between competitions.
    But dressage was different. Riding a successful testinvolved performing specific gaits, figures, and transitions as accurately as possible, and precision hadn’t exactly been Wings’s forte at the beginning. Or Haley’s, either, for that matter. She loved running and jumping—that was why she’d been attracted to eventing in the first place. At first she’d considered dressage as just something to get through on the way to the fun stuff.
    Then she and Wings had entered their first competition. It hadn’t been anything big or fancy or recognized—just a tiny, informal starter horse trials at a lesson stable over in the next county. Wings had been a superstar at the jumping parts. He’d gone double clear in cross-country and stadium, barely seeming to notice the tiny elementary-level obstacles.
    But the dressage test had been another matter. It was just a walk-trot test, and aside from memorizing it, Haley had barely bothered to prepare for it at all outside of her occasional lessons with Jan. And it had shown—they’d blown a couple of transitions, with Wings jumping into a canter once when he was supposed to be trotting. He’d also jigged through the halt, and their circles were shapedmore like melting snowballs. They’d ended up with a pretty terrible score, which had dropped them out of the ribbons completely.
    After that, Haley had taken dressage a lot more seriously. She’d even started to enjoy it most of the time. It helped that Jan was so enthusiastic about it, constantly pointing out all the ways that getting better at dressage would also improve their jumping. For instance, she’d first started teaching them lengthenings by asking Haley to trot or canter Wings between two poles or small jumps in different numbers of strides—doing the same distance once in five strides, then in six, then in four. Both Haley and Wings had found that exercise a lot of fun, and Haley had soon discovered that being able to adjust her pony’s stride could come in handy out on cross-country as well.
    They’d come a long way since then. Now their circles were mostly round and their transitions usually came at the right place. But there was always something new