Greener Pastures Page 4

  Lee moved up behind the pony waving his arms. 'Yar! Yar!' He slapped the pony on the rump. Chance snorted, but he didn't move.

  'Try turning his head,' Shelby suggested. 'Sometimes a horse will go if you point him in a different direction.'

  Lydia pulled on the rein and kicked again. Chance turned his head willingly enough. He twisted around until his nose rested on the stirrup iron, but still he would not budge.

  'Was he like this when you got him? Erin asked.

  'He wasn't any sort of racehorse,' Lee acknowledged. 'But he did move when you asked him to.'

  Shelby took hold of the bit and clicked with her tongue. 'Come on, little fella,' she encouraged him. He stretched his head forward, but his feet didn't move.

  'Hop off for a tick.'

  Lydia slid out of the saddle.

  Shelby picked up the short crop that was lying on the ground near the gate, slipped her foot into the stirrup and swung her leg over his back. 'Sometimes they just need to know you mean business.' She smacked him smartly on the rump with the crop and squeezed with her legs. 'Get up!' she called out in a gruff voice.

  Chance lifted one front hoof and put it down again.

  'I said move it, you great lump!' Shelby called out, smacking him again.

  Chance grunted, but he did not move.

  'Why don't I bring our guys around the back? Maybe he will walk over to meet them?' Erin suggested. They had left their horses on the front lawn.

  'That's a great idea,' said Shelby, slipping off again.

  Soon Erin was back leading Bandit and Blue. As they came around the corner Chance pricked up his ears and let out an excited, high-pitched whinny. He lifted up his hoof again. He put it down gingerly, and then lifted his back hoof. Shelby gave him another encouraging tap with the crop and the pony started to move slowly in a peculiar, faltering crab-walk.

  Bandit stretched out his neck over the fence and the two horses sniffed each other's muzzles.

  'He looks really ouchy, Shel,' Erin said, frowning.

  'Which foot do you reckon?' Shelby asked.

  Erin shook her head, perplexed. 'All of them!'

  'It can't be all of them. Can you make him walk? I want to see.' The two girls swapped reins. Erin took the crop and led the pony along the fence line.

  Chance stepped forward, lifting each foot high in the air and then wavering it tentatively before he put it down. He grunted and wheezed.

  Erin was right. He looked sore all over. The last time Shelby had seen something similar was when Miranda, the vet, had vaccinated one of the horses and the gelding had had a bad reaction to it.

  'Have you given him a strangles or tetanus shot?' she asked.

  Lee shook his head.

  Lydia held Bandit and Blue while Shelby ran her hands up and down Chance's legs, feeling for heat or swelling, but she couldn't find anything.

  'Hmm,' said Shelby. 'What's he like when he's in his paddock by himself?'

  'It's like I told you,' Lydia sighed. 'He stands there with his head drooped. It's as though he's depressed or something.'

  Alarm bells were ringing in Shelby's head. 'Did you think about calling a vet?'

  'Dad won't let me,' Lydia muttered. 'He says they're too expensive.'

  'He doesn't have any cuts or bruises or swelling anywhere, and he eats well enough.' Lee set his jaw defensively. 'I don't want a vet to come out here and charge me five hundred bucks to tell me we got ourselves a lazy horse.'

  'Well, I don't think he's lazy,' Shelby said. 'I think he's sore, and you should probably rule that out first. Miranda, the vet we use up at the stables, is an equine –'

  'We have a vet,' Lee interrupted. 'Dr Ross.'

  'That's no good! He's a small animal vet,' Erin blurted.

  Lee looked at his watch. 'You girls better be heading home now anyway – if you want to get there before dark.'

  'You should at least get his hooves trimmed. We have a great farrier, and he's not that expensive,' Shelby said.

  Lee didn't answer.

  'I mean, that's a normal part of horse care,' Shelby continued. 'You should get it done at least every six weeks. And worming too. Have you wormed him?'

  'We did that,' Lydia said.

  'Maybe he's had an allergic reaction to it?' Erin handed the reins back to Lydia. The two girls watched as she unsaddled the horse and let him loose.

  Chance limped towards the other two ponies with his head low.

  'He's so not normal,' Erin said.

  Lee was frowning at them, so Shelby tugged at Erin's sleeve. They made their way out to the road where they mounted and set off towards home. The colour was draining out of the day. They would need to move quickly. Shelby didn't want to be riding along the main road in the failing light.

  'What do you think we should do?' Erin asked.

  'I don't think there's much we can do,' Shelby said. 'We've told them what we think.'

  Erin commented, 'There wasn't much feed in that paddock. He was in good shape considering.'

