Show Barn Blues Read online

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Blank page

  About the Author

  Keep reading with Natalie Keller Reinert’s equestrian

  Copyright © 2015 Natalie Keller Reinert

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. All resemblances to places or people, alive or dead, are purely coincidental.

  Cover Photo: Shutterstock. Back Cover Photo: iStock

  ISBN: 1517119294

  ISBN-13: 978-1517119294

  CHAPTER ONE

  Of all the types of boarders I could have had, the woman in my office right now was by far the worst sort.

  Believe me, by this point in my life, I knew all about boarders. After twelve years of running a successful A-circuit show barn with forty stalls, a covered arena, a jumping course, dressage arena, and a dozen paddocks, I knew way more about boarders than I could ever want. I knew the good. I knew the bad… and I knew the bad easily outweighed the good. You try to make forty different horse owners happy sometime. I just dare you to try.

  “This is no kind of a way to make a living,” I’d tell my working students as they came and went, and some of them would believe me and go back to college, and some of them wouldn’t and would go into the business themselves, and then they’d see me at horse shows and commiserate and say things like “Grace, you were right all along.”

  I’d just nod while they unloaded their troubles, secure in the knowledge that I was usually right, and I was used to people not believing me until it was too late. I was like a mother that way, I supposed, although I didn’t have any children of my own. Just a barn full of adult children — the aforementioned boarders — and four-legged children — the horses. It was hard to tell which were more trouble on any given day, but most days, I’d give the top score to the humans.

  Still, they were the ones that paid the ever-mounting bills, and there were fewer and fewer of them these days. I sighed and ran a hand through my short-cropped hair, (once dirty blonde, now dirty grayish-brown, emphasis on the grayish) then fastened on a quick smile so that the young woman sitting across from me didn’t think anything was wrong. I was a businesswoman, after all. It wouldn’t be fair of me to make her feel uncomfortable while I judged her application. For the thousandth time (or millionth) I thought how much easier life would be if I just got the horses, without the boarders.

  The horses had their own quirks, but they were the reason we went into the horse business in the first place. It was the people that owned the horses, bought the horses, paid you to train and care for the horses — they were the problem. In their various archetypes, they made life as a trainer and barn manager impossible, each in their own special ways.

  For example, you had your Precious Pony type boarder — the controlling, doting horse mother, who thought nothing of phoning up a barn manager at eleven o’clock at night after a bad thunderstorm so that she could make sure her darling love was able to sleep all right after all that nasty noise. Precious Pony’s mummy would not hesitate to drag one of the already-overworked grooms off to embark on some private stall-betterment scheme, and was always buying horse-toys that had to be drilled into barn walls (by the grooms, again) or putting up a stall guard so that Precious Pony could stick his head out into the barn aisle, despite the fact that this was strictly forbidden to prevent bites and barn aisle battles between passing horses. Precious Pony was above the rules because Precious Pony’s mummy and her four-footed offspring were special.

  Precious Pony types had lost me more good grooms and put more holes into my stall walls than I would care to recount.

  Then you had your Poor-But-Proud Go-Getter, always trying to work off riding lessons and to convince other boarders that she’s their gal for any extra riding or schooling that their horses might need. All talent, no money — and not just teenagers, either. Some women hang on to their trainer dreams for surprisingly long, lean years before they realize it just isn’t going to happen, or they finally sell all their belongings and move to Germany to take a dressage apprenticeship just like they had wanted to do, when they were seventeen but had chosen to go to college like their mothers wanted instead. The Go-Getters were a problem that I usually flushed out pretty quickly. It wasn’t a lack of respect for these perpetual working students, don’t get me wrong — we all had to start somewhere and I’d done my share of begging for rides — but there were simply too many of them, and if they were schooling a fellow boarder’s problem horse, then, simply, I wasn’t.

  The Go-Getters were welcome to pursue their dreams and I wasn’t above throwing them a lesson now and again in exchange for the occasional pulled mane or mucked stall, but they were not permitted to infringe upon my cash flow. The minute they started riding horses previously on my schedule, they were out on their ears. I had my own working student already, whom I had vetted and interviewed and sank plenty of time and money into, and one way to lose a good working student was to hand over their jobs to someone else. Working students could be very prickly.

  The complete opposite of the Go-Getter and the Precious Pony boarder was the Absent Mother. She drops her horse off, rather like a child at boarding school, and then simply disappears. As long as the checks arrive regularly and the horse is in training, I really don’t mind Absent Mothers — most of the time. All is well until suddenly Absent Mother remembers she has a horse, checks the stable show calendar, and arrives on a show morning decked out in a new jacket with the tags still attached and a pair of never-worn custom boots, wanting to know why I didn’t put her name on the entry forms, of course she wanted to go to the show. This usually was followed by a disagreement that ended with the Absent Mother heading off to a new farm, with a new trainer to charm, pay, and then irritate beyond all sense.

