Chapter 3

As summer warmed up, Buddy slowly began to settle in and fill-out. The vet pronounced his sight 100% fine, stiched the wound on his chest, started him on a course of antibotics, making recommendations for Buddy's recovery process.

Ebony soon found that the gelding's character matched his oddball appearance. He was exceedingly gentle, allowing himself to be handled like a big dog by anyone who had a kind word for him. Ebony had no fear when Glen and Lisa brought the children around, and often found them plaiting his tail and mane with flowers, or climbing him like a tree. All the while, Buddy stood with drooping lips and floppy ears, enjoying being the centre of attention. He bonded instantly with Spud and Boss, following either of them around the farm, or seeking out their company if he lost sight of them. After being abandonned for dead once; the big gelding was not going to let any of these kind friends out of his sight ever again! He had also formed a special bond with Dale, and Ebony often came home from work to find her mother and a massive black gelding chatting amicably in her downstairs lounge room, Dale doing the talking, and Buddy resting a hind leg and drooping his head sleepily over the back of the couch. Dale's mum even took to making the gelding bowls of camomile tea, which suprisingly – he loved.

Ebony's first few tentative rides on him were equally suprising. The gelding responded well to initial dressage training, loving the way he was rewarded with a pat and a 'nice voice' from his mistress when he did the right thing. He hated to be reprimanded, and his one show of true disobediance was one afternoon when Ebony was riding him back to the barn after a work out, and noticing her long dressage whip she'd left on a fence post. Planning to pick it up to carry it back to the tack room, she reached over to pick it up, and felt Buddy tense under her. She got her fingers around the handle and picked up the whip, but the second she did so, Buddy spun to face the object of his terror, backing away rapidly and dislodging Ebony onto his neck, where she promptly dropped the whip into the long grass. Speaking soothingly to him, Ebony slithered off, and looked in horror at the poor horse. Every vein on his body was popping out, his nostrils were huge, sucking in air, and he was rolling his eyes and chomping his bit in terror. Runny green manure splattered down his back legs, and the gelding's knees shook violently. Buddy was returned quickly to the barn and given a massage, a small injection of ACE and a bowl of his favourite camomile tea, and a few hours later, he had calmed down enough for the sweat to dry and the trembles to stop. The whip was never retrieved from the long grass.

Buddy's initiation into jumping and cross country were by far the most alarming experiences, however. Floating him over to Mira's one weekend, Ebony had had notions of trying Buddy over some baby jumps, to see what he would do. The look on Mira's face as Ebony took a couple of 2-foot rails on the gelding confirmed what she was feeling: The gelding had NO technique. None.

“He looks like a cow trying to jump those fences!” Mira laughed, but not unkindly.
“He feels.... bizarre.” Ebony agreed, “but he's not afraid. Actually look how he pricks his ears, I think he enjoys it. He just, I dont know, seems to tip sideways, instead of jumping straight! It's the strangest feeling I've ever had on a horse! It's like both his legs go to one side – like a high jumper doing the frosby flop!” Strangely enough, it felt safe. Buddy was not going to stop. His jumps were honest, and careful, but... sideways. And his legs could go to either side of his body, depending on the canter lead he was using. Ebony shortened her reins, deepened her heels, and turned to gelding toward another of the little fences. Sure enough, like clockwork, the gelding shuffled into the jump, picked a take-off spot, sat on his hocks, and corked screwed his big body over the fence, legs to the right, while Ebony bent her right knee more then her left, and felt her seat hovering to the right of centre of her saddle's cantle. The gelding landed clamly, and shuffled cheerily off down the slope, as though nothing was amiss.

“Mira – you're gonna think I'm nuts – but whack that little spread up to about a metre ten, would you? And only about half a metre wide. I just want to see what he does.”
Mira looked wary, but shrugged her shoulders and hefted the poles into place on the wings, thinking to herself that it was lucky she had her mobile phone with the ambulance on speed dial in her pocket. It was a plain, unpainted fence, on a slight upward slope, with no shadows or false ground lines. Ebony thumped her helmet firmer onto her head and tightened the chin strap, flexing her calves so that each heel was deep and anchored her balance on the gelding.

“Okay, here goes” she breathed, turning the gelding into a wide circle. Buddy picked up his customary shuffly canter, and circled quietly in a beautiful round frame – the way he knew got him a pat and the 'nice voice'. As Ebony turned him to face the fence she felt the gelding's head shoot up, and his ears prick forward like bullets. “Oh-oh” she gasped, but it was too late now – they were committed. Yanking a big lanky horse like Buddy sharply out of a jump at speed was risking a slide or a fall, or worse, damage to his precious tendons, not to mention his confidence. Grasping a handful of black shaggy mane, Ebony sank into her heels, and waited as quietly as she could for the jump to come.

The gelding saw the fence and sank onto his hocks into a powerful forward canter. He'd done this loads of time before; hopping an old sagging barbed wire fence into a field with a sprinkling more grass than his abandoned, unkempt, bare paddock, so that he wouldn't starve. Finishing the grass in that field, he had noticed the field beyond that had a higher fence, but a bit more grass. And so he had hopped back and forth between the three paddocks for months before he was taken to the sales. Jumping was good. Jumping was easy, and something the gelding had done every day.

Jumping meant food.

Ebony braced and rose into two-point position as the gelding launched his powerful body up and into the air, he seemed to hang suspended at the highest point of his arc, and he remembered to tuck his legs sideways just as he did for all those minths to avoid the barbed wire, which had torn his at his chest the one time he hadn't been so careful. Flicking his legs sideways kept them safe, and he felt his mistress shift her seat sympathetically the same direction, so that their centre of gravities were aligned. Straightening his front legs, he reached for the ground on the other side of the jump, landing lightly as a deer, and shuffled bouncily away up the hill.
Ebony pulled him up, puffing and laughing, turning to Mira. Mira was running toward them, laughing and pointing at Ebony's red face.

“I thought I was gonna die!” gasped Ebony wiping her eyes and patting Buddy, incredulously.
“Shit Eb, he cleared that by about a foot! But he was – literally – sideways in mid air! God knows how you stayed up there! Why the heck does he jump like that?!” Panted Mira arriving at their side.
“I have no idea” Ebony began lauging again. “It's bizarre! You want a go?”
“NO THANKS” Mira shot quickly, bursting into fits of laughter again. “Well, I guess he's not going to be your olympic horse, hey Eb?” she joked.
“Well, that's the thing, Miz, he's ultra careful, and he's honest! I had no doubt in my mind that he would jump. He got the height – no problem there. And yeah; it feels bizarre! But it's ok; I just have to balance myself a little differently.” She saw Mira's incredulous look. “I know it looks funky, but it feels - I dont know - safe. Weird, but safe. He's totally self-assured. He knows what he has to do, and in his own way, he gets it done. And look at him! He loved it!” Ebony pointed a finger down at the black gelding whose ears were still pricked keenly and was looking about him cheerfully. “I think he just... walks to his own beat, is all”
“Yeah!” Mira scoffed, shaking her head. “His own beat, eh? Well, it's some pretty funky music he's listening to then!”