  The streetlights flickered on above their heads.

  'Come on. We have to hurry,' Shelby said.

  The two girls pushed their horses into a brisk trot. Blue and Bandit stretched out their legs, ears forward, eager to get home to their dinner.

  6 Chicken

  When they reached the stables it was dark. Most of the clients were gone. Erin's mum was waiting in the car park reading a newspaper. The two girls unsaddled their horses and slipped on their heavy rugs. Already the dew was settling. Shelby's knuckles were cold as she fastened the buckles and straps. Her nose started to drip.

  After Shelby waved goodbye to Erin and her mum, she noticed that there was a light on in one of the tack rooms. She went to investigate and found Hayley and Mrs Crook inside eating KFC. Shelby was hungry and was captivated by the smell of it. Hayley noticed her eyeing a drumstick and offered it to her.

  Shelby's family hardly ever had take-away, and when they did it was never brand name take-away, it was fish and chips from the corner shop, or a supermarket barbecue chicken. You never gave up a drumstick, there simply weren't any to spare.

  'Are you sure?'

  'I'm not going to eat it,' Hayley assured her.

  Shelby took the drumstick. It was oily, salty and delicious, just as she had imagined. She looked around the tack room while she ate.

  The Crooks had a stack of hay bales in one corner. There were pegs on the wall with saddles in covers and bridles in bags. They kept their feed in airtight plastic tubs, rather than the steel drums that everybody else used. There was a shelf above with all different kinds of feed supplements, lotions and potions, and next to that a kettle and some coffee cups stacked upside down.

  The Crooks had a bar fridge in the corner, and a wardrobe too, which was new. The door was open and Shelby could see jodhpurs in a variety of colours, a safety vest and a number of helmets in a higgledypiggledy stack.

  Above the wardrobe there was a faded picture in a frame of Hayley about five years old, astride a chubby black Shetland pony. Mrs Crook was standing next to them clutching a trophy.

  'So, how are things with Chad Hammond?' Mrs Crook asked as she selected another piece from the bucket.

  'Fine,' Shelby replied, blushing. She had enough trouble talking about Chad with friends, let alone a grown-up.

  'You hang on to him!' Mrs Crook advised, pointing at her with a chicken wing. 'He's one of the good ones.'

  'We're not even really properly going out or anything,' Shelby mumbled.

  Hayley's eyes widened. She ran her sliver of chicken in front of her neck, a slicing motion, silently telling Shelby to be quiet.

  'I saw that, young lady,' Mrs Crook said.

  Hayley sighed, exasperated. 'You always stick your nose into everybody's business, Mum.'

  'It's called making conversation. It's showing an interest in someone other than yourself. Shelby doesn't mind, do you? Shelby likes talking to me.'

  Shelby chewed on her drumstick and stared
out of the tack room door, embarrassed about being drawn in to one of the Crook's inevitable family arguments. She watched as a car's headlights swung across the paddocks and up the driveway. Her father was running late picking her up, but as it neared she saw that it wasn't his Alfa.

  She tried to think of something that might distract them. 'How's Smarty?' she asked.

  Almost a year ago now Shelby and her friends had secretly sold a pony to Hayley. Quicksmart, or 'Hotty' as she was previously known, had some behavioural problems, but she was nicely put together, so the Crooks had sent her to Wanada Park Pony Stud to have a foal.

  The owner was a friend of Mrs Crook's, having sold her a few show ponies. One of them was Wanada Park Echo – a favourite of Shelby's that the Crooks had recently sold.

  'Oh, I forgot to tell you. We're going up there tomorrow. Mum can't decide which stallion she likes so we're going to have at look at their foals,' Hayley replied, as keen to change the subject as Shelby was.

  'After your riding lesson,' Mrs Crook reminded her.

  'Do you want to come with us, Shel?' Hayley asked.

  'I'd love to!' she replied. 'If that's OK with you.'

  If they left after Hayley's lesson, Shelby would still be able to lead the trail ride in the morning. She was mindful of what Erin had said about Mrs Edel the day before.

  'It would be a pleasure having you, darling!' Mrs Crook replied, pinching Shelby's cheek. 'And I have to say it's nice to see you around here, Shelby, we've missed you.'

  'Yeah, I've missed this place too.' Shelby smiled.

  Just then a car tooted and Shelby peered out the door. It was her father.

  'Gotta go. Thanks for the chicken!'

  7 Birthday Party

  It was a few weeks before daylight savings and so it was quite bright very early in the morning. Shelby woke up with the dawn, had her breakfast and managed to arrive at the stables at around half past six. None of the clients had appeared yet. She propped her bike against the wall in the feed shed and stood with her hands on her hips while she read the noticeboard.

