Official AEC Countdown: 5 days!!

I am officially calling an end to this veterinary nightmare week RIGHT NOW. We had one go in to Fairfield for a colic (turns out he's got wicked ulcers), one go in to Salmon Brook for stovepipe legs and a serious fever, two go to Fairfield to get their suspensories shockwaved/injected with steroids/poked at, had a different vet essentially give up on the third suspensory horse (told us to just throw her in a field), and then of course we put Max down last night. All since Wednesday, I might add. Theo is back and eating fine and drinking sort of fine, the suspensory horses are lame but less so (except for Hermione, who is more so), and we had no random emergencies today. So we're DONE now right? We're DONE! Because I said so!

And yet, despite alllll this crappiness, Gogo has been the ultimate superstar this week. I couldn't imagine having a better set of schoolings directly before the AECs. Bonus points because she's in VIOLENT FLAMING PEEING HEAT:



Notice how she's getting licked by Teg. Nice. Today when I was walking her to the wash stall, she stopped dead in front of Sonny's stall and tried to pee on his face. I literally had to drag her squatting, peeing self down the rest of the aisle while the geldings all did their best big-bad-stud impressions. As Daun correctly put it, KEEP YOUR PANTIES ON GOGO YOU'RE WORKING.

But here's the good news: she was in heat at King Oak, Mystic AND Groton House! So maybe this is the magic trick!


Yesterday evening, I had planned on galloping, but given the fact that Max was already in such distress and my gallop field is directly next door to his barn, I figured I better bag on that plan and jump instead. I set up my favorite old exercise as a refresher: a very big X right on the centerline, with four strides leading to three trot poles. You canter the X, and have those four strides to bring your horse back to trot. Sounds easy? It's not, if you're Gogo. She very much likes to go into autopilot mode after each fence, so it's a good challenge for her. She warmed up well, and went through the exercise backwards and forwards a few times VERY quietly and very perfectly. Tada! 15 minutes and I'm done? Nope, silly me wanted to test the gears and see what we had with lead changes. Now, when she got her hocks done I figured it would resolve her cross-cantering issue - she swaps in front but not behind, even though while out on XC she does perfect, fluid changes every time. But nope, injections did not fix it immediately. I did some very unsuccessful part-changes a few times, and then was like oh screw this, FINE, let's GO FORWARD and see if we can get some. And lo and behold, there we had it! We just needed more GO to get those changes right. Unfortunately, that meant I had just added a lot of GO when I needed to be adding a lot of NOT GO in this quiet exercise. I let her walk for a bit, then went to address the exercise a few more times - yep, now we're nuts! She tried to run through it like a maniac a few times, and then finally settled after some serious half-halts and some trotting through it. The final time through, she really waited when I asked her to, right to the base of the fence, and while she wanted to charge off after it, she took my fairly firm half halt very well, and two strides out had already come back to trot. Nice! I called it a day on that and hacked about in the orchard in the sunset.

Today was our final dressage school before we step into the ring on Friday, and boy I couldn't have asked for a better one. All week she's been a little snotty about her dressage, meaning she's been taking her sweet time to warm up, and doing it a little more on her own terms than I'd usually like. But today, she warmed up right away in a nice stretchy trot (a stretchy trot as our warmup, not a giraffe trot! Hooray!), and was foot perfect from there on out. She developed a very supple, very buoyant trot after some quick transitions, and actually maintained left bend through everything we did - she always, always wants to pop her left shoulder out and sneak back over to the right, but not today! We did simple changes through the trot and walk (quite a feat after last night's gallopy flying changes) and a lot of counter canter work for her, but mostly we just worked on straightness, correctness and quality of gaits. Vicki wants me to think about her trot and canter work as being right on the edge of a lengthening or a leg yield all the time, so I need to keep that in my head. No more comments about needing activity from behind! We will have so much activity it will SCARE YOU!


Speaking of something scary (or well, maybe not scary but a little bit intimidating), times are up for the AEC and WHOA, there are 41 people in my division. 41 PEOPLE. That is far and away the most I've ever shown again, and is more than double what I normally show against. At least half those are professionals, and several of them are big names... very big names. Jennie Brannigan is in my division. Phillip Dutton is in my division. Phillip Dutton, who was leading at Burghley yesterday (had time faults and is now in 4th after XC). (By the way, The Good Witch is in 38th after a not-too-awesome XC, and there are a WHOLE slew of eliminations and retires, including Mandiba, Madison Park, Arthur, Courageous Comet, and Macchiato. 12 eliminations, 13 retires on XC. Crazy... I wonder what happened.) So yeah. 41 people, some totally unbeaten horses with some amazing show records, and a whole slew of Really Big Names. I know this sounds weird, but in a way, I feel more relaxed about all this after seeing that. I no longer feel like I should be under some sort of pressure to do well, because quite frankly, that is a LOT of competition and a LOT of really good horseflesh to show against. I still am hoping to Top Ten - that would be amazing - but in all honesty, I want to go out there and do exactly what I always want to do, which is put in a great dressage test and finish on that score. If she goes around XC and stadium like a champ after a great dressage test, who cares how we place? Now that the pressure is off, I get to go just for the honor of being there, and showing against these amazing people, and getting to watch all the other amazing people, and getting to hang out with all my old friends and rivals and family. You don't really have rivals in eventing.... you have friends that you just happen to want to beat all the time!


