Gogo's Goodies

Hmmmm. Gogo, the weirdest mare I know, continues to get weirder by the day.

So a few weeks ago I went away on vacation right? Well, when I came back, Gogo had a weird little surprise waiting for me: one side of her udder was super swollen. The other side was normal as always. I poked, prodded and pulled for a few days, and nothing happened. It didn't change or go down. She didn't have a fever. It wasn't uncomfortable for her. When I consulted the vet, he suggested trying to express it and that it might be a weird hormonal thing. Since I had been trying to express it for days, I wasn't convinced anything was going to happen. That night, after quite a lot more tugging, pulling, and milk-attempting, I gave up and fed the Mami her dinner finally. When I sat back to watch her eat, my eye was drawn back up to her udder.... which was now leaking white fluid. Holy milky fail, Batman!



Yes, that is me milking my horse. Good thing I milked a cow at summercamp one time about 15 years ago and remember how to do it. Wasn't I a breeding major in college?

Gogo, weird woman that she is, stood perfectly still with no halter or anything (and a giant tempting grassy field all around her) while I expressed it. The following day, the udder and teat were quite a lot smaller. I expressed it again, and again, the following day it was even smaller. I couldn't really get anything out of it at all the day after that, so I figured the vet had been right and it was just some sort of funky hormonal issue.

And then yesterday, it came back. My concern at this point is that it is a mastitis. (Really, Gogo? A open maiden mare?) She is still eating, drinking and doing her thing, and at this point still doesn't have a fever, so I don't think we are dealing with an emergency, but I'll be giving the vet a call tomorrow so we can get her on some antibiotics. I read somewhere that rubbing castor oil on the udder and then rinsing it off a few hours later helps to clear it up.... never heard of that before but it might be worth a try.

Oh, Gogo. Seriously.




In other, much better news, I put Gogo in the roundpen yesterday to see how lame she was. I hadn't really seen her trot much since she blew the adhesion a few weeks ago, and I was under the impression that she was still quite lame. Apparently I was wrong, because she trotted out VERY well. She looked great! I'd give her about a 95%. She is as sound as she was post-vet when I sat on her a few times. Which is not to say she is SOUND... but she's close to it. Sounder than the dang Irish horses I've been riding for the past few months, that's for sure.

I think I will go ahead with what Dr. H recommended and sit on her a few times. If someone is around to watch, I'll trot her a bit and see what they think. At this point I am ridiculously honed to the feel of hind-end lameness, so I'll be able to feel what exactly is going on as well while I am in the saddle. Mostly I want to sit on her so I can peel off some of those ridiculous pounds she is carrying around with her.... she's easily 200lbs overweight. Not exactly good for a pair of questionable hind legs is it! Ever hear overweight people complaining about their ankles, getting surgery on their knees, riding around in carts because it hurts them too much to walk? Same basic idea.... excess weight is damaging to bodies. ALL bodies.



I mean look at her.... DANG!:




That is one big momma. I'll have to get some sort of a game plan in order in terms of sitting on her... I really just can't do the willy-nilly ride-when-I-feel-like-it thing, not with an injury. My slightly OCD brain can't deal with that.

Good lord though. If I can't get some of this weight off of her, she really might just explode.

Does this saddle come with a seatbelt?

Gogo feels awesome. She is also feeling awesome, which is certainly delightful, but remember what happens when she is feeling great? Yea. She can be downright EVIL when she wants to be.

