Gogo, A History (Part III, 2008)

Yep, still stalling! Blogging is way more fun than packing.

January of 2008 saw my mare move from The Looney-Bin (the nickname for Alex's barn) back to the barn she had been at over the summer, just for two or so weeks. We then trekked back to the college. I essentially started working with her over again from scratch, doing lots of lunging with the Faux-ssoa (the cheap-o Pessoa system that I got from Schneiders for like $30!) and starting slowly under saddle again with lots of stretching. She became loads more balanced, especially in the canter. I had three goals - break 70% (which we did at a later event), show First Level (which we did in the spring), and qualify for and place in the top 10 at the American Eventing Championships (which we also did). But more on that later! That spring, we were enrolled in the Competition Dressage class, which meant dressage lessons twice a week plus competitions, and were also taking jump lessons once a week, from January through April. The only really awful thing that she did all winter that was a leftover from her poor training was some small rearing and one flip-over incident under saddle, which was pretty bad. We were both just fine, and she actually hasn't ever reared since, or even offered to... so maybe that was the lightswitch in her head.

Gogo's feet, less than 6 weeks after the horrible messy accident (she was never lame either!):

Faux-ssoa Time!:

We showed in the March Lake Erie College Winter Dressage show, and did Training 3-4 and First 1-2, Gogo's first time out at First Level. Wouldn't you know it, my mare that couldn't possibly stand to have her mouth touched less than 8 months before was Reserve Champion at First Level her first time out, with another 69.5%! (See what I mean when I say I can't break a 70%?)
We also did some schooling jumper shows, the ones held at Lake Erie, and even a C-rated hunter show once (she ain't no hunter if you know what I mean!) She even placed in a few of the 3' classes and was a star in the hack (we were robbing... we figured the judge didn't like that this not-hunter horse had a pulled and banged tail... whoops).

Gogo's ribbons from the March dressage show:

Gogo at a jumper show, baby 2'6" division:

Gogo in the hack... she looks like a nice ride to me, damn judge!:

The crown jewel of the winter season was SUPPOSED to be Lake Erie's Dressage Prix de Villes in April. We were all set to clean the crap up; our high team consisted of three of my other friends riding First, Second and Third levels. And the best part? Our team was named LEC's That's What She Said. THE best team name ever. Alas, things don't always go as planned... not only was the judge REALLY REALLY nasty tough, but Gogo came into heat like I've NEVER seen before during that weekend, in large part thanks to one of my teammmates being a big horny stallion who was stalled two stalls away from her and who talked to her nonstop. She was CRACKERNUTS that weekend, and we placed in two of our three classes, but only just. We had been getting between 66-69% all the time, and our best score at the Prix was barely a 60% :( I think we deserved better scores, because the parts when she wasn't exploding were really nice. We got a few 2's and 3's because she did some really awful head-tossing and plunging about, which she had never done before. Our team STILL did manage to come in third in the team competiton. Here's a quick clip of First 3:



Not bad huh! I should see if I can get some video up of the Waterloo show for comparison. Trust me, it's scary.

Things were going great. I had some problems after I left for three weeks in May to go for a study tour in Costa Rica (also very awesome), and she lost some condition during that time. She did a Novice combined test at South Farm in early June and won that with a 26.0, then went on to her first Beginner Novice event of the season at the Encore H.T. in Ann Arbor, MI. She grew up that weekend... we rode for an entire hour to warm up for dressage, were ready to go, and the horse before me was in the ring.... then BOOM CRASH! Giant thunderstorm out of nowhere. UGH! She stood in the trailer still tacked up with my non-horse mother for an HOUR while I was in the tent with the officials, who decided that the remaining 5 dressage rides would go that afternoon, and then the stadium (which was slated to run that afternoon) would be run the next day directly before x-country. We had less than 10 minutes to warm up, and the judge was judging us as though we were riding First level or so (everyone at the show scored low under her), and it was POURING RAIN, but somehow she came together and was in first after dressage with a 39.5. (yes, mucho de low scores!) We had an uncharacteristic rail in stadium, and had a great x-country run, finishing in 3rd instead of 1st (d'oh!).
Our next event was at South Farm, and it was by far the greatest. We had an AWESOME dressage test and scored a 22.6!! Our x-country had a few bobbles but was still clean, and we had ANOTHER rail in stadium, but still finished 1st with our score of 26.6! I got to thinking that something might be wrong, seeing as she had also started to lose a lot of weight and didn't seem quite right. A trip to the Equine Specialty hospital showed that she had the very beginnings of hock arthritis.... UGHHHH!!!! And I had been SO careful. It probably had something to do with crazy training lunging her in tight circles every day, and her old owner making her grossly obese too... ack. Well, some Adequan and Cosequin later, and we were back showing. We went to the Hunters Run H.T. in Metamora, MI (just half an hour from my parents' house, and where I did my first ever x-country school on Metro), had a dressage score of 33.0 (the first time we weren't in first after dressage... we were in 3rd!) and moved up to second after a blisteringly fast x-country run (speed time was 4:03... our time? 4:03), and then when the person in front of me pulled a rail in stadium, we won!