Oye it's September 5th and I STILL don't have my goals up. Tomorrow I will, I swear! I have a half day of work thankfully (it'll be my 8th day in a row, how did I get stick with THAT schedule?), so I'll get to get most of my leftover stuff done, and then we'll gallop in the freshly mowed field. The weather has been amazing, Gogo feels ridiculously good on her naked feet of steel, all the things on my to do list are right on track, and the boarders got together and gave me almost $700 for the journey, just because they wanted to. That's incredible.


I have a really good feeling about this one. I'm nervous as hell, but I'm seriously excited at the same time. We leave in three days!!




(2008 AEC Picture of the Day: Halt, salute, breathe!!)

Three Great Rides (Official AEC Countdown: ONE WEEK!)

First thing's first. Since she ragged on Gogo's not-ambition to go win next year's International Hunter Derby, I declare today National Embarass Your Best Friend Day! However I shall also post an equally embarassing picture of me to not make her feel so bad. Ha!

Second, you'll have to forgive me for not doing my End of August analysis yet. I have other things to write about first so you'll just have to wait!


These past three days have been fantastic. I've been very productive and busy in terms of getting things together for the trip, and our rides have been equally as good. After two days of good dressage on Sunday and Monday, we headed out Tuesday evening for our 2-hour conditioning hack, the last one before the AECs. I had an absolutely HORRIBLE day at work, and ended up getting on much later than I had originally planned (it was 6pm by the time we left... and it's been getting dark by 7:30!), but a great ride on the Mami was all I needed to feel better. The hayfield had just been mowed (a stroke of good luck!), and after the hack out to it, we started out 25 minute trot. WOW she felt great - 20 minutes into it and she was STILL powertrotting along, so big that I could hardly post to it, and still breaking to the canter pretty much every time we rounded a corner of the field. So I said, what the hell, let's burn off a little energy, why not? and let her go. And the afterburners kicked in - I've never gone that fast on any horse in my whole life! (And I've had some pretty hair-raising gallop moments in my life - the one that stands out in my head involved crazy New Zealand ponies and crashing at breakneck speed through the wild underbrush... one of those just-hold-on-and-cross-yourself rides!!) The sun was low at that point and I watched her shadow as we flew along, admiring her huge reach and laughing as we left the crappiness of the day in the dust. I brought her back to trot as we rounded the corner of the rectangular field, and let her go as we reached the long side of the field again. And she FLEW again, top speed! We rounded the next corner at the trot and as we came back around to the first long side, she exploded into a full-out sprint with hardly any prompting from me, going even faster than before. We must have galloped at absolute top speed at least 6 times like this around the field, which is pretty huge. I didn't intend for her to work this hard, but we were both having so much fun neither one of us could help ourselves. Finally, I looked at my watch and realized it was high time to continue on with our walk work, and brought her back. She came right back to me, ears pricked, marching right along, happy as a clam, hardly winded and still with a ton of extra energy to spare. Boy she is AWFULLY fit for just Novice! (I fitted her up for Training, anticipating that we'd be running one or two at the end of the year, but July and life got in the way of those plans, so now I have an over-fit Novice horse... oops!) She just felt SO GOOD. We walked up the gravel road for a little while before heading back to the pavement, and I was quite delighted to feel that, despite the fact that she's hardly been on gravel anywhere at all this year, she was quite comfortable on it. When it was very wet earlier in the year and she was on a different ration balancer, she was slow and overly-cautious when walking on rocks, and I avoided the gravel road. Now that her feet have dried out and toughened up, and given the fact that she has amazingly dropped almost an entierly new foot in three months (not kidding.... I can't even BELIEVE how fast she puts out hoof, it's kind of scary! And hair too for that matter... her bridlepath, clipped just two weeks ago for Huntington, is already nearly 2/3 of an inch long.), she is quite comfortable again. I know everyone has been having hoof trouble with this wetness all year, so I'm glad to see that my own small version of it is under control. Anyway, so we ventured back onto the pavement and continued our walk hack for our remaining time, enjoying the gorgeous sunset and contemplating returning as it steadily got darker. Determined to not cut our time short despite the rapidly dissapearing daylight, I headed back to the orchard to finish our walk, where we were treated to a nearly full moon and a subsequent moonlight walk. Fabulous, and beautiful. She was bright and chipper when I finally dismounted at the two-hour mark, still with plenty of gas in the tank. I kept her legs unwrapped given the creeping crud still stubbornly hanging on to her front legs, and checked them first thing in the morning the next day - if by some horrible off chance there WAS an S-word problem there despite all the signs pointing to otherwise, it SURELY would have presented itself after such a hard ride. But, success! Her legs were tight and cool as always, and she jogged out perfectly sound on the way to turnout. Sweet! All systems go!

Yesterday and today, her cheerful, overly-fit self was raring to go for some dressage.... or well, I was and she, after some convincing, agreed with me. She was, at first, being very subtly stubborn (If I stretch out to your contact, I will disengage my hind end. Oh you want me to go forward instead of disengage my hind end? Then I will, but I will disengage from this contact. Back and forth.), but eventually she settled, and we had a very good workout, complete with some fantastic counter-canter. Today's work was equally as excellent, and she had some OUTSTANDING trotwork in the end, and some absolutely fabulous walk-canters, which I haven't schooled that much as of late. Mostly we worked on LEFT BEND, which she has an aversion to, and once I finally broke up the locked tension in the midsection of her neck and connected her a little more thoroughly (you can see it visually, the area in her neck she most obviously resists the bend... it feels a little like when you need to take a frozen solid ice pack out of the freezer and massage it with your hands for awhile to make it flexible), suddenly whoa! Her shoulders came up, her work became way straighter and she developed some serious push from behind. Sweet! The work was high quality, all of it, and she worked very hard. Dare I say we had moments of real collection? I do dare day it. I'm not about to go run out and try a Second Level test anytime soon, but on days like this, I feel like we're approaching it, maybe even next spring.