Not to say that she is being evil on purpose. She just has entierly too much energy to know what to do with, and under saddle I am going to have to be very careful that she doesn't end up doing something stupid and reinjuring herself. My problem is that with my go-go-go-go job all day long, I am exhausted at the end of the day and not inspired to get on when it's dark and freezing cold out. So, instead I've been coming to ride first thing in the morning before work. First thing in the morning for a very spicy mare in the freezing 12-degree weather is not exactly a fun time however. When I rode her the other evening and we took our first trot steps, she was totally quiet and relaxed... after she had been turned out and treadmilled. First thing in the morning, however, she is a veritable fire-breathing monster. Take yesterday, for example. Our walk work is a bit scary because while she is behaving for the most part, I can see her exceptionally expressive eyes rolling around in her head. Which usually means trouble. When she's relaxed, she has nice relaxed eyes. When I can see the whites of them popping, everybody put your seatbelts on. She demonstrated her tension by walking by one of the arena doors, spooking at whatever evil monster was hiding behind them, and standing up in a huge rear. She rears.... and rears.... and rears..... and rears. Just stands there on her hind legs, hanging out. I had one arm wrapped around her neck, and one on the reins, and I actually had time to scratch my nose and then start laughing while she was still up there. Seriously. By the time she came down I was peeing my pants laughing. I probably shouldn't find that as funny as I do. Well, she's balanced!
When we started trotting, she felt OUTSTANDING, not like the weak-butt of Tuesday at all. She very very, very even - even better than this summer, maybe - and very forward. Very, very forward. I obviously don't want to be on a circle for any length of time in the trot, so I sort of gulped and made my way down to the far end of the arena to where the scary door is. Miss Gogo Queen of Camels shot her head up in the head, started snorting, and rocketed away from the door, launching herself into a series of leapy-bucks. This mare NEVER bucks, so it surprised me, but they weren't like rodeo bucks. They were leaping-around-with-all-four-feet-off-the-ground-too-much-energy bucks. So we spent a lot more time than I wanted trotting down at the far end of the ring instead. It's only 5 minutes, thankfully, but it was 5 VERY exciting minutes of my life. Especially because every 10 seconds or so she'd spook horribly. Very exciting.

At least there was no nonsense in turnout yesterday..... and why was that, do you ask?
Oh I dunno. It might be that she's magically come into VIOLENT FLAMING HEAT again:






Oh for god's sake, Gogo.

Today we will be riding in the afternoon. Just because I'd really rather not DIE today, thanks.

I'm in Chicago, Trick!

We made it! Last night, Gogo and Alex and I pulled safe and sound into the Lamplight Equestrian Center after a long two days of travel. Really, it wasn't nearly as long or miserable as I expected - in fact it was really quite a lot of fun.

On Tuesday, I woke up early and scrambled around trying to get all the last of my preparations done. I was a little waylayed after Shan discovered I left my shipping boots outside and they had gotten covered in dew - d'oh! - but after a little lovin' from the dryer everything sorted itself out and we rolled out of the farm at around 8:15am or so. It was REALLY FOGGY!



But it lifted and the drive through PA was gorgeous, albeit reallllllllly long:



Gogo and I stopped at a highway rest area around 1:00pm or so to unload and go for a little walk. I'm pretty sure there isn't any other horse in the world that I would do that with, but Gogo always hops off the trailer and looks around with mild interest, and that's about it. She wandered around with me, ate some grass, drank nearly a full bucket of water, and let a family with kids fawn all over her.





I love the one with the Pet Area sign, she looks so quizzical. The drive was loooooooooooooooooooooooooong, and as we drew closer to Alex's house we of course found THIS waiting for us:



It poured so hard I literally had to pull over, which I NEVER do. I just couldn't see the road at ALL. And when you can't even see the white lines, well, you know.

But the storm passed, and the sun even came out. We pulled into good old Chardon, OH at around 6:30pm, and brought Gogo into the barn to have a blissfull reunion with her old friend Sinatra. Now, I think I should mention Gogo hates geldings, chesnuts, and Paints. Sinatra is a chesnut Paint gelding. But apparently, when Gogo is in VIOLENT FLAMING HEAT, chestnut Paint geldings that you used to get turned out with and beat on a long time ago are the best things ever after a long hard day:





Of course, that adorable-ness came hand in hand with nonstop squatting and peeing, probably allllllllllllllllll night long. Nice. They settled in, we fed dinner and then her later night check, and crashed, ready to wake up bright and early the next morning.


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Man that whole waking up the next morning thing SUCKS sometimes! Neither of us really wanted to get up when the 5:00am alarm went off, but we somehow managed to crawl out of bed by 5:45am or so, lol. We fed, finished packing, and then tossed Gogo on the trailer for another shuffling around - Alex and I still had to go clean stalls at the barn where she works, so we brought Gogo with us and turned her out in the big grassy field to let her move around and stretch out before yesterday's long, long drive. Now, Gogo's not friendly to other horses. In fact, she'd really rather just kill any horse that comes remotely near her. However, she and Alex's mare Polly used to go out together, and they fell in LOVE. CRAZY MAD MARE LOVE. Or at least Gogo did, Polly was more like "uhhh..." at the time. Polly is currently at the facility where Alex works, so we figured that they would love to go back out together for a little while and have a happy reunion. And just look at Gogo's reaction to when she sees Polly:



Totally anticlimactic at the end but look at her wheel around and scream!! You can't hear it very well, but she was nickering to Polly the entire time. At some point, however, Polly decided she was not going to play turnout anymore, so Alex had to bring her in before she started running. Which of course, got Gogo to start running. So I had to bring her in and put her in one of the empty stalls in the lower barn, which she did not like at all, but she finally stopped hollering for Polly and settled down and ate some hay. Unfortunately now that she's seen Polly and had friends for 2.5 seconds, that's ALL she can think about now! We don't normally let Gogo have friends of any sort because a) she likes to EAT them and b) she then gets abnormally and irrationally attached to them. Oh, Gogo, why....




