"Colorful," he amends. "I think the canter gets colorful."
Laney has walked over from the center of the pen and is standing at the rail listening to this with her arms crossed. Expression caught somewhere between exasperated and entertained. She looks at me on top of Copper, then at the betting committee on the fence rail and shakes her head slowly.
"Y'all are terrible," she says.
"You could've joined the pool," Remy tells her. "I offered."
"I'm his instructor. I'm not betting on my student."
"So you think he falls too," Remy says.
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't say he doesn't."
Laney points at him. "Fence repair. One month. Keep talking."
Remy zips it with a grin.
I look down at Laney from the saddle. She tilts her head up at me and there's something warm in her expression underneath the exasperation. Something she's not quite hiding as well as usual.
"You ready to keep going?" she asks.
"What comes after the trot?"
She holds my gaze for a half second longer than necessary. "Canter."
From the fence Remy makes a sound of pure anticipatory delight.
Maisie grips the fence rail with both hands and leans forward.
Silas picks up his fence tool and sets it down again.
I settle deeper into the saddle, find my posture, and think about the canter chapter.
I read it three times.
I should have read it more.
The canter is nothing like the book.
I want to state that clearly and for the record. The book described the canter as a three beat gait with a rocking motion that most riders find more comfortable than the trot once they relax into it. The book used words like flowing, rhythmic and natural.
The book has never met Copper at full canter on a Tuesday morning with an audience.
Copper moves into the canter smoothly and easy because Copper is a good horse and knows exactly what he's doing. The problem is entirely on my end. I lose the rhythm immediately, grab the saddle horn which I know is wrong.
Overcorrect my balance, overcorrect the overcorrection, and spend approximately fifteen seconds looking like a man trying to solve a very physical math problem at high speed.
Remy makes a noise from the fence that is not a word.
Maisie goes completely silent, which is somehow worse.
Then something shifts. Some combination of muscle memory and desperation and whatever instinct lives underneath. All the book knowledge kicks in and I stop fighting the movement and just. Ride.
Copper's canter is actually exactly what the book described. Rocking and rhythmic and once I stop arguing with it, genuinely manageable. We come around the far side of the pen and I find the diagonal and sit into it properly. My hands soften on the reins and for about thirty seconds everything works the way it's supposed to.
It feels extraordinary.
