Page 84 of Her Guarded Hero

“Elsa and Dennis Lyle. It’s the Lyle Olympic Equestrian Center. They’ve been training horses for twenty years. Their horses are Olympic champions. They can’t be abusing horses. They can’t be. I know them. I’ve been to their center. I’ve seen their horses. It’s amazing.” It wasn’t possible.

“Crystal, how reliable is this information,” Lindy asked briskly.

“It was a Frederick’s of Hollywood push-up bra. It’s gold.”

“Aurora is there any place else within this area?”

“I’m sure there is, probably somebody’s farm or little ranch,” she said shakily.

“Okay. Let’s do a google map search.” Lindy smiled kindly.

* * *

“What are you doing?” Lindy asked.

Aurora was once again wrapped in Gunnar’s shearling coat in the barn. She was staring at Aladdin.

“I’m an idiot.” She looked into Lindy’s curious brown eyes, they were so like her own.

“Why do you say that?”

“Come into Aladdin’s stall. Stay near the door, I don’t want two of us crowding him, but I want you to be able to see what I’m going to show you.”

“Okay.”

“I never thought about the significance of the scarring on the backs of his legs.” Aurora opened the stall door, and they both walked in. Aladdin nickered and ambled over to Aurora, not even caring that Lindy was in the stall with her.

“You are doing so well,” Aurora praised the horse. She reached up and stroked the stallion’s neck. “You’re not afraid at all, anymore, are you? Soon I’ll get to ride you and everything.”

Lindy snorted. “Maybe in a year.”

“Can you turn just a little Big Boy?” Aurora positioned the horse so that Lindy could see the back of Aladdin’s legs. “He came to me bloodied because he had fought against the horse trailer. He was out of control. He was tranquilized, and the vet found fresh whip marks on him and focused on those. I was the one who noticed these thin scars on the back of his legs, but I didn’t put it together with abusive dressage training.”

“What do you mean? You surely saw the marks, I know you,” Lindy protested.

“Of course, I did. The vet missed them entirely. Even Doc Barnes did when he examined Aladdin.”

“You’re kidding,” Lindy said.

“Nope. Like I said, he was a mess, so these thin scars were missed by them, they are probably three or four years old.” When Aurora touched them, Aladdin pranced back.

“Shhh,” she soothed. He calmed immediately.

“So, what made them?” Lindy asked.

“A thin whip that is often used for dressage training. They use them on the back of the legs to get them to do their high step. But never in my life have I ever seen somebody whip a horse to a point to leave scars when training them for dressage. Never. Like I said, I’m an idiot.”

Aurora was queasy, and it wasn’t the food or anything to do with the pregnancy.

“I guess you’re thinking it could be the Lyle’s after all, aren’t you?” Lindy surmised.

Aurora nodded. “I want to check a couple of more things.”

He’d never taken to a bridle or a bit. It was just too much for him. He panicked and fought when she even brought them in the stall. Aurora wasn’t even sure she could do anything to check to see if he had been subjected to Rollkur, not without actually pulling on his head, but even that wouldn’t tell her anything. Then she did the next best thing.

Aurora stroked the big stallion along his neck, again and again she continued with the soothing petting. She knew that if Rollkur had been used on the horse while training him, it would have forced a deep flexion of the horse’s neck through aggressive force to get them to perform well during dressage competitions. She’d seen one video where the pain had brought a horse to its knees.

She looked at Aladdin. “Can you be a Good Boy? Can you?” She kept talking to the horse, petting him and stroking him. Finally, she pushed in a bit along the tendon where the flexion would have occurred. She knew that over the ten months Aladdin had been with her the tendon would have healed, but he might still be sensitive to any kind of pressure in that area. Like it would be a phantom wound.