Back on the trailer at around 10:00am, and after about 10 miles Gogo FINALLY stopped screaming for Polly. We continued from there, and the drive was totally fun and felt a lot shorter because I had Alex there with me to keep me company. At around 2:00pm, we decided we needed to stop and let Gogo go for a walk, at another truck stop of course:







Again, I am pretty sure Gogo is the ONLY horse in the world I would do this with, but then again Gogo is the only horse in the world I would actually take this far on a trailer trip because she ships so easily. Any other horse would have had a really hard time. Gogo really just took it all in stride.

Finally, we pulled into Lamplight at around 6:00pm Chicago time - PHEW!! We unloaded (and Gogo then started screaming hystically, looking around for Polly, although she thankfully quieted when she realized Polly wasn't anywhere to be found), unpacked what we needed to unpack, unhooked the trailer, let Gogo roll in her stall and have some dinner, and then took her for a nice long walk around the Lamplight grounds, up near the dressage arenas where everyone was schooling.




We bumped into some of our readers - hi guys, you know who you are! - who Gogo then promptly tried to kill in perfect Gogo fashion, not once but TWICE as she spooked at a random piece of caution tape and went bolting sideways (and backwards) into their horses. Oops. The second one was my fault - I held up the caution tape and was rubbing her face with it, and she put her head down and got her ear caught in it. Yeah, I'd probably go backwards too! Thankfully all three horses got over the horse-eating tape, and Gogo was even friendly enough to bite one of them on the nose, what a sweetheart. I think she's feeling bitter because Polly is secretly in love with another gelding. We headed back to the barn to get tucked away, and she was fine and dandy later on at night check - her night check paper said that shortly before we arrived she had been taking a nap - and she ate with gusto, drank two buckets of water, and tried to kick her neighbor Tessie in the head. Nice!


We're up and at 'em this morning, getting ready to go feed. Today we'll do lots of handwalking, give her a bath and make sure she's all clipped and trimmed, walk my XC course, watch some Advanced dressage, get my packet and bucket o' goodies (show office was closed last night), and hopefully get to go see the Shedd Aquarium and Navy Pier if we get some time. The weather is supposed to be GORGEOUS all weekend, and I am VERY excited to see what my course has in store for me.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaay AECs!! Come stop and say hello if you can find us, we're in the front tent!

Groton House Farm H.T. 6/27/09: Day 2, Cross-Country

YEAAAAAAAAAAA BOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

Fabulous, fabulous Gogo and I have unofficially broken our tie for 2nd. At the end of stadium, ties are determined by looking back on XC and seeing who came closest to the optimum time. In terms of seconds, optimum time for our course was 312 seconds. The other rider has 302 seconds. And us? We had 310. DAMN WE'RE GOOD.

But we were only that close (which normally would be WAY too close for me) because Gogo was freaky as hell on course. I correctly assumed that because of the flaming heat and doing XC on a separate day, she was going to be looky and hot. And, well, she was, sort of. I'm not going to say she was HOT per se, but the big questions on course really caused her to look. She went over the first two just fine, looked hard at the third fence (couldn't see the landing), cruised over four and five, and gave an ENORMOUS leap at the sixths (the dark one in the woods going out into the light). I don't think she could tell that the brush bushes in it were, you know, brush, so she went over it. All four feet of it. Seven, eight, nine and ten all went well, but by this time I was riding hard and defensively at every fence instead of letting it roll smoothly. She listened well when I gave a hard half-halt down the hill to fence 11, and we cruised through the woods to the real meat of the course, fences 12 through 15 - the ditch, drop fence, water in and jump out, and hidden barn at the top of an offset hill. Well! The yawning black ditch with a troll in it almost went smoothly, but at the last second she saw that it was filled with black mulch and was much bigger than anything she'd done before, and gave it the popeye and hesitated hard, but had too much momentum and launched over it. A big pat from me, and it was onto the drop, but she was wary after the ditch and gave the drop, water and barn this kind of a crazy crazy ride:



