People and Horses at Bracken by Gillian Baxter

Author:Gillian Baxter [Baxter, Gillian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2019-11-20T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter nine

The foal was fine, Guy assured her, meeting her by the field, and Bobby went to see for herself. Coffee was on her feet, licking her unsteady baby, a pretty dark brown filly, who was obviously going to be very much like her. The vet had arrived but after examining mare and foal she said they were fine, and advised them to leave the pair in the field with the other mothers and foals.

‘It’s a good thing you intervened,’ she told them. ‘Mares in trouble like that can’t last too long, they get exhausted.’

It was a lovely sight, thought Bobby later, as she leaned on the gate in the warm afternoon sunlight, watching the three babies play round their mothers, but she could not help the tinge of regret that the bay foal bouncing round Shelta was not her hoped for chestnut filly. Guy saw her standing there and came to put his arm round her.

‘A full nursery,’ he said. ‘Shelta looks contented being a foster mum. You could try again next year, let her rear that one and perhaps ride her again when it’s done. I don’t like the idea of covering them again too soon.’

Bobby agreed. It seemed that for the foreseeable future Shelta’s wayward son was going to be her only offspring.

Rose was fascinated by the foals. She could ride Mitzi round the place on her own now and she liked to sit on her own pony and watch them. Guy was a bit doubtful about letting her do this but Mitzi was a perfect nursemaid and he and Bobby always tried to be sure that she stayed in sight.

Anthony’s lessons seemed doomed to be disrupted. He was booked for one two days later and Guy planned to take the horse box for its plate earlier and be back in plenty of time, but he rang half an hour before to say that there was a hold up, the lorry ahead of his had broken down on the test pad and was only just being moved.

‘You’d better phone and put him off,’ he told Bobby, but Anthony’s phone was on voice mail and he turned up anyway. Yolanda was out with a single child rider and Bobby was saddling Cracker when Anthony arrived. Seeing him in the yard she went to explain, expecting indignation, but although he complained he seemed genuinely disappointed and Bobby risked offering an alternative.

‘I’m going out exercising this one,’ she told him. ‘Would you like to ride Lord out with me?’

’Hack him, you mean?’ Anthony sounded amazed. ‘That’s not going to get me far.’

‘You can’t learn everything in a school, ’Bobby told him, ‘and for eventing you need to be rider fit, you only get that by doing it,’ and Anthony said grudgingly that he supposed he might as well ride with her.

Bobby collected Lord’s tack and got the horse ready and Anthony did his usual indolent swing into the saddle. As they set out Bobby wondered what to do, a safe walk and trot sort of ride or something a bit more demanding.

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