Margaret Fletcher Gallop Girl: A Fall From Grace at Forty Miles an Hour by Dutil Genevieve

Author:Dutil, Genevieve [Dutil, Genevieve]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Horses, thoroughbred, equestrian, dressage, eventing, hunter, equestrian fiction, comedy, jumper
Published: 2014-12-28T16:00:00+00:00

DAY ONE

A lot of people mistake Geoff Maurice for a mean old man on an ego trip. They wonder why any equestrian would subject herself to so much verbal abuse at the steep price of five hundred dollars an hour. But while Geoff may lack concern for his students’ feelings, the man knows how to get the best out of any rider tough enough to endure his criticism. I’ll never forget the time he called one of the country’s top equitation riders an “incompetent fool” for misunderstanding the approach he asked her take to a fence. Word got out on the Internet and recreational riders from across the country demanded he be banned from ever teaching our fragile youth again.

What they didn’t realize was that the incompetent fool wasn’t offended at all. She just had the best lesson of her life with a man who could not care less who her daddy is or what his money can buy. He didn’t treat her like some kind of delicate flower too spoiled to hear the truth. By the end of the lesson, that incompetent fool rode better than she ever had in her entire life.

Five years later, she can’t wait to get back into the ring to ride with him again.

Here I am, that incompetent fool, back in Geoff Maurice’s arena, ready to try my heart out. Only this time, I’m sitting on a tense and confused horse that would rather canter in place than execute a nice, relaxed trot.

Mr. Maurice takes one look at us and turns the volume up on his megaphone to ten. “Girl with the muddy boots…TrrrrrrROT!!! I said TRRRROT!” It takes every ounce of determination I have to make Chocolates transition into a gait almost resembling the trot. It’s horrible. And when Geoff Maurice bellows at the top of his seventy-five-year-old lungs, “NOT like that. Not like a sewing machine. That’s not how you trot. This is not a home economics CLASS,” I can’t help but feel that he is being kind.

Margaret Fletcher has never been one to give up when the going gets tough. I sit deep into the saddle, carefully wrapping my legs around Chocolates’ barrel, trying to encourage him to soften his body.

With the anger of a drill sergeant reprimanding a difficult cadet, my childhood idol screams into his megaphone, “Why are you humping your saddle like a confused eighteen-year-old boy? It’s not going to buy you dinner!”

And then I hear the Boss’s familiar laugh amongst the sea of auditors. Who invited him? I didn’t invite him. Did Emily invite him? Oh, I know. Erica invited him! That little scheming tramp. It’s not enough for her to make sure that I embarrass myself in front of everyone in the equestrian world who actually matters. No, she has to make sure everyone at Winning Edge also has an opportunity to see me looking like a fool. I’m on the verge of hyperventilating when Geoff Maurice interrupts the onset of my panic attack by screaming,

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