Shannon (the barn manager) surprised me by coming to watch my XC run before heading back south to see her boyfriend. HOW AWESOME IS THAT? She got up at 4 just to watch a tiny piece of my ride! She's awesome, AND she filmed me too!
And oh my GOD is that not HYSTERICAL when she does the awful LAUNCH off the drop? It really was just a very green mistake and typical of a horse that doesn't understand how to drop down instead of leap off, so that's understandable, but the water? She's never really looked that hard at any water before, and as you can see I was pretty much beating the hell of out her to get her in. She trotted out fine, cross-cantered all the way to the barn, and then wiggled all the way to fence 16. Fence 17 was uneventful. As I glanced at my watch just before the finish (which you don't see), I saw that my watch said 5:08, and the optimum time was 5:12. Believe me, I was spurring by that time!! We crossed the line on 5:10.... CLOSE. TOOOOOO CLOSE.

But it worked out didn't it!!!! Thanks to her spookiness and hormones, we are the unofficial breakers of the tie should we both go clean tomorrow. The stadium course is currently set for training, and we have a different track, so I'll be walking it tomorrow, and don't have pictures of it.

I really can't stop cracking up every time I see her stag off of the drop. It is SO FUNNY.

WISH US LUCK TOMORROW FOR THE FINAL DAY OF THE GROTON HOUSE EVENT!!!!!!!!!

The Return of the Chiro Man

I am very thankful to report that Gogo's little puffiness in all four legs disappeared with poulticing, and all throughout the day there was no return of it nor was there any heat, so my guess was that it was just hot and stressful, and her little bit of time off was just the fix. Yesterday I wanted to give her a light workout on the soft, rubbery indoor footing, so I revisited this old exercise, but left the vertical as a big X. I figured if she felt at all strange, I wouldn't go beyond a little flatwork, but she felt brilliantly sound, so we progressed with the exercise a few times. You canter in to the big X, and then have four strides to transition back down to a trot, trot over the poles, and then halt. Again, I rode her in the snaffle (second time I've ever jumped her in it as opposed to her Waterford), and she was BRILLIANT in it. She did the exercise VERY well, and was very quiet and responsive to every half-halt and every transition. I worked hard on staying up in a respectable two-point right up to the base of the fence (it's soooo hard...!), and keeping her round throughout the entire workout as well, including right up to the fence. She performed beautifully (and I did all right too!), and we finished our quick 20-minute workout with a hack through the orchard with Harrison and Shannon. I cold hosed both fronts and re-wrapped her that evening, just to be safe.

This morning, her legs were still tight as a drum, and I had a lesson bright and early at 8am (which meant I was up at 4am cleaning stalls... blarg). Right off the bat, she warmed up well. After some walk-trot work, which she was very malleable for, Vicki asked, "Does she do reinback?" Well, in the past, reinback was a source of major fear for Gogo - something about confining her in front after Jeane ruined her brain just scared the daylights out of her, and before she realized she could go backwards away from the pressure, asking for reinback caused her to rear uncontrollably. I'd reintroduced the concept to her with the help of a groundperson, and schooled it VERY occasionally, but haven't pressed the issue. I've been re-re-introducing it over the past few weeks, so I took up Vicki's suggestion to see if we couldn't unlock the area behind the saddle a little more. And what do you know, after the very first reinback, we praised her like crazy, and she visibly perked up and stretched perfectly into the bridle when we walked off again. She just adores being told she's perfect! We did loads of transitions after that within and between all three gaits, and continued to halt, then reinback. We did then without Vicki's help either, and by the time we finished, we were getting clear and light steps of reinback (she tends to want to shuffle backwards in a walk-type footfall sequence instead of with diagonal pairs). The work inbetween asking for bits of reinback was quiet, relaxed, correct, and forward. I called it a day with one final, lovely reinback and a few steps of walk out of it. She was delighted with herself, and she should be!