Tomorrow, we gallop, and after Tuesday's hack I am VERY excited to get out there and boogie our guts out!


The AECs are now officially one week away. Can you believe it? I can hardly even wrap my head around it. I was going back and rereading posts from these past nine months since I moved to Connecticut tonight, laughing at all our ups, bemoaning all our downs, and realizing just how far we've come. We've worked so hard for this, put in our all, struggled through all the challenges thrown at us, and come out on top every time. We have fought hard for this, and we're ready. The pre-show jitters are starting to set in... ahh!! We leave in five days!!




(2008 AEC Picture of the Day: After some SERIOUS flooding, I try and swim my way to the Bit of Britain tent, because I inconveniently forgot to pack my canoe.)

The Attitude X Factor

Gogo is feeling a whole world of better after the injections, aloe juice, and Doxy. And that's great! Except for one thing. When Gogo feels poorly, she gets very, very sweet, and very snuggly. She wants me to take her head in my arms and cuddle her, which is the way she's been for the past several weeks. And when Gogo feels good, she has an... attitude. Now that she's feeling REALLY good, she has a REALLY BIG ATTITUDE. Really.

For instance. All that cuddliness? Gone. I always give her a snuggle when I walk by her stall and she has her head poking out over her stall gate, and even just last week, she would cuddle up to me whenever I'd reach up to pull her face over. Now? Nope. She lifts her head away from me and looks away in a way that clearly says, "Mom. You're embarassing me." She's always been punky like this, so this is no surprise. But I was enjoying the sweetness!
And she's starting to do little things to try and reassert her alpha-ness, like I talked about in my last post. I stop her while leading, and she takes another step forward after she's supposed to be standing still. I lead her somewhere, and she lags behind, or drifts. I ask her to stand still, and she looks at me for a moment, then moves her feet. I've had her for three years... she knows the house rules by now. I am a self procleaimed manners nazi, just because horses are big and quite frankly, I'd rather not be getting dragged around, mauled for food, bitten in the butt/face/hand/boob/whathaveyou, or kicked in the head. One of my unbreakable golden rules is that you NEVER put your mouth on ANYTHING unless it is food that is specifically offered to you. She has never, never been mouthy in any way, so this has never been a problem. Alllllll the horses here chew on the crossties, except her, and when she tried this once or twice this past winter, she got a stern talking to. She never did it again. Until yesterday. AND she had the nerve to do it right in front of me. I was brushing her tail out with her paddle brush (yes, that gorgeous, thick, dreamy, shining tail? Yeah, I spritz on some Showsheen and rip a tailbrush through it. Every day.), and I looked up to see her craning her neck around to look at me. While she was staring at me, she purposely reached over and took the crosstie in her mouth. The flat end of the paddle brush made a very loud WHACK as it made contact with her butt, I can tell you that! She jumped a little, and held still for a moment. Then, she turned her head around to look at me again, and took the crosstie in her mouth AGAIN, as if to say HA! Your beatings cannot stop me! Cheeky, cheeky wench.
She also knows that at mealtimes, you hold still and you WAIT for your food. You don't eat it until you get out of my way and I give it to you, then walk away and leave you to it. You do not paw, bite things, kick the wall, scrape your teeth on stuff, pin your ears, or get in my space. Normally she's very polite about these things. But yesterday? She pinned her ears over her stall gate at everyone around her, made like she was going to kick the wall, then walked over to her feed bucket and scraped her teeth on the wall. Which she has done exactly ONCE before in her entire life. Again, another stern talking to. But what did she do just seconds later, when I walked away? Walked back over and scraped her teeth on the wall again. I walked into her stall as she was still doing it, whacked her one, backed her up into the corner, told her to stand and think about what she had done, and closed her door behind me. I fed everyone else, went and cleaned the back grounds, and then went back to feed her. She was still standing in her corner waiting for me. Sorry mare, but you know the rules! I am no-nonsense when it comes to rules on the ground. Everything is cut and dried, black and white. You can do this, and you can't do that, end of story, no exceptions. Today, she was back to her polite self about her food, but it wasn't without an air of disgust. She is very smart, especially about food - you get fed when you wait for me. If you don't wait for me, you don't get fed until you do. That is easy to put together, if you are a cheeky mare.

Under saddle, post injections, I had some sort of dream fantasty that Gogo would be totally thrilled to be feeling better, and would trot off like a million bucks right from the get go, and all would be fabulous! Ah... no. Gogo has other ideas. Yes, she is feeling a TON better, but since she is now finding it easier to do things with her body, she has an entire army of new ways to evade me. When she DOES get going well, the work is brilliant, but we are back up to our 45 minute warmups because she just isn't keen on playing the game just yet. I have to take a step back for a few days, I think, and just go back to letting her warmup by crusing around and being relatively benign to her. When I start asking her for more than she thinks she's ready for too early on in the ride, she just doesn't play. She won't. I can't make her. But when I stay quiet and just let her be for a little while, she always comes around. Always. And just from seeing her in the mirrors as we pass, she is moving phenominally, flexing her hocks more than she has in a very long time. She feels fantastic. She's just... punky.

Very, very punky.

