Half Pint

By Liz Braid

The first book in the Brumby Girl series introduces the Ferraro family in Beverford near Swan Hill, in particular 10 year old Jessica Ferraro who raised the wild rescue filly Half-Pint from a foal. Now nearly full grown, Half-Pint comes back from six weeks with a trainer having been started under saddle. Jessica thinks all her dreams have come true until her parents restrict her riding to weekends when she is supervised by her mum or a local riding instructor. Jessica has other plans and starts riding bareback in secret before her parents get home, but not everything goes to plan... From first ride to first gymkhana the book details basic knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to succeed with horses.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadOnTime BV
• Release date: Nov 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781742844909

Book preview

Prologue

Hooves thundered everywhere. Dogs were baying. Nothing made sense. We never ran from anything here in the high country. We ran for fun. We ran to feel the wind on our faces. We ran to test our legs and strengthen our lungs. But today, we were running for our lives.

At only a couple of weeks old I was strong and fast. I could outrun a wallaby, and the pregnant mares, but not my older half brother. He and his mum got away first, along with the yearlings and our dad. My heavily pregnant aunt had been roped first. She was in no condition to flee dogs and men on horseback. My mum and I would have slipped into the trees and hid while the raucous was on but as soon as auntie was tied down, the dogs came after us. There’s no hiding from dogs. They bite at your heals. They tear at your flesh. All you can do is run. But as fast as I was I couldn’t keep it up. I collapsed from exhaustion, my heart beating so loudly I could hardly hear the dogs over the top of it.

A man yelled and the dogs slipped away. He grabbed me off the ground and lifted me onto his horse. I heard my mum squeal, then nothing more. I woke up sometime later contained in a box, all alone.

Chapter 1:

My pony

It had been six weeks since I’d seen her and I couldn’t wait to have her home again. Home just wasn’t home without Half-Pint. She’d been with us two and a half years, and when you’re ten, that’s a very significant proportion of your life. Actually, I can work it out: its one quarter of my life, and about one half of the life that I can remember, since I don’t remember much from before I was five.

We’d just moved to the farm. Well, it’s not really a farm; it’s just a couple of hectares on the corner of grandpa’s orchard (stone fruit block). I’d been nagging mum for a pony since ever and then mum heard of the Victorian Brumby Association. They rescue wild horses caught in the Alpine National Park. Now the National Parks and Wildlife Service trap the wild horses and the VBA take them to re-home them with families like us. Back then ‘brumby runner’s caught them with dogs and horses and sold them to whoever would buy them - usually for dog meat.

Anyway, the VBA heard of this foal that had been brought in and they made a special trip all the way across the state to rescue her. When mum rang them the lady was hand raising her and happy to pass her on, since she needed four hourly feeds and her wounds dressed every day and they had twenty other wild horses to care for. I suppose a normal mum wouldn’t even have considered it, but my mum’s pretty cool. And Dad works from home, well, from Grandpa’s next door, so he could feed her while mum and I were at school.

So we made the trip from Beverford, near Swan Hill to Beaufort that weekend, and bought back VBA Half-Pint in the back of the ute. That was two and a half years ago. She was tiny then. She spent her first nights in the laundry, then we cleaned out the old hen house for her and she spent her nights in there, and her days in the back yard. We had a roster: I did the 6.30am feed, Dad the 10.30am and 2.30pm feeds, I dressed her wounds when I got home from school and did the 6.30pm feed, mum did the 10.30pm and the 2.30am feeds. Mum was really pleased when we could cut out the 2.30am feeds.

The VBA were a little concerned that we had no other horse for Half-Pint to be with, but Goldie, our aging Golden Labrador took care of her. They would curl up together in the straw at night and during the day, lie in the sun. Early morning and late evening, Half-Pint would do her exercise. I thought she could be a race horse the way she would gallop circles around Goldie, come back, nuzzle her, and take off again, this time in the other direction. The rest of the day Half-Pint would nibble some grass and sleep in the sun, never far from Goldie.

As Half-Pint grew, I spent all my waking, non-school hours with her. We would lie beneath the old gum tree in the back yard together and I’d tell her about school. We’d go for walks around the farm and over to Grandma and Grandpa’s. Grandma would always sit on the back veranda with me so she could watch that Half-Pint didn’t eat her roses. I taught her to do tricks: she would nod or shake her head given the right cue, so it appeared to others that we were having a conversation. Of course we had lots of conversations and I always counted on those soft, kind eyes to give me the answers I needed. So six weeks without her was as if I’d had my arm cut off.

Chapter 2:

Coming home

I’d been sitting out the front all morning, hardly daring to leave my post even for the call of nature, in case Half-Pint might arrive home without me there to greet her. Then finally a saw the old blue Ford and the battered grey float come slowly around the corner. It pulled into the driveway and a lanky young man stepped out to greet me.

‘Hey there Jess, how ya goin? Nice day for it.’ Leroy was so laid back and I was about bursting at the seams.

‘How is she? Is she alright? Did she travel OK? Did she miss me?’ I blurted it all