I also have happy news: the chiropractor came back and readjusted Gogo this afternoon, and I am very happy to say that it was nothing at all like the last time she was adjusted. Three months ago, everything in Gogo's body was majorly out of alignment, and it took some really serious adjusting to try and get it back to where it belonged. I wanted to follow up with another adjustment sooner rather than later given how major the work was last time, so I chose this time to go at a three-month interval; with luck, we'll go six months next time, although I will probably want her adjusted before the AECs. Let me tell you, Dr. Amery is a genious. Not only is he a skilled veterinarian and a skilled chiropractor as well, but he and his wife do a lot of acupuncture and applied kinesiology, which is completely fascinating to me. I've only seen him do it, never anyone else. He, being the wonderful guy that he is, patiently answered the millions of questions I always ask him when he's here, and even let me help do some applied kinesiology while working on her poll. For those of you who haven't heard of it (I hadn't either!), here's a Wikipedia article on it. Applied kinesiology is a sort of controversial alternative medicine form that goes along with chiropractic work; the point is to tap into the horse's energy, which can tell where there are weaknesses in the system. The concept is difficult to explain, but the idea is when there are disruptions in the neurons in a muscle, energy escapes, creating a weak response in the 'testing' the chiropractor performs. In the horse, it requires two people to do this: one person touches the horse and extends an arm, and the other puts their hand on the other's arm and touches the parts of the equine body in question. By both having their hands on the horse, they can create a closed circuit. I tried this with him, and he had me push up strongly with my arm, while he matched me with a downward push. That was a 'strong signal.' When he found a weakness, I found that I really had no ability to push up, and he could press my arm right down with no effort on his part. It was really weird! He then went on to adjust whatever he found was weak. While it sounds a little kooky, I totally buy into the thought that we all have a sustaining energy force in our bodies that we can tap into, and that can get disrupted, so hey, it makes sense to me. The actual adjustment went really, really well, considering how awful it was last time. Given the fact that she's just come out of heat, he found reactivity in the T-L junction (place where the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae meet) on the right side especially, which he expected was secondary due to soreness in the quadatus lumborum (which runs under the spine and connects with the ovaries). He found some reactivity in her left SI, oddly enough - I was sure it would be on the right! - but it responded well to adjustment. He did minor adjustments all the way down (some mid-lower neck, a sore spot on her poll where she banged her head, some mid-lower back), but found nothing seriously major besides some sore ovaries and a little reactivity in her left SI. She was WAY more relaxed this time about it all, and I was totally thrilled with the response she had to the treatment. PHEW. I was terrified there might be something horribly wrong and she's just really stoic!
Another thing he mentioned, when I told him sometimes I have difficulty with left bend, is that she's more upright on that foot, so her body sends differing signals to itself due to the fact that she loads that side of her body differently. There's nothing really that can be done about it except continue to work on improving her balance, and keeping the foot trimmed properly. I'll probably always fight an uphill battle to keep her as symmetrical as possible on both sides, but really, what horse (or rider, for that matter) is ever totally symmetrical? None, that's for sure!

I feel like everything is sort of falling into place before Groton House. I was worried about her hocks - now that I've seen her move and seen how sound she is, I'm not worried anymore. I was worried about her back and maybe there being problems I didn't know about - now that I've had her adjusted and there's nothing major this time, I'm not worried anymore. She's been so outstanding under saddle lately, and equally as cheery and lovey on the ground, and it just makes me feel like she's comfortable, happy, fit, healthy, and ready for a challenge. Knock on wood, but I think we're really ready to play with the Big Boys at Groton House, and have a good chance at doing well.

(Hunter's Run, 2008.)

End of May Analysis, and Happy Belated 8th Birthday, Gogo!

I've been away this week in OH visiting my fiancee week. I left Monday night, and came back VERY late last night (went to bed at 2am, was up by 4am to go clean stalls, bleugh!), so I'm understandably tired! Gogo had Sunday off, and got a nice groom and some handwalking to go along with her loooooong turnout, and on Monday, she hacked lightly around the neighborhood, up all the big hills at a trot.

And very tragically, I missed her 8th birthday on Tuesday, because strangely enough, June 2nd is not only her birthday, but my kitten's birthday (well, she's an adult now I guess!) AND my fiancee's birthday too! Before I left on Monday, I carved up an apple into the shape of an 8 and left it in her morning grain, and tonight, I made her a special birthday cake:



Mmmm! She, of course, thought it was delicious:






And she was nice enough to share a bit with everyone when she was done :)
Happy 8th Birthday sweetie pea!! Here's to many, many more birthday celebrations, cakes, and years together! :D


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And now, June begins!!