  Those boarders were just the tip of the iceberg. Believe me, there were plenty more, each with their own brand of insanity.

  For all of that, I loved running a boarding stable — really, I did! But you got a real cross-section of crazy moving through your barn year after year. You saw too much money, not enough money, and the bad effects of both. You saw good horses with bad owners, bad horses with good owners, and everything in between. You tried really hard not to be a therapist. You tried really hard not to admit to yourself that if you could afford it, you’d be in therapy yourself. You got through your days on caffeine and the relentless ticking of the clock, as you worked through your schedule, horses to ride, lessons to teach, fires to put out, tempers to
soothe.

  It was… fun? Maybe that wasn’t the right word. It had been exciting once. My own barn! My own students! No one else telling me what to do! I’d worked for years for this right.

  I wouldn’t give it up for anything — mad boarders or otherwise.

  Mounting costs or otherwise.

  Empty stalls with cobwebs in the corner or otherwise…

  Kennedy Phillips, the young woman who was sitting opposite my desk and making me stifle a sigh of regret, crossed and recrossed her legs. My silence was making her nervous. I glanced up from her application, smiled tentatively, looked back down through the papers as if I was checking them most thoroughly. Of course it was all here: the Coggins test showing her horse had a negative blood test for Equine Infectious Anemia, the proof of standard equine vaccinations within the past six months from a veterinarian’s office, the application with billing and horse information. All printed out from my website, all done in advance, all very promising if the only things that I were looking for in a new boarder was meticulous record-keeping, responsible horsemanship, and organizational skills. It was the Riding Discipline and Riding Goals entries that disappointed me.

  She had written “Pleasure Riding” and “trail riding and fun” under those headings.

  Which was very nice for Kennedy, but it put her at the very bottom of my list of Most Wanted Boarders.

  “Pleasure riding” and “trail riding and fun” meant no horse shows for Kennedy and her horse, and no lofty training goals, either. It meant no riding lessons, no training sessions, and none of the assorted fees that came with showing — the braiding fee, the shipping fee, the coaching fee, the extra training and lessons afterwards when she didn’t bring home the color ribbons she wanted. Kennedy described herself as an excellent rider, with a history of big jumps and shiny ribbons, and all she wanted to do now was goof around with her horse (which was perplexing in and of itself — the horse was sound, she was in good health, what on earth was wrong with this picture?)

  According to the application, Kennedy didn’t need me for anything at all, other than to make sure that her horse had a roof over his head, a clean stall to sleep in, and a paddock to relax in. She didn’t even mind that the unused horse trails adjacent to the farm were overgrown and needed clearing, or so she had assured me when I explained, uncertainly, that I wasn’t sure how my farm was the right fit for her needs.

  “I just really love your property, and your standard of care is well-known,” Kennedy now told me earnestly, leaning forward in her chair, clearly anxious to break the silence. “I’m used to caring for him myself, but now that I work full-time, I can’t do it all anymore. If it can’t be me… then it has to be someplace like this. The very best.”

  We were in the second-floor barn office, a cluttered place wallpapered with rosettes and horse show photos. Above her left ear I could see myself, ten years ago, jumping a picket fence in a Working Hunter class. My face was serious, my horse’s face was serious, the faces of the people watching in the background were serious. Showing was serious business. A show barn was a serious place.

  “And of course the location matters a lot. But I don’t want to show or anything. I just want to have fun.”

  I nodded. I had six empty stalls, and two boarders making rumblings of moving to another state. Six was too many — one more and I might have to let a groom go — eight was unthinkable.

  I couldn’t afford to turn this one away, as much as I wanted to. But I felt compelled to explain that she was about to be the odd man out — a lonely position to be in at a bustling boarding stable. “No one else here trail rides,” I warned her. “You’d be on your own.”

  “Not even once in a while? For a treat?” Kennedy’s voice was wheedling, and I could imagine her using that on impressionable boarders, worn out with training for the winter season through what seemed like an unending Florida summer. Just cancel your lesson, just skip that schooling session, come out on the trail and relax with me! Sounded charming, until you considered their actual practical knowledge. More than a few of them hadn’t ridden outside of an arena since their childhood, some never at all. There would be problems. There would be accidents. There would be ambulances and vet calls.

  I gave Kennedy a sympathetic smile, spreading my hands to show her that things weren’t going to end in her favor, and I was sorry, but it just couldn’t be helped. “Take a look out here,” I invited, standing up and heading over to the observation window behind my desk. Kennedy followed uncertainly, and together we looked out over the scene below.

