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cups, and when they are galloping, the ridge of the cup connects with the ground and it expands ever so slightly to absorb the impact. So then the blood rushes to the horse’s foot, which is exactly what the horse needs when he’s running. Especially if there’s a full-size human on his back.
    If you keep a horse enclosed in wet conditions, then his feet can get all soggy, and if they get like that, they will eventually become horribly sore. If you change his shoes too often, then you can put too many nail holes in the rims of his hooves and wreck them. If you ever see a horse that’s lame or limping, chances are that its owner didn’t care enough about his feet.
    Just by looking at the way a horse is standing, I can immediately tell you what’s wrong and which foot needsattention and why, and I can file down parts of the rim of the hoof that have grown too much, and I can replace shoes or take off ones that are faulty.
    Even though he was the expert horseman, Granddad said that I taught him a few things too. He said I was able to get horses to trust me. They never freaked out when I came near them.
    He said that being worthy of trust is half the battle in life, no matter what it is that you’re trying to do.
    Me and John often galloped so fast that the people at the stables took stopwatches out. They told my granddad that I should definitely think about entering some of the competitions in my age group.
    But we never wanted to win any prizes. Granddad didn’t keep track of our progress or our speed or anything like that, no matter how often people kept saying that he should.
    â€œWhen ambition lifts its nasty nose, joy creeps away,” is what he used to say.
    â€œWhat does that mean?” I asked him.
    â€œIt means that when you’ve found something that’s worth doing for its own sake, you don’t wreck it,” he replied.
    It was great when John and me were out there flying around the place. My granddad would watch us, as he leaned up against the fence, resting his chin on his arms with a smile on his gentle old face. We never knew how far we had galloped. We never knew how fast we had gone. It didn’t matter. We just did it for the sake of it.
    And when we were going really fast, I talked to John the way anyone might talk to someone who cared about them. I told him some of the mean things that people said to me, which was the kind of stuff I would have told Mum if she’d happened to be around at the time. I explained to him how Sydney, Australia, was roughly 17,420 kilometers away, and about what had happened to Brian—things that were hard to talk to anyone else about. I’m not saying he understood all the details or anything, but he definitely listened to me, unlike a lot of other people I know. As we thundered along, I sometimes whispered a song to him that my mum used to sing to me when I was smaller. I don’t really know why, because it was all about seeing a baby for the first time and wanting to kiss the baby and relatively embarassing stuff like that, but I know he liked the sound of it. John was warm and strong and full of power. I always had this feeling, even when we were going very fast, that somehow he and my granddad were keeping me safe.
    All the time we galloped around the place, Granddad would be proud and delighted-looking, with his cheeks getting lovely and red. After we’d finished, Granddad would help me hose John down and brush him. And then we’d feed him and settle him back in his stable, and me and Granddad would walk home.
    I wanted it to be like that forever. The three of us hanging out together at the stables. But in the end Granddad couldn’t come with me anymore. He tried his best and everything,but just because you try your best doesn’t always mean you get superb results.
    That last autumn was cold but it hardly ever rained as far as I remember, and by the time we’d finished, the light was always