Soaked after our dressage test at Encore:

The week after Hunters Run was the Erie Hunt & Saddle Club H.T. - yep, the same one she gave me a concussion at the year before! We had a 32.5 in our dressage and were in second, less than a point behind the leader (and should have scored higher... on our test of 7's and 8's I had a really nice walk transition that scored a 5 with the comment of "Prompt transition! Cut corner." WTF?), had the BEST x-country run ever (she got over her horrible phobia of ditches and was now doing them like a pro), and had a great stadium round too, finishing in 2nd on our dressage score.

So now, I was overqualified for the AECs, and was set to go to the Area VIII Championships at South Farm. YAY! Welllllll, the thing about Gogo is she has a great sense of humility, and know just when to deflate my ego when it's too huge for my own head. We were in 1st after dressage, as usual, with a great score of 28.5. All set to be the Area VIII BN Champions, I thought. It's in the bag! And then, on x-country, Crazy McPsychopony gave me a wild ride... bolting, no steering, no brakes, trying to run out at everything for no real reason other than she was going too fast in her mind to possibly bother going OVER anything. We wrestled our way around the first 5 fences, and then came to the teeny-tiniest, most boring log on course. Crackers MgGee then turned into a pretzel, bulged her shoulder our, and went rocketing right past fence 6... UGH! I turned her back around, made it over just fine, and then she was PERFECT the rest of the course. PERFECT. So convinced was I that something HAD to be wrong, I withdrew from the rest of the competiton, but no, the next day she was her regular old cheery self. Mares.....

But the AECs were still ahead of us, and I turned my sights on them. It was my year-long goal to qualify and attend, and top 10 if I could. But I'll post another blob on that later... it's getting too long here to do it!

Gogo, A History (Part I, 2006)

I want to start off this new blog with a brief (or not so brief) history of the past two and a half years I've had with Gogo. There's plenty to tell, that's for sure. She's had a little bit of a rough trip, but that makes all of our successes that much more special to me.

When I had to euthanize my last gelding in January of 2006, it was for a lot of reasons - epilepsy, ringbone, and a chronic suspensory issue that was getting worse and worse, just to name a few. He had been barefoot when I had bought him less than two years before, and that quickly progressed to front shoes, then to all four shoes for eventing, then to four shoes with front pads when he went lame, to two regular hinds and two bar shoes in front with special pads and silicone, all of which made him go lamer, and lamer, and lamer. At some point I came across the natural barefoot movement, and wrote it off as something that sounded nice but obviously couldn't work for me - show horses need shoes, horses can be born with crappy foot genes, etc, right? Plus, that Strasser lady was just plain insane (and I still think she is!). Well, the day I put Metro to sleep I pulled his shoes, just to keep them as a memento, and was horrified to see his once beautiful, fat frogs completely atrophied and a quarter of the size they once were, his heels totally contracted and mushy, really mushy. Granted, part of that certainly came from being on stall rest for 8 months, but the rest was in the shoeing. What drove it home for me was that I let my stall-bound critter who had been locked in jail for 8 months loose in the ring for one last taste of freedom before we put him to sleep, and he trotted off SOUND once those shoes were off. The necropsy showed that there was horrible hemorrhaging in and around the suspensory and obviously I had done the right thing, but I just got to thinking, how would this be different today had I opted to try this barefoot hoodoo whatsajigger? Would he be alive still, would he be sound? I vowed that I would never let my next horse suffer like this, and started researching more into the barefoot idea. As it turns out, it was exactly what I had been looking for.

The other thing I had been looking for did not come to me for another six months. I wanted a younger, greenbroke horse who was a prelim candidate, and boy did I have a lot of horses to go through. I e-mailed at LEAST 60 people (I lost count after that) and had no less than 25 DVDs and VHS tapes sent to me. I flew to Connecticut and Nebraska to look at horses. I tried horses near and far. Where was the horse I had been searching for all that time? Not two miles from the farm I was interning at during the summer of 2006! I just happened to find her online, thought "hey, she's close" and went to take her for a spin. She was five, she was grossly obese, she was not a pleasure to ride at that point, but was a far better mover than any of the horses I had seen thus far in my price range, and looked to be very scopey from what I could see over fences. Trouble was, she had NOT been started well - she had been under saddle for about two or so months, but only two or maybe three times a week, so I figured I could reverse the damage before it was too late. The trainer who was working her literally said, "Well it's too easy for her to put her head up, so we're making her put her head down." And here's a link to what I mean by that:

http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a260/LovelyRitazza/Gogo/?action=view&current=Picture7049.flv