  The noticeboard had been her own idea and she was quite proud of it. In the old days people would leave scraps of paper in their tack rooms, or scrawled notes in the letterbox. 'Please don't feed Blaze in the morning as I have my lesson at 8,' or 'No rug on Captain today'.

  So many times Shelby had found a note after she had already fed the horse and put it out in the paddock for the day. Sometimes she didn't get the message at all and the clients would get angry, as though that was her fault. With the new system clients had to leave messages on the board about their horse the day before, and that way any changes to the schedule could be factored in before work began. It seemed to be working, as no one had yelled at her or left her cranky notes for ages.

  Shelby filled the feed buckets and hauled a bale of hay onto the trolley. As she rounded the corner most of the horses were standing in their yards, ears pricked and expectant. An old chestnut ex-racehorse named Charlie lived in a stable on the corner. He was always the first to greet her at breakfast time.

  'Morning all,' she said, and the horses called out to her, turning circles and stamping.

  One at a time she dumped the feed into the bins, the hay in the racks, and then changed their rugs from their heavier night rugs to cotton day rugs, or fly sheets.

  There were a few horses that she skipped, because their owners had written on the board that they wanted to feed them themselves. Those horses spun and whinnied to her, as if saying, 'What about me!'

  She reached the end of the laneway, and then she turned around to attend to the horses on the opposite side.

  By the time she reached the beginning again, Charlie and his next-door neighbour Griswold had both finished their breakfast and were ready to go out for the day.

  She slipped a halter over Charlie's ears and led him down the path, stopping to collect Griswold. The two geldings walked calmly to the paddock side by side like a pair of old gentlemen, but as soon as she let them go, they leaped and bucked and rolled as if they were a pair of two-year-olds.

  Even though she was busy, Shelby stayed, leaning on the gate and watching them frolic. Charlie flopped on the ground and rolled with his eyes closed, groaning with pleasure.

  'There's nothing in the world like seeing a happy, healthy horse enjoying life,' she said out loud. Then she headed back to the stables to move the other horses out to their paddocks.

  Just after she had let out the last horse in the row she heard the quad bike coming in. She looked down the laneway and saw Mrs Edel hauling the poo vac on the back of the bike. Remembering what Erin had said at school the other day, Shelby decided to help. That way she would be able to gauge her boss's mood.

  In a corner between the Edels' back garden and the stallion enclosure was the poo pile. When Shelby had first arrived at the stables the manure was contained in a nice timber pen, but now it was full. There were new piles on either side, and in front too. Next to that was a pile of soiled rice hulls that had been used for stable bedding. It smelt strongly of ammonia.

  'It's getting a bit stinky around here,' Shelby observed, holding her nose. 'How come these piles have grown all of a sudden?'

  'A fellow used to come in with his trailer once a week and take it to the community vegie garden, but he's moved house now,' Mrs Edel explained.

  Between them they lifted the hatch on the back of the vac and tipped the manure out.

  'I'm sure if you put a sign out the front people would come in and take it,' Shelby suggested.

  'We tried that once,' Mrs Edel said. 'We had all these cars and trailers zooming up and down the driveway – people who knew nothing about horses. Sometimes they'd get lost and drive up between the stables. It was an accident waiting to happen.' She slipped one of her gloves off and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. 'The best thing would be to fill up the old chaff bags and put them out the front. That would solve two problems, but I don't have time to do it.'

  It was the sort of thing Shelby would have volunteered to do not so long ago, but over the past few months she had been doing the bare minimum of help around the stables. She must have wheeled three or four barrows full of poo to this pile every day, but she had been too tied up in her own thoughts. She simply hadn't noticed that it was mounting up.

  'If anyone had told me just how much of my adult life would be spent handling poo I would have found a different business,' Mrs Edel said, climbing back onto the quad bike. 'I could have been a florist, or a jeweller, but no, I'm a poo vacuumer.' She slipped the earmuffs over her head. 'I think I can probably get one more load in before everyone arrives.'

  Shelby followed the bike along the path for a way and then she turned towards the paddock where the school horses were kept.

  Lindsey was there already. 'Morning,' she said, with uncharacteristic cheerfulness. She had put Blue into one of the smaller yards and saddled a few of the favourites – Hiccup, Cracker, Scooter and Blockhead.

  'What's the plan for today?' Shelby asked, giving Blue a cuddle. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead on her arm, pushing her off-balance. 'Hey! That's not nice manners, little man.'