excerpt
Tanya also decided that the palomino could use a quick bath, and
together, they led their horses to the wash rack.
Even though they were stabled at the far end of the show
grounds, it was amazing how many people were finding their way
back there to say hi, offer their words of encouragement, and take
a look at the horses. Joel never was a social animal, but even he
found himself saying “howdy” to the folks who wandered by. He
recognized a few faces from the Great Falls Show and he suspected
that they were part of the Montana contingent who had
been cheering on both him and Tanya.
After bathing their horses, the consensus was to get a bite to
eat. They had a light salad and a bowl of soup at a restaurant,
then it was time to return to the horses and start thinking about
saddling up for the evenings performance. It was already seven as
they passed the arena on their way back to the stables and could
hear the national anthem and the roar of the crowd heralding the
start of this evenings’ performance. This ought to be something,
Joel thought to himself as he nervously strolled along between
Tanya and Cindy.
As they saddled up, Joel thought the horses could tell that this
was something special. This time, the warm-up pen was much
less crowded. With only twenty horses and riders making it in to
the finals, there was lots of room to move around, but Joel didn’t
want to allow his nerves to get the better of him and start to work
his horse too hard. What was different this time was that there
were probably more people around the warm-up ring, watching
the horses and riders prepare, than there were at many horse
shows.
This evening they would be riding in the reverse order that
they finished in the preliminaries the previous day. For Joel,
being in fifteenth position meant that he would be the fifth rider
in the ring, and for Tanya, in second, she would be the nineteenth
rider. With all of the horses separated by only a few points
going into the final go-round, it really was anyone’s show. After
all, they were competing in front of a crowd of thousands…