Tomorrow comes the true test: we are going XC schooling at Red Rock in Rhode Island. It has water, banks, and plenty of varied jumps. And at $25 a school, it also has the right price. Very excited!






Boy I love that wenchista. I do really enjoy when she has this snarky attitude. It's never nasty in any way - never any pinned ears or grumpiness - but it definitely has an air of better-than-thou snootiness to it. Directing this cheekiness into productivity is a very refined art, and it's not easy. I don't pretend to be successful at it day in and day out. There are days that I just can't figure out how to approach it. And there are days when it all comes together and really clicks.

It's something I realy live for, every day.

Eric Horgan Dressage/Jumping Clinic 7/22-23

Forgive me, readers! I have been remiss in my blogging this week. In my defense, between getting the facility ready for the clinic and trying to move my entire life back into my newly painted and carpeted room (yes!!!!), there's not been much time at night to sit down and write! Also, since the messy breakup with my fiancee, I've not been particularly interested in other human beings or seeking out what they have to offer, but as fate were to have it, the very attractive tranny that works at the Dunkin Donuts that Gogo and I always ride to (and who also always gives Gogo a donut when we get there) has been hanging out with me quite a bit this week, and we've really hit it off. Unfortunately, he gets off work at 10pm, so I've been doing a lot of staying up til 5am and getting less than an hour of sleep a night. Yeah, I know he's a tranny and I'm gay and that's all complicated, but hey, I'm flexible ;) I intend on getting to bed by midnight tonight, I swear!

I also apologize for my lack of commenting on all my favorite blogs, and for not yet picking up my Honest Scrap award that a couple of you have sent my way. My next post I will, I promise :)



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~






After the past two weekends of fail, I was feeling pretty lousy and not looking forward to the fact that we were going to host a private clinic at our barn with Eric Horgan that was decided fairly last minute and that I was not going to have the funds for, seeing as I had not known about it far enough in advance to set aside some money for it. Thankfully, one of our boarders came to the rescue, and asked me if I was planning on participating. When I told her I wanted to but just didn't have the money for it, she told me not to worry, and that she'd cover two days worth of lessons for me as a sponsorship. I about fell off my chair. They really are a wonderful bunch of people here.

And man, the clinic was so helpful. Wednesday was my jumping lesson, and while I got on feeling still stressed and miserable (and totally hormonal... seriously, I almost started crying for no reason when he asked me a simple question, who does that?), the lesson went on for over an hour and a half and I got off my horse beaming. She was a superstar. We had to ride in the indoor unfortunately, because it had rained so much that our outdoor was a lake, but it all worked out just fine. Eric had me start over a simple vertical at the trot and canter coming from both directions, just to see what was there, what I knew, and what needed to be addressed. The first thing he addressed was my 2-point. Now, coming from a dressage background, I've really struggled to maintain a half-seat in any way, and my lesson with Kerry helped to address that. Unfortunately for me, my overachiever self took it too far, and I've been unknowingly clamping down with my thighs and calves in order to maintain the position. Eric noted that my right stirrup leather squeaked against my saddle, and when I told him it always does that, he smiled and said "Well, it won't by the end of this lesson." Apparently, that comes from keeping my legs clamped like vices onher side! What he had me do was to think of my stirrups as my base of fluid support, and to keep my legs in contact with her but very relaxed all the way down, so I could easily flow over her back in balance while still allowing her to move underneath me. This had quite the effect on Gogo - her normally ewe-necked self came very round in the canter, rounder than I think she ever has during our jumping work. It felt very much like she felt very unrestricted, and had the ability to really let her energy flow forward through her back from her hindend. It was very cool.
We jumped the single vertical back and forth from both ways, and I had significantly more trouble jumping off the right lead, which is my much weaker way. As a right-side dominant person, I tend to really let her slip through her left shoulder if I'm not paying attention, a fact that isn't helped by the fact that she is also right-side dominant. My position in the air needs some significant addressing, but I already know the issues with that - letting my lower leg slip, ducking, and unfolding too early. Eric thought the bigger problem was in how Gogo and I approach fences. She tends to put her head very high in the air before every fence, and he wanted her to maintain a sense of roundness to each fence, seeing as good bascule comes from a proper approach. While we never stayed totally round to every fence, she did maintain a nice sense of soft self carriage, and jumped very easily out of every spot we found.
At some point Eric mentioned the fact that travel in a straight line for horses is very hard because they instantly want to fall on their forehands, and I asked him how one would counter that in a line. So, he set up a line and said let's find out! I was asked to maintain a more forward canter (which gave us a pretty good spot every time), to stay off her back (struggled with that a bit), to set her up before the fence and then let her find her own way (not riding her right to the base, which I tend to want to do), to tell if the spot to each fence was short, just right, or long, and how many strides I got in the 6-stride line. A lot to remember! By the end, she was jumping 3'6" easily, and I felt no need to push her to anything, which is my natural inclination when the fences go up. In the bigger, rounder canter, she maintained her own energy, and I never felt like I had to help her find a good spot. She found them herself.




While you can clearly see the faults in my jumping position and just how much that hinders her upon landing, you can see how rateable she was and how easy she found the work. And how darn cute she is over fences :D
I came out of the lesson feeling like I really had a lot of homework to keep in mind and a lot of tools to help us both out. Eric seemed impressed with the amount of information I retained, and at one point said, I'm throwing a ton of mud at the wall, and it all seems to be sticking! Which, I assume, is a compliment :). The bigger canter, the position work, the way we ride to each fence... all these things are really going to help us. I felt very satisfied and looked forward to the next day.