May Goals:

1) Attend our first two recognized events of the year, and obtain two qualifying scores for the AECs and for Area I Championships
Success!!!! And this deserves many exclamation marks!! Not only did we get our qualifying scores, and are now entered in the Area Championships (and just need one more completion to go to the AECs), but we WON both of Gogo first Novice runs, on our very respectable dressage scores. Awesome!!!

2) Continue to develop our gallops, and my gallop position
Success... mostly! Our schedule wasn't quite on the week-for-week that it was the month before, but during show weeks, I tend to back off on the gallops in order to save her for the galloping she'll need to do during the weekend. We have defintely developed our fitness further, and I definitely think my position has improved thanks to working with Kerry. I shortened my stirrups one hole already, and I'm going to shorten them again when we jump on Monday. We'll likely end up galloping tomorrow or Sunday, depending on how the footing is after all the rain we've had today.

3) Continue to develop better stretch, and trot-canter transitions
Success, slowly! We're still steadily improving this, the same as we have been these past few months. It comes along very slowly, but it's certainly not something we're going to perfect in a month. Progress, steady progress!

4) Start to work a little more collection into our schooling dressage work
Sucess! Again, this is not an end-all goal. We're starting to work more in shoulder-in and counter-canter work, and starting to gather her gaits beneath her a little more. She's given me exceedingly promising moments, and we'll continue to work on introducing new concepts. I've been playing with some baby walk pirouettes (very rudimentary ones), reinback, and more advanced counter canter work, but we have to be in the right level of relaxation and the right frame of mind in order to try new things. It's quite remarkable though, because things like reinback used to cause her to panic, fling her head in the air, and rear uncontrollably. I think now that she understands that she has an outlet when I ask for it - backwards motion - she's not so totally freaked out by it. I imagine when Jeane had her, a good yank backwards on the reins was all it took to flip her over. Ugh.

5) Have a little FUN out there ;)
SUCCESS! We are having a blast :D That weekend vacation we took with Salute and Anne and Kerry and Jen? Awesome. Just awesome. None of it is worth it unless you're having fun doing it.



June Goals:

1) Complete our AEC qualification requirements (one more event, obtaining a completion with no XC jump penalties)
2) Start to introduce new dressage concepts to her, and continue to ask for more moments of collection
3) Start fine-tuning our gallop speed and fitness via GPS
4) Continue ironing out the kinks in our Novice test - transitions, freewalk
5) Continue to strengthen and improve my position over fences, on the flat, and during gallops - there is always more to work on!


As for exercising myself.... I fail. A lot. If I am to start running with more regularity, I need to get up at 4am every day, because I just don't have the time or energy during the day or after work. Which is a horrible shame, really, but there is only so much a person can do before they collapse completely.


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Like I said before, Gogo's had the better part of this week off (Tuesday-Thursday). I got on her today to do a light, stretchy dressage work, but discovered that since she had just been starting to come into heat last Sunday, she's finishing up her cycle now and OYE it's a strong one. When I went to get on her, she scooted off underneath me - totally unlike her! I went to get off and try again, and she scooted off again! Rude! When I went to get back on her, she held perfectly still, like she normally does, but the second I shifted my weight to pick up my other stirrup, she tweaked and went bolting around the mounting block in circles. Which, of course, made me crack up. She stopped and stood there quietly for a second, and then we walked off nicely, but the rest of the ride wasn't all that productive. We finished with a lot of really quiet walk-trot transitions, but it was obvious she was completley cramped up through her back, and there wasn't much I could do about it. Oh well, these next few days will be filled with galloping, hacking, and jumping, so hopefully by the time dressage-ness comes back around on Tuesday, we'll be quiet and comfortable and non-hormonal and ready to go again!

Boobalicious!

Good news on the Gogo boobie front! Yes, the swelling is WAY down, and we don't have to call her Dolly Parton anymore! There is still minor swelling, to be sure, but the majority of the edema is waaaaaaaaaay gone. Woohoo! I'm done icing it - there's nothing left to ice really - and we're up to handwalking twice a day for 1/2 hour each time. We're back to work on Tuesday, which cannot come soon enough because she is starting to jump out of her SKIN from having these past few days off.

