News on the Gogo front is not all that good. This past week, she's been very twitchy, headshakey and fussy with her mouth and tongue, seemingly only in the indoor arena, and not totally related to work (did this a little while handwalking in the indoor). I thought perhaps that this was due to it being that special synthetic rubber footing that hasn't been watered in a number of days - maybe she's sensitive to this particular type of dust? - but this seems a little unlikely, because she's been fussy with her mouth and tongue as well (by this I mean sticking tongue out of the right side of her mouth on and off, fussing with mouth). It seemed that a few good sneezes helped her, but not always. When I jumped her last Sunday, I watered the arena REALLY well, and it seemed a bit less dramatic.... so I haven't ruled out the synthetic-dust as irritating and a culprit to this.
But also, today I grabbed her tongue, got a flashlight, and went in her mouth to see if I could see anything, and it looks at though she *may* have a slight irritation (looks a bit red and raw) on her lower jaw underneath her tongue on the right side, which would make sense given the tongue-out-of-right-side thing. I can at least be thankful that it's NOT an issue I caused - it can't possibly be bit-related, it's way in the wrong spot for that. She's been doing this for less than a week, like I said, and has never displayed these symptoms before. She's also eating just fine.
So I wonder.... maybe something weird and weedy in the hay irritated her? Maybe she put her mouth on something she shouldn't have? Maybe one of those supplement-y buckets she gets her night check grain out of had somebody else's supplement in it that for some reason irritated her mouth? I don't know. And I don't know if this is the actual solution to the issue or not, but it seems like a good place to start.
So this sucks, pretty much, but in the grand scheme of things is NOT the end of the world. My plan is to flush with Nolvasan or peroxide twice a day, and hack her out in a hackamore for a week and see if there's any difference at the end of the week, and revisit from there. We'll kind of miss a week of training, but we will get a nice long week of hacking outdoors, which goodness knows will be awesome for her brain. I think being inside all the time is probably getting a bit dull, although she's been VERY, VERY good lately. Just... twitchy-fussy, that's all.
And now, seeing as I still have the flu and still had to work today and still have to work tomorrow..... back to bed. Keep Gogo's silly little mouth in your thoughts and let's all hope that it's just this small thing and nothing larger, and it will resolve itself on its own.
Oh Gogo.... WHY.
Gogo not enjoying the blizzard we got last week:
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