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what was going on. He wanted Lisa to like Comanche, too.
    Lisa and Stevie circled the ring a few times at a walk, allowing the horses to warm up. The warm-up also permitted Lisa to get used to the feel of Comanche’s gait. Horses’ gaits were as distinct as their personalities. Lisa thought that Comanche couldn’t have been more different from Pepper. For one thing, he was a full hand taller. Horses were measured by “hands,” and a hand was four inches. That meant Comanche’s saddle was four inches higher than Pepper’s. Lisa noticed the difference right away. It was like sitting in the cab of a truck instead of the front seat of a car. The world looked smaller. Comanche’s walk was also brisker than Pepper’s. Since hislegs were longer, each stride carried him across more ground. Also, there was a sort of grinding quality to Pepper’s slow walk. Lisa knew that had to do with his age. Comanche seemed to take pride in the smoothness of his walk. Then they trotted. Comanche’s trot was almost choppy, but it was very fast. Lisa could feel the breeze in her hair, even with her hard hat on. She posted automatically, rising and sitting ever so slightly with every step of the horse’s trot. Pepper’s trot was very smooth, though much slower than Comanche’s. She often did a sitting trot on Pepper. It would be hard and uncomfortable to sit Comanche’s trot. She was sure she’d just bounce out of the saddle like a cumbersome sack of potatoes. Lisa wasn’t happy about that at all, and she told Stevie about it.
    “Balance,” Stevie said, consoling her. “Balance is the most important thing. When you work on that, you’ll find you won’t have much trouble with that choppy trot.”
    Lisa made a face.
    “I promise,” Stevie insisted. “And besides, the best is yet to come.”
    Stevie slid her foot back and touched her horse, Topside, behind his girth. In an instant he began cantering.
    Comanche followed suit. It bothered Lisa that Comanche had started cantering before she’d signaled him to do it. It just wasn’t a good idea to let a horse changegaits on his own, even if she was about to tell him to do it. Lisa tugged on the reins ever so slightly. Immediately Comanche slowed to a trot. That was good. She made him trot a quarter of the way around the ring. Then she gave him the signal for a canter. He obeyed. At first Lisa was so pleased by the fact that she’d done the right thing and taken charge of Comanche that she didn’t even notice how wonderful the result was. Then it came to her. Comanche had a smooth, rocking canter that totally made up for his choppy trot. She sat deeply in the saddle, shifting easily back and forth with the gentle motion of the speeding horse.
    “Oh, this is wonderful!” she called out to Stevie, now behind her.
    “I knew you’d love him!” Stevie said happily.
    But, of course, that wasn’t what Lisa had said. She
didn’t
love Comanche. She just loved his canter. The horse she loved was Pepper, and the trouble was that she couldn’t ride him. Riding wasn’t ever going to be the same for Lisa.

A LTHOUGH C AROLE LOVED being with Judy and learning from her, she found it difficult to be with horses who were in pain. They had been working together for a while and Carole couldn’t get over her feelings of sadness every time she saw a sick horse.
    “It’s not the pain they’re in that’s important—unless it was avoidable,” Judy said to her. “It’s how we can get them out of it that matters.”
    The two of them sat across from one another at a pizza restaurant where they’d paused for a snack in the middle of a busy afternoon.
    “But it hurts me so much to see a horse who feels bad,” Carole explained.
    “All creatures, including people, feel bad from time totime. Most of what we see is temporary and will pass. You know the gelding we saw earlier with founder?”
    “I thought you said that was laminitis—”
    “Same thing, different name,” Judy told her.