  From way up here on the high-ceilinged second floor, we could look down on the horses in their stalls, the grooms in the wash-stalls and cross-ties, and the boarders leading their tacked and wrapped horses to the covered arena. We could even see into part of the adjacent covered arena, where a few boarders were walking together, reins loose, after a hard ride. Their horses were dark with sweat, white foam on their necks — it was a hot day in October, another Florida autumn that felt like other people’s summers. Everything about the scene said hard work, dedication, ambition. I needed Kennedy to understand the vibe around the barn before she got any ideas about changing it.

  “This is a show barn, Kennedy. Everyone here is concentrating on their show season coming up. They have big goals and I help them get there. We work hard.” I sat back down and waved her back to the guest chair. “I don’t think you’ll find any trail buddies here.”

  She nodded ruefully, settling back in the chair, folding her leg over again. Her jeans were threadbare in one knee, and were stained dark around her calves. I knew that pattern. She rode in them, without chaps. Another strike — we weren’t casual around here. My boarders rode in breeches and half-chaps, or field boots. There was an expectation of classiness when people paid what I charged for a box for the sole purpose of putting a pooping horse inside. The unspoken dress code was part of that class. If Kennedy had understood what kind of barn this was, she wouldn’t have shown up in ragged jeans at all. Still, she persisted. “I guess if I want a full-service barn, having a lot of really serious riders around probably comes with the territory. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with anything less than a barn like this, though. I looked at the place down the road. Rodney’s barn…” She trailed off, but her face said it all.

  “Rodney’s barn is a little rough,” I agreed. Rough, hell — it didn’t even have full walls to keep the rain out. Rodney’s place was essentially a long lean-to with partitions to separate the horses at feeding time each evening. It wasn’t an atypical Florida barn, though. My fancy show stable was the new kid on the block. “But he’s a nice guy. He’s been here his whole life — knew my grandfather when this was just a little breeding farm —”

  “Your grandfather bred horses?”

  “Right here. His real business was oranges, but he had a couple mares all the time, Thoroughbreds, mostly. A few Standardbreds, back when they still trained in Orlando.”

  “I didn’t know there was a Standardbred track there! It’s not still open?”

  “Long gone.” I sighed. “Still some horses there, though. A nice therapeutic riding center. But horses aren’t front and center here anymore.” I paused. “How long have you been here?”

  “Oh, I’ve been in Orlando a few years,” Kennedy said. “I finished school here. But I’m from Indiana.”

  I absorbed this information without interest. Nearly everyone in Florida was from somewhere else.

  “And maybe someone will want to come trail-riding sometime,” Kennedy suggested hopefully as she slid the papers back to my side of the desk. “I mean, it’s fun, right? I’m sure I can find a buddy.”

  I didn’t want her to find a buddy. Still, with the threat of eight empty stalls… I looked at the boarding application again, searching for reasons to tell her take her business elsewhere, but all the reasons that came to mind didn’t exist on paper. I didn’t have anything but my own disappointment that she wouldn’t bring me any training or showing fees. I l
ooked down the neatly typed pages and noticed she’d put the horse’s breed and age, but not his name. “What’s your horse’s name?”

  “Sailor.”

  I felt a momentary twinge deep in my gut, a lump in my throat, a bitter taste in my mouth. I bit my lip, forced a smile, and remarked as brightly as I could: “What a nice name.”

  My first show pony had been named Sailor. He hadn’t been called that at shows, of course. At shows he was Maplewood’s Sailing Weather, a title as far from an eight-year-old girl’s dream pony name as one could get, but such was the world of show ponies. At least I could call him Sailor at home.

  Instead of bursting out with all those childhood memories, I just closed the binder I’d laid out on the desk when Kennedy had first come into the office, its pages listing my various boarding options and training packages. I put it back on the shelf next to my horse show catalogs and training logs and lesson plans, which were usually of great interest to prospective boarders, but which today had not been disturbed. “And he’s a Quarter Horse!” I went on encouragingly, busying my hands with straightening the binders, which always toppled over when you moved one little thing. “We don’t have any other Quarter Horses here. I think we did a few years ago, but the owner moved to Chicago.” At a barn like mine, Quarter Horses were as old-fashioned as rust-colored breeches in the hunter/jumper ring, but without the trendy vintage respect the breeches could command. “Then again, he might have been a half-Dutch Warmblood,” I added upon further reflection.

  Maybe she’d take the hint.

  “He’s not fancy, but he’s my pal,” Kennedy said, a little defensively. “We aren’t here to set trends. Just living life to the fullest. We don’t need ribbons to define us. We just want to have fun. Isn’t that what life’s all about?”

  “Of course,” I agreed, and took a sip of coffee to hide the twist of my lips. What an optimist. What a hippie. What a pain. I wished she’d just go away. I wished she’d see that this barn was not at all a good fit for her. I needed to fill stalls, but I needed paying clients who wanted my expertise and coaching more than anything.