Free Comet and the Champion's Cup by Stacy Gregg Page A

the loose boxes.
    â€œWill you help us put the saddles on too?” Sophie asked. “The thing is, when we ride at the riding school they always have our ponies ready for us.”
    â€œSo you’ve never even groomed a horse before? Or put on a saddle and bridle?” Issie was stunned. “That’s awful. Horses aren’t just furry bicycles that you can park up at the end of the day, you know!” The girls giggled nervously at this.
    â€œCome on,” Issie smiled at them, “it won’t take you long to learn. I’ll give you a grooming lesson right now.”
    And so Issie showed Sophie and Lucy how to groom their ponies, starting at the head and working back towards the tail, using the body brush on the soft parts of the horse where the saddle went, and the dandy brush to scrub the mud off their ponies’ hocks.
    â€œI think I’m hurting him!” Sophie wailed as she snagged her mane comb in Pippen’s thick grey mane.
    â€œHe’s fine,” Issie reassured her. “Ponies’ manes really aren’t very sensitive.”
    Lucy, meanwhile, was trying to pick out Molly’s hooves, but kept getting nervous and shrieking every time Molly tried to help by obediently picking up her feet. It took forever for Sophie and Lucy to get Molly and Pippen groomed, and even longer to saddle up.
    â€œAre you lot ready yet?” Stella stuck her head over the stall door. “It’s almost lunchtime and we haven’t even started riding!”
    Eventually, all eight riders had their ponies tacked up, their helmets on and their stirrups at the right length, and they were riding around the arena.
    â€œKeep two horse lengths between you and the horse in front of you,” Kate called out as the riders walked around. “And trot on! Rising trot, everyone. Come on, Arthur, keep Glennie moving!”
    â€œHe won’t go!” Kelly-Anne, who was bouncing about in the saddle like a sack of potatoes with wobbly hands, was having trouble getting Julian to trot.
    â€œJust put your legs, try and keep your hands still and don’t jag him in the mouth. He’ll move forward,” Kateinstructed. But Kelly-Anne wasn’t having any of it.
    Kate, Issie and Stella were forced to watch in horror as Kelly-Anne lifted her legs up and away from her pony’s sides and then brought them down again with a bang, giving Julian an almighty boot in the sides and digging her heels hard into his ribcage!
    Julian, not used to being kicked in the tummy, got such a shock that he bolted forward into a frantic canter and Kelly-Anne, who hadn’t been expecting him to move quite so suddenly, let out a squeal as she lost her balance. Julian, realising his rider was in trouble, came to a sudden stop and Kelly-Anne flew forward, out of the saddle and landed smack flat on her bottom in the middle of the arena in front of the entire ride, whereupon she immediately burst into floods of tears.
    â€œWell, that’s a brilliant start,” Stella muttered to Issie under her breath as Kate rushed forward to help Kelly-Anne up, grabbing Julian’s reins with one hand.
    â€œAre you OK?” Kate asked as she picked Kelly-Anne up off the ground.
    â€œI’m fine. He’s a stupid horse. I was just making him go!” Kelly-Anne said defiantly.
    â€œThat’s not how you make a horse go!” said Kate.
    â€œWell, that’s how I do it,” Kelly-Anne sniffed.
    â€œI can see that!” said Kate. She turned to Issie and Stella. “I think we’d better run through some basic rules before we even try the rest of them at a canter.”
    â€œUh-huh,” Issie nodded.
    â€œI think I saw a whiteboard and a felt pen in the tack room,” Stella said. “It might help if we write them down!”
    When Stella returned a few moments later with the whiteboard, she had already written a title across the top: The Blackthorn Farm Riding School’s