Holy poopsicles! Any of you who know a smidge about dressage know that this is a HORRIBLE way to start a youngster, or ride any horse at all, period! She's an Advanced level event rider too, shame on her. Anyhoo, after a second test ride they suggested I go cool her out by taking her for a hack..... alone. In the corn fields. And she'd never been out of an arena before... EVER. And I was a stranger on her back. I pretty much crossed myself and hoped for the best. And that's what sold me on her - I hacked out there on this 5 year-old who hadn't ever been alone or out of an arena on a windy day with 4-wheelers driving all over the place around us, and she just calmly walked out, sighing and stretching down, even when we almost got run over by a stray ATV. She had the movement to score well in dressage, she was built to have a good gallop, she showed great promise over fences and she had BRAINS and BRAVERY. I was sold. She passed the pre-purchase with flying colors, and then, at the end of July, she was all mine.

There was a lot to work on. First, we had this... ahem, weight issue. Gogo the day I bought her:



She was probably at least 150 to 200 lbs overweight. Several months of dieting and exercise led to this:



Much more reasonable. We moved back to college together for my junior year in September, and I thankfully got to take over her feeding, handling and stall cleaning myself again. Gogo also was shod in front with pads when I bought her, and had huge toe cracks on both front feet. The old owner told me, "Her feet had gotten out of balance," which I think meant "I didn't have her trimmed for 6 months and it was bad." Gogo promptly threw both shoes within two weeks of me owning her, and within two days of each other, and that was the end of that. I got in contact with a trimmer in Ohio named Sherry Eucker, and the rest is history. She did an AWESOME job with her, and I loved how her feet changed. I also took her from a weeny tiny handful of a Nutrena pellet to Buckeye Gro N' Win. For those of you who don't know, it's a ration balancer that essentially is a super nutrient-packed top dress (not an actual grain) that you can feed to easy keepers in order to stuff all their vitamins and minerals into them without overloading them on calories, starches and excessive carbs and sugars. It was magic stuff, and I saw the improvement in her haircoat and feet fairly quickly.
And then, there was the training stuff. She progressed fairly well, and found her balance and steering (and brakes, which we sometimes did not have). I found out that she had a VERY stubborn streak, and was all alpha mare. This is poor Joker also finding out that Gogo is the alpha mare:



We even managed to get our steering and brakes together enough to try our hand at a little unrecognized event at the Elementary level that September. For those of you who don't know, Elementary consists of an Intro walk-trot test, a course of tiny tiny tiny crossrails, and an x-country course of six-inch logs. My roommate Nicole, who was videotaping it, actually thought outloud on the tape that I was going to miss the first jump - it was so tiny she couldn't even see it! We finished in 3rd place on our score of 39.0, which was pretty good considering she lost some steering at the end of our dressage test and almost freaked out when we were attacked by killer bees (not really, but there were an awful lot of bees). We also had one of THESE moments...



Whoo! Special when you get those on camera.
Anyway, she graduated from our Green Beans jumping lesson to cantering small fences and coursework, even doing some lines and scarier fences, skinnies, and some x-country fences. Her dressage slowly but steadily improved, and her transitions became more fluid. Her contact morphed from up and down, rooting and sucking back, to trying to reach out for the bit, although not totally consistently. Wintertime approached, and I was feeling pretty good about where we were heading. We were really making some progress, as punky and spunky as she could be sometimes.

And yet, something was looming over my head and worrying me nonstop. I was headed on February 1st of 2007 to Palmerston North, New Zealand, where I would spend a semester studying abroad and traveling the country. I was REALLY REALLY excited, but I was worried about what would happen to Gogo. I didn't want to just leave her to hang out in a field, she was a spunky 5 year-old who needed work. I had a few options as to trainers to leave her with, and I finally chose one in Michigan that had several off the track TBs and eventing/dressage experience. She was quiet, worked well with the hot horses I watched her ride, and put a lot of emphasis on the care of the critters. I wish I had peeked in on some of the other horses at the time.... the ones I saw were in healthy weights, so keep that in mind for later. The barn wasn't much to look at, but I was promised whatever grain I wanted, however much hay I wanted, and 10 to 12 hours of turnout, as well as 5 days of work a week. Sounded great, although I was still nervous. Whenever I had left my previous horses with someone else for any length of time (never more than a week while I was away), they always did stupid things, like break out of their stalls and gorge themselves on whatever they could find, resulting in things like spending a week in the hospital - it did happen and it's WAY more dramatic than this little blurb states, but you'll have to ask if you want to know more! The only time I had ever left Gogo in someone else's care, it was for less than a week, and she went out in the roundpen one afternoon and managed to get three of her four legs tangled in the panels - EEK. So I was panicked, to say the least, that something would happen to her.

Don't worry, I told myself. She'll be fine.

Readers, I'll leave you with that, as the year 2006 closes. I'll start up again when I got back from New Zealand in June of 2007....