The dressage day was also just as helpful. I told him about the lack of brilliance behind, and after we warmed up, he had me really push her forward. There is a definite line with her where you can easily cross into rushing, but it's really fun to get to that brink of brilliance/insanity and try to maintain it for as long as possible without heading one way or the other. He also had me do a similar thing to what I had done the day before - relax my thigh and really let her back move underneath me. When I did that, I felt my leg slip into the most natural and balanced position I think it could ever be in, and her back really started to swing. The other really big thing he pointed out, aside from how crookedly I was sitting in my shoulder-ins (took some work but we got it straightened out, literally!), was that in my sitting trot and canterwork, I am weighting her forehand instead of releasing it by... well, I don't know exactly how to describe it. By riding down instead of up. And there was a definite difference between the two, a definitee lightening of her forehand. I wish I had a better way to describe it, I really do. It's just something in the way I sit and move my body that is very supple. We're going to have to see if this aids in achieving a little more in the way of collection.


All in all, she was fabulous, and I felt like I made a lot of progress myself. We've got our homework cut out for us, that's for sure, but there is always something to learn and always something to work on to better ourselves. We're slated to really get out and do several intense XC schoolings, as well as maybe picking up a few schooling jumper shows, just to get out over some courses and work on our homework in a low-pressure environment. I sent out my entry today for Huntington Farm H.T., in late August, as one final reprieve before the AECs in September. I feel that we will be ready by then, and our little spinning issue will be resolved. The Lyme titer hasn't come back in, but with how marvelous she's been these past few days, I'm not really suspecting it any longer. We shall see, we shall see.

We've back into our heavy training schedule without show interruptions: Sunday 2-hour conditioning hack with 25 mins of trot, Monday jump, Tuesday-Thursday dressage, Friday gallops, Saturday off. We'll adjust for XC schoolings.

I am very, very excited and very refreshed. Bring it on, world! We can take it!

Ever forget you were gay?

I have! Actually I do all the time. I've had several people ask me about this subject, and got a few questions from an anonymous commenter just the other day, so I felt that touching on the subject might be silly and fun.

No, seriously, I forget that I'm gay. It's such a normal, boring ol' life thing that's just a part of who I am and is also totally forgettable, like having short hair or a nice tan or some killer arm muscle (that's me! Seriously, it's freaking me out, I look like a G-D bodybuilder right now). Being with a girl (more specifically, my fiancee) is such a natural and normal thing that I find myself eyeballing straight couples every once in a while, because it looks unnatural to me. No seriously, I do! Heterophobia... well, the first step is admitting it, right? I accept my straight friends for what they are, and just have to deal with the fact that no matter what I say, I'm not going to be able to convince them that sex with girls is THE BEST THING EVER. No, seriously, try it!

In all seriousness, I suppose that loving and sleeping with women exclusively has earned me that weird L-word label. I'm not much into labels or the whole gay pride thing, nor do I really feel like it's a huge and glaring part of my everyday existence. But just because I feel that way doesn't mean that everybody else does too. In an ideal world, we'd all just love whomever we happen to love, and that would be the end of the story. In reality, there are lots of people out there who hate us, want to hurt us, and want us to remain as second-class citizens. Don't believe me? Just go Google the Westboro Baptist Church, or Fred Phelps. I won't post a link to it because it makes my stomach church.
Some people hate me for being a girl in love with another girl. (Maybe they're jealous of the hot hot hot hot hot HOT sex. No seriously. I'd be jealous too.) Some people slander us with horrible, crude names, some people tell us we'll be burning in hell, some people tell us that we ought to be shot and killed. Some of us do get shot and killed. I've had my ass beat more than once, and worse. Way worse. I don't talk about it anymore, but it hasn't changed who I am. How could it? I'm not afraid to love. And I honestly don't understand it. Why? Why hate? Why waste the time and energy when there is so little love in this world anyway?

Was it hard to "come out?" Well, yeah, it was. I kind of figured it out on my own after I caught myself staring at girls' butts in tight pants and skirts while going up the stairs behind them at high school (no seriously. THAT'S how I found out I gay. While I tried to convince myself I was just jealous of their round little buttcheeks, I actually just wanted to jump those round little buttcheeks. To put it politely.) I told my mom when I was 16 and had my first ever girlfriend. She didn't take it all that well. My father, on the other hand, found out because he walked in on my then girlfriend and I doing... well, you know. And hey presto! I found myself landed in a mental hospital for a week to cure the gay. That didn't go over too well. No seriously.

And no, I didn't tell anyone at the barn for a long time.... a few years and many girls later. At some point, I found myself just blurting it out to the daughters of the trainer, and they all just laughed and said they knew. Did some of my friends walk away from me forever? Yes. But to me, that signalled something very important - if they were not willing to accept this part of me, then I didn't want them in my life anyway, because that is no way to treat a real friend. It sort of cleaned out who was really real, and who wasn't. And I found that even the ones that had a very hard time accepting and dealing with it (the super religious types, etc) but still stuck with me were the ones that meant the most to me. That's love, and that's the ability for human beings to bond and grow and accept each other. It's the little differences that really make people well-rounded, worldly, educated, and sympathetic to one another.

