Gogo's Demon Possession #8574904475

We all know Gogo gets possessed by demons on an occasional basis, right? They struck again today, those a-holes. Stupid demons. I should give them names.

Yesterday, we had a random snowstorm for the better part of the day, which made travel dangerous enough that I opted to stay home and work versus die on the roads (I did try to get to work, but alas, two hours later I was not even halfway, so I gave up!). I selected a few choice turnouts for the afternoon, and Gogo was not on the list - given the nature of her injuries I like to be there when she is outside so I can monitor everything. This, unfortunately, worked both for and against me today: she's feeling the ridiculously cold weather (about -9 at the moment), so thankfully yesterday she was not outside to do something stupid when I couldn't monitor her, but she DID do something stupid outside today because of her day inside and the demons possessing her. Of course.

Shortly after being turned out, one of my staff members called to me as I was walking down the aisle and said, "Gogo's crazy!" What he meant by that is that for whatever reason, instead of placidly munching her hay like she always does for her entire turnout time, Gogo was lunging at the geldings turned out on either side of her and double barreling at them. Excessively. Here's a nice set of pictures taken two years ago of what she looks like when in "attack mode":





Which is EXACTLY what she looked like today. For those of you that argue that dressage "isn't natural," check out the attractive passage/piaffe combo and collected canter. Lovely! (And she also does a reining spin and/or rapid-fire pirouette!) Which, of course, is exactly what you DON'T want to be doing on tender legs. I saw her lunge a time or two at the geldings, separated only by one fence and some not particularly strong hotwire, and yelled at her across the way. In typical I'm-in-trouble fashion, she froze, eyed popping out of her head, and stared at me in a worried way for a second, then started trotting around her little pen. Also not what I want her to be doing. She also started kicking out at the fence behind her with one leg, then the other, and over again. I had seen enough and was like, "That's it, you just lost your turnout privileges young lady." To which she said, "Well I'd rather just stay out here and kill geldings, thank you very much!" In the entire 3.5 years that I've owned her, the only time I can remember her ever being hard to catch was one day in the first few months that I had her when instead of walking to me like she always does, she walked verrrrry slowly towards the other end of the field. That's it! Even when she gets loose, she usually head to the nearest patch of grass and is readily caught there. Every other day, she either walks over to me or stands there immobile, easy as can be to catch. Not today! Today, she was determined to NOT come in. We walked around and around and around, and she was pretty sure that she was not going to turn to face me. Rude.

Of course, being Gogo this only lasted about 30 seconds. Then, she rediscovered the haypile, and figured it was better to just eat hay and let herself be caught. She did, however, attempt to jig the entire way in to the barn, which is not okay in my book and I reminded her that we walk nicely, always.

Back in the barn, I checked her legs and found that oh no! Her LH (one with the lesion) was really quite warm. A bit freaked out, I felt further up the leg and suddenly found my hand covered with warm, wet stickiness. GREAT, now she's bleeding! A lot! She took a good couple inches of skin and hair off part of her lower leg, completely superficially so but it still bled quite a bit. The leg, of course, became quite warm and swollen, true to form. I'm pretty sure it's entirely related to the mini-gash, but this isn't helping my total rising panic about next week's ultrasound. Ugh. Only the pictures will tell, I suppose.


Gogo, really?