The Return of the Queen

SHE'S BACK! The Gogo I know and love, the cross-country machine.... oh she's back.

Thursday evening, Gogo, Shan and I all headed out to Red Rock Farm in Rhode Island to get some XC schooling in. I was slightly anxious about it, seeing as our last schooling at Mystic was only partially a success - but this was before the aloe juice and the hock injections. She came off the trailer and out onto the field like an old pro (which is normal for her... but hasn't been so much as of late!), and quietly wandered around behind Shannon while we checked out the grounds. It was a fairly small place, but there was a ton of stuff to school and it was all well built and well maintained, with banks, water, and a lot of varied jumps from teeny-tiny to Training. There was a ditch somewhere down one of the wooded trails, and Shannon stepped over it in front of Gogo. I let Gogo pick her path, remembering all too well how when we went to school at Mystic the other week, the sight of the ditch caused her to bolt sideways repeatedly. This time, she went, oh that's nice, never hesitated, and hopped over it practically ON TOP of Shannon! That's when I knew things were just going to go well.

And they really did. She was supurb, start to finish - acting just like her good ol' normal self again. All the brightly colored, funny looking ones, she never looked at. The bigger ones, she never hesitated at. She never hesitated at anything, really, except for the water, but I can understand why. The water was actually a stream that they had backed up and worked on, and it had a big bank out, a tiny bank out, and an open side, but the water was BLACK due to all the caca that grows in a pond in the August heat. They warned me about this ahead of time over the phone, so I knew it was coming and planned accordingly. She took a little while to convince that she should really go in, but once in, she walked and trotted in and out like a pro, up and down the tiny bank option. There was a bigger, Novice-sized bank next to the little one, and she and I were standing in the water in front of it, just relaxing for a minute. Much to my surprise (and delight, really), she went, okay we're facing that so it's time to go! and hopped up out of it from a standstill without me asking. Luckily at the last second I managed to grab onto my saddle as she was leaping so I didn't go flipping backwards over her butt into the water, lol. Boy look at those HOCKS MOVE! I haven't seen them flexing that much since she was 5!



We also found the actual bank complex, which was great - it had a tiny bank, a medium bank, and a large bank, all with very nice footing, and the medium bank had a two stride option after it. And this was where I found that I REALLY had my horse back! At Mystic, they have several banks, one of which is weenie teenie. Remember the nightmare at Riga, about the banks that she has ALWAYS done no problem all her life? Much of the same there at Mystic - I walked her up to the bank, and she put her head down and snorted at it like she had never seen a bank before, backing up as fast as she could as if terrified. But here? This is how Gogo normally walks up banks:



Woohoo my horse is back!! Don't mind the mad head tossing - she REALLLLLY hates bugs.



And she really just cruised around everything in the field perfectly. Approached every fence exactly the same, even the super scary ones. She didn't put a foot wrong anywhere. She did clock herself pretty hard on a bigger table, as you'll see in this next video, and even though she flopped over the next fence, she came back around to the table and jumped it with all her heart. Awesome.



Seriously, she was perfect. Perfect. PERFECT. If she takes on Huntington's XC course like she did this one.... we'll win. Horses can be unpredictable and you never know. But I am feeling REALLY good about this coming weekend and I can't wait to get her back around a full course. I can't even describe to you how good she feels. This is the Gogo that knows and loves her job. This is the Gogo that locks on to every fence with her ears forward and takes it all in stride, no matter what it is. This is the Gogo I know is in there.

We're ready. Two days.