Countdown to Groton House: Four Days!!

Sorry for my lack of updates these past few days. Ever since the great flood on Friday when the pipe burst in my closet (effectively covering my entire floor with two inches of standing water), I've been a bit out of my mind. Today, actually, I was planning on giving Gogo a light jump school, but I've been suffering some pretty awful mold illness (between the leaking, flooding, and high humidity, we seem to have a mold explosion in here, which is making me rather sick), and my vertigo and nausea were overwhelming (no puking, thank god). I felt it wasn't particularly safe to get on my horse when I could hardly walk a straight line, especially when I was planning on jumping, so she got a light lunge instead. She did break a sweat, and we did plenty of trot-canter transitions, so I'm happy with what we did. I certainly don't need to school her hard the week before a tough show, and there was nothing over fences that I could have done today that would better prepare her for this coming weekend, so it all worked out. I am thankfuly feeling better now, but I'm back in the apartment... so I probably will feel like crap again tomorrow morning.

Saturday and Sunday were great fun. On Saturday, Anne and Salute and Gogo and I went back to the Larkin Trails and up into the Middlebury Bridle Land, where we did our 25 minute trot, which was the real conditioning part of our hack, popped over some XC fences, cruised for a little while at a brisk canter, and shared some good laughs. We were out for longer than expected - three hours - but neither Gogo nor Salute seemed any worse for the wear afterwards.






Some liniment, a long afternoon turnout, some wrapping and a good night's sleep, and she was bouncy and cheerful as could be when I went out to feed breakfast yesterday morning. And even though it was crappy and rainy all day, after work I still tacked up and rode to Dunkin Donuts to get myself a nice hot cocoa :) I carried a dressage whip this time, and just having it there encouraged her to WALK instead of saunter! We seem to be making friends along the way... people love to stop and pet her! Which, of course, strokes her ego and makes her strut along like, "yes, my admirerers are all here... come, flock to me humans!"

And then today, of course, was an epic moldy fail.
Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better, less vertigo-y day. Dressage lesson tomorrow, dressage lesson on Wednesday, day off on Thursday, and then we take off Thursday night. I've already packed all my show clothes, cleaned out the tack room, and stripped the back of the trailer, so we're under control in terms of packing. Ride times should be up soon!

FOUR DAYS!!


EDIT: Okay, Groton House is the best ever. Not only did they already post the results from the Summer Classic (this past weekend's schooling event) already, but on the same day they also posted our start times. GO GROTON HOUSE!
Dressage: 8:36am
XC: 8:28am
And stadium is... whenever stadium is. This is a tentative time schedule, mind you, but that's pretty awesome - I'll have tons of time to watch the rest of the divisions go!