Free Sophie and Shine by Kelly McKain Page B

was wrong.
    Then at lunch Aneela was doing impressions of a teacher at her riding school at home who has this really snooty voice and we were all in stitches. She’s so funny – in fact, all the girls here are nice. We’ve just been trying on each others’ stuff. Daisy’s blue fleece really suited Shanice and Izzy’s purple silk looked great on Courtney’s hat, and she said she really wishes she’d bought a new one before she came, too. Grace insisted on trying on Aneela’s jodhs and of course they were miles too long for her! I know I’m going to have a fab week with them all!

    Jody just gave us our welcome letters (I’ve stuck mine in the front of this diary) and we found out we’re going carriage-driving this week – we’re all really excited. It’ll be great fungoing on a trip together and only Izzy has been in a carriage before, when she was a bridesmaid at her cousin’s wedding, so it’ll be a brand new horsey experience too!
    We’ve got to go back on the yard again now for our first Pony Care lecture – it’s on tack and tacking up. I’m going to pay extra special attention in the lectures because maybe if I show Mum and Dad how much I’ve learnt they’ll understand how serious I am about getting my own pony, and then they might start to think about it at least.

Monday after dinner
    Our lecture was really interesting – we learnt about all the different bits of tack, then watched Lydia demonstrate tacking up on Aneela’s pony, Charm. She chose him because he’s so good at standing still on the yard. Everyone laughed when Millie said that if we’d used Tally it would have been more like a demonstration of chasing an escaping pony down the lane!
    Then we had our first go at tacking up our ponies. Millie has done all this before, so went round helping the younger girls. We did it in their stables and pens to make it easier, and we worked in twos so we could help each other. I went with Beth and she was really good about helping me get the bit in (I’ve only done it once before and I didn’t want to bang poorShine’s teeth with it). When I helped her with Monsoon we played this game pretending they were our own ponies and we were getting ready for a big comp, and it was really cool. Beth is so much fun! When Lydia came round and checked what we’d done all she had to do was move Shine’s girth up a hole, so we were really happy!

    Our lesson this afternoon was fun too. Jody wanted us to just relax and get to know our ponies, so we did lots of transitions and changes of rein to get good control and then we practised weaving in and out of cones. It was so funny when Cracker decided he couldn’t be bothered to go round all the conesand just carted Grace off to the end of the manège instead!

    I also found out that Shine gets spooked easily! It was really windy this afternoon and during the lesson a shed door banged and sent her skittering off across the manège. It really freaked me out, and my heart went all fluttery, but I managed to keep going and put her straight. But then she kept refusing to walk past the bit of fence where it happened and Jody said I had to ride really positively so Shine didn’t go completely silly about it. I felt really nervous but I made myself act calm and after a while Shine was fine again. Jody called out, “You may not have ridden for a while, Sophie, but you obviously have a feel for ponies. You handled that very well!”
    At this rate, maybe I really will get moved up to Group B sometime this week! When we had a canter, Shanice decided to trot again instead and Jody gave her a big smile and said maybe she can have another go tomorrow.
    Oh, I nearly forgot. Something strange happened before, when we were doing yard duties. We all put our hard hats on the bench in the tack room so we didn’t have to take them upstairs, and I volunteered to sweep the main yard so I could look at Shine,