T-minus six days until our first show of the season! Mount Holyoke is having their Afternoon Saturday Sizzler jumper show this coming weekend. It's not a count-for-anything show, just a little schooling show, but it's our first outing in front of a judge, so it qualifies as a show show! We'll be getting a spring overhaul on Friday - bath, mane pulling, clipping, trimming, tail banging, tack scrubbing, trailer tack room organizing, you name it, it's getting done! She actually just had a bath yesterday, but of course today went out first thing and rolling in the nasty gooey mud... like I didn't see that coming. So she got hosed off AGAIN when she came in. It was 60 degrees today, amazing! And now, it's POURING rain like you've never seen and it's not supposed to stop. Bleugh.
Also, t-minus 16 days until the opening date of our FIRST EVENT, OMG. The vet was out to pull a Coggins and give her a Rabies (apparently in CT it's law that you have a Rabies certificate at CT shows... I think I already mentioned that about five times), and I copied a bunch of entry forms and my Rabies certificate. Now I just need to copy the Coggins when it gets here and VOILA! Ready to go. NERVOUS! The actual event isn't until May, of course, but STILL.


I had this moment of realization the other day that made me swell a little with pride. As compltely, totally, and utterly alpha as Gogo is, I'm still always HER alpha, and she concedes to me and looks to me, and LISTENS to me when I ask her to move her body or treat another herd member appropriately. First of all, Gogo would pretty much like to kill every grey horse in the world. I don't know what it is about them, but she HATES them. Just one example of how much she thinks grey horses should all be killed happened just the other day - two of the paddocks are separated by a huge alleyway that a truck could easily pass through, so no horses can even remotely get near each other when turned out in these two, and Gogo was in one, and a grey mare named Duet was in the other. Gogo made it a point to go over to the corner that was closest to that field, where Duet was lingering so she could be close to another horse, and she stood there pinning her ears and repeatedly tapping the fence with one hind foot, as if to say GO AWAY, you aren't welcome ANYWHERE REMOTELY NEAR me! They were literally at least 35-40 feet apart, separated by more than two fences! She's not done that with ANY other horse that gets turned out there! Anyway, back to the story about respect. I made the mistake of bringing in another grey, Ashley, and hanging her in the crossties right in front of Gogo's stall. This was fine until I walked away for two second, and then the Fire-Breathing Monster came galloping over and attacked Ashley full-on over her stall gate. Ashley, having iceballs in her feet, freaked and was slipping and sliding all over the place, and Gogo was pretty much attached to her neck by her teeth. I turned around from all the way down the barn aisle where I was hanging Ashley's turnout, cried out "Gogo!", and that was all it took. It wasn't said in a scolding way - more like surprise! - but she instantly released Ashley, retreated back into her stall, and went back to calmly munching hay and ignoring her. That was it. My body language must have been enough to say, "Not your place to discipline that one. My place. Get out of our collective space," and she did. Good mare. On her own, I know she'd probably KILL a grey horse. But when I'm nearby? She's a perfect angel.

I wonder what would happen in a turnout situation, if I was out there while she was turned out with another horse that she didn't like. I feel like she'd do as I asked, but would still, as second-in-command, probably kill the thing unless I really told her not to. And of course, the second I leave she's alpha again.


Those crazy, crazy mares. Oh yeah, AND she's in violent, flaming, pee-spurting, non-stop screaming heat again. Spring is here!

Slutty A Go-Go

Ohhhhh Gogo. Somebody forgot to mention the fact to Gogo that mares reaaaaally shouldn't be cycling all winter long, because dropping a baby on the ground in mid-January is really just not the best planning. Nope, that evolutionary footnote went by the wayside with Gogo the second I purchased her, and she really has continued to cycle all year round for the past two years. And well, she's in heat again, now that it's early February. Surprise, surprise.

The good thing about Gogo is that being in heat really doesn't change all that much. She gets a little more distractable, she talks a lot to other horses (which she only does when she's in heat), and she, when in flaming ultra mega heat, flirts mercilessly with other mares. Yep, mares. Never geldings, only mares. One mare, in particular, is her lifelong super gay soulmate, and her name is Polly.

Polly and Gogo last winter:



(Me trying to keep Gogo clean for the show that weekend.... hence the Sleazy.)
The only mare - or horse at all - that she's EVER let come near her!!