So where does that leave me today? I'm here at this barn in Connecticut, and everyone knows, just because they all figure it out on their own - I felt no need to go and broadcast it to the world, because why should I? (I suppose this is the entire gay pride debate - straight people don't go around broadcasting their straightness, so why should gay people go around broadcasting their gayness? It's one thing to be proud of who you are, but it's another to be annoying about it. I don't get the whole pride thing, but I completely understand the reasons behind it. But I think pride parades are really annoying, personally. Be loud, be proud, I guess, but I kind of really just don't care. I sound like a homophobic bigot, I think. Obviously that's not my intention.) Everyone here, in all honestly, just doesn't care, or is totally happy for me. I don't think it's changed how any of them see me or think of me. But I am fortunate, because some people really are nasty about it. It's just another little part of who I am, and I really and honestly forget about it on a day-to-day basis. When I was 16, it was totally on my mind ALL THE TIME, and I wore rainbows and crap like you do when you're 16 and wanting to attract mates. But now? I have my little rainbow sticker on my car because, in all honesty, I don't want people to get the wrong impression and think I'm straight. No seriously! I'd hate to be mistaken for a straight person, how weird would that be! And beyond that, I dunno. I act with my fiancee the way any other engaged could should act - loving and happy. I don't think this makes me different from anybody else.

Being gay is just.... normal. It's just life. Once in awhile, Alex turns to me with this look on her face, and goes, "Wow... we're gay." And I'll always say, "I know, that's so weird! I forgot."

So to sum it up - if you're gay or you're bi or you're straight or you're poly or you're asexual or you're this or that or whatever, amen and more power to you. If you're struggling to come out to your friends and family, hang in there. It's not easy at first, but it will get better over time, I promise. Will people get mad at you? Yes. Will people hate you? Yes. Will other people love and support you? Yes. My advice is to surround yourself with the good and loving people, because they're the only ones that matter. Life is too short to hate anyone or anything. There are too many good humans out there to love, so don't waste time and energy with the bad ones.

And just be gay. Whatever that means to you, just be it. If that means waving a big fat rainbow flag out your window, then go for it. If that means spending a quiet evening at home with your fiancee, then go for it. Just be you, whoever you are, whether or not you're queer in any way or have blond hair or brown eyes or are really tall or have a weird birthmark that's shaped like Texas. And love yourself. Always.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



In other news, Gogo is AMAZING. We had another incredible dressage session today that just blew my mind. She's becoming so confident and happy in her dressage work.. it's like having a whole new horse. She's literally been transformed. No longer is she is the skittery, anti-contact bundle of nerves that she was two years ago when I got her back from Crazy Trainer. This new Gogo goes out to my contact and stays there... and is actually heavier than I'd like sometimes, which is a whole new concept. This new Gogo takes manipulations through the contact without any great leaps, massive stiffening, major resistance, or rearing (all things we did two years ago). This new Gogo actually likes dressage, because she understands what I'm asking. She finally, finally, after all this time finally went OH! Okay. THAT'S what you want. You're not trying to take on my face or hurt me or scare me or take away my freedom. You want to help me be freer. But I can still do it on my own.

She's from a notoriously late-maturing, headstrong line of horses, but they're also amazingly smart and strong. I think she'd jump the moon if I asked her to, but she'd take full credit once we were back on earth again. She's proud of herself. I can feel it in her dressage-y swagger. I might be anthropomorphizing, but it's there. And if we can channel it together just right, there's nothing we can't do.

Groton House is almost, almost here.... and I can't freaking wait.

Dressage, dressage, dressage

The title says it all. We've been doing dressage... dressage... and more dressage over these past three days. I had a lesson on Tuesday, which went pretty well, and a lesson on Wednesday, which went a lot better. We finally made it back out into the outdoor - YAY! - but then of course, yesterday it POURED ALL THE LIVELONG DAY, so we ended up having to head back inside. Interestingly enough, yesterday, my indoor-not-lesson ride was THE BEST out of all three of them. That's exactly how I like to end a dressage spree - with an amazing ride!
It didn't start out amazing. She stretched fairly well from the get-go but was having nothing to do with coming back up. She was essentially giving me the big middle hoof, if you know what I mean. I asked nicely, I asked not nicely, I waited, I refused to wait any longer, I waited even after I refused to wait any longer... still nothing. She stayed locked at the withers, gnashing her teeth, and that was the end of that. 40 minutes into the ride, I still had nothing... and then something changed. I have no idea what it was. I don't think did anything particularly different. But she transformed from tense and locked to supple, loose, relaxed, forward, and steady. She stretched into the contact and took every correction I made properly, and without tension in her neck or back. She lengthened more dramatically than ever before. She crossed so far underneath himself in our leg yields that I could hardly believe it when I saw it in the mirror. And we had collection - real collection - in the canter, which I could completely maintain with my seat alone. In front, she stayed light and connected. It was amazing, light, smooth, connected, and beautiful work. I dismounted with a big stupid grin on my face. If we have a ride remotely like that at Groton House, we'll win. Of course, I say that now... Gogo is very good at keeping me humble at the shows that matter the most!! But I'm delighted with how she's been working. Groton House is right around the corner and we're ready, ready, ready. I can't wait!!!

But then of course, things like today happen too. The plan has been to start gallops on Friday instead of Thursday, but it's been raining - torrentially, I might add - for the past, oh I dunno, three weeks. Yesterday it rained so hard that the horses didn't even get turned out at all, so obviously today, seeing as everything was drenched, there was no galloping surface to be had. Today I spent the morning and early afternoon at the Mystic Aquarium, and then was going to come home and hack Gogo to the Dunkin Donuts again. Of course, I got home and went into my room to change, and found that the ENTIRE SURFACE OF MY FLOOR WAS COVERED IN TWO INCHES OF STANDING WATER. A pipe burst in my closet... the pipe that the handyman already fixed yesterday night. AWESOME. So, instead of riding, I've been making a very sad attempt to throw out all my ruined stuff, move furniture, soak up the worst of the water, and run the Shop Vac/dehumidifier/three fans in a sad effort to make a LITTLE of the water dry up. Seriously though, everything is soaked. It's awful.

