Daisy and Dancer Read Free Page B

tea we all hung out in the games room, having turns on the table tennis and dance mats and stuff, and Sasha and Libby worked out this hand jive dancing bit they’re going to do in their display.
    While we were waiting up here in our room for the shower to be free, Isabel and Rosie were trying to show me how to do a handstand properly (as in just in the air, without leaning your legs on a wall). They’ve got an idea that we could all dismount at the end of our display and do them in the manège. They can go upside down and stay there for ages, but even with the wall I’m not very good – my legs just slide down one way or the other after about a millisecond. I’m going to practise in every spare minute, though, so I don’t let them down.

    Oh, gotta go, I can hear Jody on the stairs. Goodnight!

Wednesday I’m quickly writing this after lunch
    Isabel and Rosie have gone to the tack room to look through the box of show ribbons, to make the twirlers for our display, but I wanted to stay here in the kitchen and catch up with my diary. Jody says we can try out the ribbon twirling in our lesson this afternoon, but that if the ponies spook we won’t be able to do it. I’m worried Dancer is definitely going to freak out. I hope she doesn’t because I don’t want to let my friends down and be the reason why we can’t have ribbons in our display (especially as we’re already not doing the vaulting on because of me).

    My mind’s whirling round and round with all these thoughts now, and I’m getting more and more nervous about the display. 

    This morning was really fun – up until our lesson, that is! First we got the ponies in and brushed them down (Dancer came trotting straight up to me again and I was SO proud!). Then we did a fitness workout – Sally had us doing laps round Sunnyside and running to the different markers in the manège. We all got the giggles during that, and Millie and Stephanie ended up having to lie down on the woodchips because their knees had gone weak from laughing so much!
    I helped Isabel and Rosie tack up again – only with a couple of little things this time because they’re really getting the hang of it now. They still said lots of thank yous though, and Lydia said well done to me for being so helpful! Dancer chose just that moment to nuzzle into me, so I couldn’t stop grinning. I gave her a bighug and told her how fab she is, and how I wished she was my own pony!
    It wasn’t until our lesson went so badly that I started to get this nervous feeling. Here’s what went wrong:

There’s this bit in our routine where we get our ponies trotting down the long side, and then stand up in the stirrups and hold our arms out. We started with just a few strides of it and then tried to move up to nine or ten, but I could not get my balance and we had to keep starting again. I found myself saying “Sorry, sorry,” to everyone because Isabel and Rosie could do it straight away, and also Sasha and Libby were waiting to practise their latest move and I felt like I was cutting into their time.
Dancer wouldn’t stand still while we were doing our Round the Worlds – she kept walking forwards and I nearly fell right off! Also, it’s even harder to do the handstand in the manège because your hands sink into the woodchips and put you off balance. Well, it is for me , anyway. Isabel and Rosie didn’t seem to find it any more difficult. Help! I couldn’t even do it in our room, and now it’s even trickier!
I’m already worrying about the ribbons bit, even though we haven’t tried it yet. At lunch just now, I wanted to say something to Isabel and Rosie about how I feel, but they were really excited about it and everyone else was saying what a fab idea it was, so I stayed quiet in the end.
    Oh, they’re back with the ribbons, so I’d better stop writing now and go and help make the