Well, anyway. I guess I should catch up on the past few days! Last Sunday was jump day, as usual. I got up extra early in order to finish all my stalls early, and set up a really fun exercise:



And actually, that description isn't totally correct. The big X in the middle is comprised of four different jumps, which were not 2'3", but were instead set up on Bloks, which I think is very good for her because I've had her squiggle a little bit on occasion if there aren't standards. Although come to think of it, she was five when she was doing that kind of squiggling, so maybe it doesn't matter anymore. There was no squiggling for this exercise at all! It's a lead change thing - approach as indicated (say on the right lead), and land on the left. If you don't land on the left, or if your horse crossfires, make the change over the first groundpole. If you don't make it then, change over the second! A variation on this exercise (and the more 'proper' way to do it, but I did not have enough room to make it work) is to circle once you've gone over the second canter pole, then come back over it, then go to the first pole, and then take the fence away. Gogo was excellent about this exercise, excellent! She just 'got' it right from the get go. There were a few times when a few strides out she went wheeeeeeeeeeee! and pretty much doubled her stride to get to the fence, but that's what she does when she's feeling a bit fresh, so all you have to do is come back and go now wait just a minute, hold on, and she does. There was only one time where she landed from the left lead to the right (which is her harder way) where she landed on the correct lead, then crossfired over the first pole, then continued to crossfire over the second pole! Yeah, came back down to trot and tried that one again. For whatever reason, canter poles are hard for Gogo. She takes big, reaching lunges at then almost every single time, even when you ask her to wait. We'll keep working on that. The other thing we did do was approach the middle of the X of fences and take it that way, and HOLY CRAP! Talk about jumping me out of the tack, her jump over that was HUUUUUUGE! We did that a few time and called it a day. She also got her legs washed and her mane pulled, her favorite.

Monday was a hack day, seeing as it never ends up working out as a dressage day at all. We went around our usual 40-minute track up the long and gradual hills, trotting part of the way, walking most of the way back. The hills are great workouts, and she feels so fit and sound trotting out there. I'm not going to do any trotting at length on pavement, but small amounts are okay. It was freaking GORGEOUS out - almost 50 degrees!! - and the sun was shining. Aaaah, spring is almost here!

... OR NOT. The next day, Tuesday, we had a huge freaking BLIZZARD and most of our boarders had to cancel on coming out because they couldn't physically make it! It snowed like crazy all day and EVERY horse in the barn was kooky. We had a horse go THROUGH our PVC fencing (I have a picture, I'll post it later) and go running around the property bleeding, we had another horse break the the chain on his paddock gate (at a DIFFERENT time of day) and also go cavorting around, and my horse, as it turns out, is in heat. Gogo, really, in January? Well, she was awfully quick to meltdown under saddle, so we spent most of our time walking, and the walk work was all VERY good. Trotwork? Eh, not so much. She was also mega distracted by the fact that the hay guys were loading hay into the hayloft (which is very noisy) and the fact that one of the horses outside called out a few times, so of course she had to start screaming for whoever it was. She only ever does that when she's in heat! Wild woman. She also had a couple of mighty big rears for literally no reason at all that I could see. That's just what she does when she can't take it anymore... that's her escape. But really, I wasn't doing anything to upset her that I could tell. And also, I think it's more of her just acting out at harder work than anything, or her acting out at not understanding something - she just goes, I CAN'T! and throws herself around for a minute. Then, if you break it up into bite-sized chunks, she goes OH I GET IT, and the fussing stops.
Thanks to asshole trainer for teaching her how to rear. She hadn't done it in a long time, which is so weird, because the work she's done here has been BETTER than anything she's ever done in her life, WAY better. Then, she has these big explode-y moments literally out of nowhere, then settles again and is fine. Such a weirdo. She's so volatile sometimes. Before, all our work was either really good or, more often, really mediocre all summer. Now the work is AMAZING with, a couple times a week (usually not more than one or sometimes two), she BLOWS UP!

Crazy mares. And yesterday, her full-blown in-heat-ness did NOT affect her in the slightest, and Vicki said during our dressage lesson that that was the best she'd ever seen her. Powerful, uphill lengthenings, supple shoulder-ins, fluid leg yields bouncing back and forth between quarterlines, picture-perfect halts, some great stretching (yay!), some really connected transitions.. it all felt soooooo good. MARES!

Today we have another dressage lesson (yes, I'm writing this really early in the AM.... started last night, got too tired, finishing now!), and then Friday I'm either going to ride her or lunge her, seeing as Wednesday was supposed to be our lunge day and that obviously didn't happen. Which is fine... because she was great!


And whatever happened to the spring-type weather? Well, after the blizzard the temperature plummeted..... it's currently 2 degrees out with a windchill of -10. WHY. At least on Saturday and Sunday it's supposed to be almost 50 again....

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!