So no riding today. Gogo had today off instead of Sunday, which works just fine, seeing as she'll have next Thursday off. SIGH! But, some good things happened today: I got an additional award in from the Mystic show (more on that later), and I found that RNS Media is running a video special for the Groton House trials, so I might get to have a professional video made!!

Speaking of which, a few of you have mentioned that you'll be around at Groton House and wanted to come cheer us on. If that's you, leave a comment or e-mail me at deathstarbattlestar@yahoo.com, and I'll pass along my cell number.





I have one more interesting and exciting bit of news for you. They've just announced the location for the 2010-2012 AECs: Chattahoochee Hills, outside of Atlanta, GA. That's right by the Georgia Aquarium ya'll. Where they have WHALE SHARKS. That's one HELL of a long roadtrip to Atlanta, but oh my god, is that not going to be FUN AS? I'm ALREADY excited!

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.)

Mystic Valley Countdown: Four Days!

Four days until our second horse trial of the year! Who's excited? I'm excited!

I'm actually feeling pretty relaxed about this show. I'm not sure exactly why, but there are only 10 people in my division. I've never been in a division that small in all my life! I checked up on all the people running, and I thought Daun and Stacey might like to know there are two full drafts in the Novice Horse section with me - two Clydesdales, owned by two different people no less! I'll have to keep track of how they do.
The not fun part? I'm trailering in, and it's about an hour and a half away with a trailer, maybe a little less. I need about an hour to warm Gogo up before dressage, and so of course, guess what time I ride? Yep, you guessed it - first ride of the morning, 8:00am sharp. Which means I need to be on at about 7. Which means I need to get there at about 6. Which means I need to leave here at like... 4:30am. Awesome. So, I'll need to have EVERYTHING done before I leave - bathing, braiding, packing, etc. That's not a problem... but heaven forbid her braids come out overnight!! She doesn't rub them or anything, and I tie a pretty tight braid, but I always do the forelock braid the day of (because they don't stay under her Sleazy), and I'll need to factor in time to fix anything that goes awry. Blah!

So dressage is at 8:00am, and stadium goes at 10:30am. The other thing that I'm not all that hot about is that XC starts at 10:50am - so I have to ride stadium in my XC gear. In reality, doing my stadium as a sort of warmup and then riding over to XC to start there makes a lot of sense.... I just feel like a goob riding stadium in my XC gear, lol. It will make things easier for sure - one less thing to get dressed up for, considering I'll likely be alone for this one. Then again, I thought I'd be alone at the last one, and I had three people show up to watch and help and film, so you never know really!

There isn't much of a Virtual Ride coursewalk on the Area 1 website, but I do know we will be tackling this jump this weekend:



Her very first picture frame! Gogo grows up and up. By the way, she'll be 8 next Tuesday... time is flying by.



After a nice day off and a light hack yesterday, doing the rounds greeting little kids on a beautiful Memorial Day afternoon, we had a totally awesome dressage school today. Her canterwork was actually better than her trotwork for the first time... well, ever, I think. She even did some shallow loops in canter that were totally balanced and exquisite. She usually does them obediently, to be sure, but she tends to get near the centerline and sort of dive back towards the rail. These were smooth and totally balanced - no gravitating towards the outside. I was very impressed! We also did all sorts of serpentines, leg yields, and transitions, just to keep her mind relaxed and quiet and thinking. We worked on free walk too - our Achilles heel - and she actually did quite well. I have high hopes for Saturday! Let's hope we can hold it together!

Two more days of dressage, and then we take a day off to get ready on Friday. And Saturday, we PARTY! And by party, I mean we are not going to have a rumba butt repeat performance, but instead we are going to have such a square halt-salute that I drop the reins and give her a big crushing hug at the end of the test!

Lots of things to do to get ready, lots and lots of things. This being the second show of the year, I'm feeling way less nervous and way more excited. This is going to be a blast!!

Namaste.

What a fabulous weekend I just had. Okay, I know that it's the Memorial Day weekend, and it's supposed to go through Monday, but my holiday ended yesterday. It was so needed though, and I feel exceedingly refreshed. Everything went beautifully, and while I hope to do it again sometime soon, I feel like vacations like this come long only once in awhile. I can accept that fact though, as I get to appreciate them even more when they do happen.

Friday, after getting my repaired boot back (AGAIN), I washed the truck, packed my stuff, bathed my horse, and loaded Gogo and Salute onto the trailer. I was headed off to my lesson with Kerry Millikin at Hillden Farm, set for 3:00, and I was excited. The trip was uneventful, and Gogo and I looked pretty classy if you ask me.



That's Gogo's flybonnet signed by Jennifer Wooten-Dafoe and The Good Witch! But she was unimpressed.




