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them.
    Stevie opened the door to the little paddock while Carole stood aside, allowing the mare to pass her. Honey-Pie glanced at her, apparently assuring herself that Carole wasn’t going to try the lead rope thing again, and trotted out into the paddock.
    “Wow, that was a big job,” Stevie teased. There was an edge to her comment, though, because none of them could figure out why Max seemed to doubt their ability to look after this horse.
    “Well, if there’s nothing more to do for Honey-Pie, perhaps we can do something for ourselves,” Carole suggested. “Max left the low jumps up in the schooling ring, and that gives us a chance to work on jump form. Why don’t we tack up and go have some fun?”
    Lisa glanced across Honey-Pie’s paddock to the schooling ring and saw that Carole was right. The whole ring was set up with eighteen-inch jumps. The jumps themselves would be no challenge for their horses to get over, and that would make it all the more important to work on their jumping style. One thing she’d learnedin her relatively short time as a rider was that if she could do something perfectly when it was made easy for her, she’d be able to do it better when it was harder.
    In fifteen minutes, the three girls were ready to begin. Carole went first. Her horse, Starlight, was a natural jumper, and she had learned a lot from him.
    But this exercise was difficult for the bay gelding. He loved jumping so much that he tended to overjump—to begin too early or jump too high. In hunter-jumping, form was everything, and a horse that jumped four feet high to clear an eighteen-inch jump didn’t have good form. Carole had to work hard to keep him from taking off too far from the little jumps.
    Carole was annoyed with her performance. “Go ahead, Stevie, you show me how to do it.”
    “It’s tougher than it looks, isn’t it?” Stevie asked.
    “For us, yes, but I bet you’ll do better.”
    “Not likely,” Stevie said modestly. It turned out that she was wrong, however. Belle and Stevie often worked together on dressage, a precise form of competitive riding in which every single move made a difference in the score. When Stevie held Belle back from jumping too early, Belle held back from jumping too high.
    “Nicely done!” Carole said.
    “You kept her on a tight rein, didn’t you?” Lisa asked. “Was that why she did so well?”
    “Partly,” said Stevie. “Also, all my aids were given in very small doses—like, I only loosened the reins a little bit, leaned forward a small amount, and held her from her takeoff until the very last minute. Remember, a horse cannot see anything that is immediately in front of him and nearby, so he’s relying on you to tell him about the jump. It becomes invisible at the most critical moment.”
    “Okay, I’ll try now,” said Lisa, although she wasn’t confident that she’d have much success.
    She nudged Prancer to a trot and then to a slow, even canter. She circled the ring once to be sure she and Prancer were in balance; then she opened her left rein a little bit to bring the mare in line with the first jump. Prancer, seeing the jump ahead, began to speed up. Lisa tightened up on the reins to make Prancer return to their earlier pace. Prancer obeyed. The jump wasn’t high, but Prancer knew she had to get over it. She lunged toward it. Lisa didn’t release the reins and allow her to make the jump until they were very close, less than two feet. Prancer got the message. She pushed off with her hind legs and responded with a gentle upward surge as Lisa leaned forward in the saddle and moved her hands up, relaxing the pull on the bit. Prancer cleared the low jump and landed smoothly.
    “I did it!” Lisa said.
    “Good form!” Carole complimented her.
    “Well done,” Stevie agreed.
    The rest of the jumps seemed easy after that. Lisa was glad of the exercise. Sometimes the easiest-looking things were the hardest to do right.
    As she drew Prancer over to the fence