I found Kerry to be really, really refreshing. She tells it like it is, but not harshly. I was later told that if she doesn't like your horse, she's going to let you know about it, but she had nothing but good things to say about Gogo - a real compliment. Right off the bat, she honed in on my equitation - "you ride like a dressage rider!" - and helped me get out of dressage mode and into jump mode, something I've never really been able to make the transition to fully simply because I've never really been taught how. I tend to sit up instead of really getting into my halfseat. Kerry helped me close my hip angle, turn my toes out a bit, and take the brunt of my weight into my heels and calf instead of stalling out at my knees and thighs - more of a dressage thing to do. The other thing we worked on was keeping her round instead of letting her cruise around with her head in the air. I usully leave her face alone while we're jumping, but by keeping her round to a fence, it helps to influence how she uses her body over the jump. She's tidy with her legs when she jumps with no bascule, but it does her no favors otherwise to jump so flat. So, instead of doing what we usually do, we tried to go around a little more like this:



Which, in turn, caused her to jump more like this:



The picture isn't at the best moment of the jump, and she's sort of trying to figure out where her legs need to be, but you can see she's actually using her body over the fence. Bascule what? We have that?



Kerry helped me stay up in two point all the way to the fence and away from it, staying quiet the whole way. She was totally pleased with how quietly Gogo dealt with the little challenges we set up for her, including a jump on a circle and some gymnastic exercises. She did super well, and I felt that I did do.
After the lesson, I went with Anne and Jen (and Salute and Lucas) for a nice relaxing hack. Or so I thought! We went all the way down the mountain, and trotted all the way back up! It was another hour before we were back, so Gogo and I were both pretty tired! We turned out our horses for a few hours each on grass (a REAL treat), and then tucked them into their stalls at Jen's place for the night.

And we rounded out the evening with a whole mess of people enjoying wine and cheese and dinner on the porch, watching the sunset:





Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh yea. A lot of wine and passing out on Anne's couch followed. Yessss.

The following morning at 7:30am sharp (oye!) after delicious smoothies, Anne and I headed off to yoga. I LOVE YOGA. I never get to do it anymore because I don't have the time or money to go to a studio and take classes, and lack the religious inspiration to actually do it on my own. I find the practice of yoga to be enlightening, refreshing, and rejuvenating. And not only does it stretch every part of your body, it tones every part too - I woke up this morning and EVERYTHING hurt. The classes at this studio run for an hour and a half and are only $15, and they're on Saturdays too, so it would be totally possible for me to go to them. On my way to Moksha, one yoga practice at a time.

After changing and helping a neighbor load some horses into a trailer, we cleaned out our stalls, let our horses out on grass again for awhile, groomed them up, and then loaded up and headed out for White Memorial Park for a few hours of trail riding goodness. The day started off with a downpour, but nature must have been happy with the positive energy we sent out into the universe with our yoga, so everything cleared up beautifully by the time we got out there. The trails were perfect, the scenery was gorgeous, and the company was hilareous. We laughed the whole time we were out there.







Just perfect.
We finished the day with some lunch, and then cruised on to take the tired ponies (and our tired selves) back home. One of my favorite parts of the day is taking care of a horse's needs after a hard workout. Putting a freshly linimented, rubbed, and wrapped horse into a softly bedded stall with buckets of clear, cool water and a mountain of fresh hay in front of them just feels so good.

Today was a well-deserved day off for both of us, complete with some stretching, grooming, walking, and turnout. Tomorrow, it's back to work, and prepping for the show on Saturday!!




Breaking the daily cycle of Samsara and achieving a little taste of Moksha is exactly what you need sometimes. Thanks, Gogo. Thanks, Anne and Salute. Thanks, Kerry. Thanks, Jen. Thanks, yoga. Thanks, life.

Snafu

The title of this post doesn't have much to do with anything really. I just like the word 'snafu,' much as I like the words 'jabberwocky' or 'catawampus.'

Yesterday we jumped! It was more of a breath of fresh air for her than an actual school, something other than boring ol' dressage. We did a simple gymnastic, set like this:



The distance was set pretty short for her. She definitely favors the long spot, so exercises like this help her be very tidy and quick with her body, as she must tap the ground pretty cattily and come right back up again. She had one time where she came in a little quick and shimmied through it a little awkwardly, but every time before and after it, she put it together pretty easily. I had Shannon help me put the whole grid together as we steadily warmed up through it, and I also had her put two poles together to form a triangular chute propped up against the top rail of the final vertical. I really like what it did for her straightness and tightness up front. We didn't go for too long - about half an hour - but I felt that she was excellent and saw no need to continue. As Shannon said, she's not a horse that needs to really be schooled per se over fences. She, as this point and at this level, is point and shoot. There isn't enough I can set up at the farm that'll really challenge her. I do want to, in addition to the jumping lessons I'll be taking, set up a few steep slices and a few really narrow skinnies for her, just to see how honest she'll be. She really seems to have grown up over the winter, and she's being more honest on her own than she ever has. Last year, I felt very strongly that I had to be there to hold her hand for her to every fence, and this year I feel like as long as I'm pointing her sort of towards the right fence, she'll take it no matter how we get there. I've been really, really impressed with her.
The other thing I did yesterday that I haven't done in well over a year is jump her in her snaffle. I usually have her in the waterford, but really and truly, she just LOVES that blue plastic bit. She was dead quiet, completely response, and took a half-halt like you don't know. Maybe I was just being softer, but seriously, I think that's as responsive as she's ever been to a rein aid while jumping. I'm not about to go gallop XC in the thing, but man, blue plastic bit is my friend right now!

Today, more boooooooooooring dressage! Or well, that's how she sees it :) Gogo actually came out feeling AMAZING and completely responsive RIGHT off the bat, and was giving me awesome trotwork and leg yields right from when I first picked her up. I thought about just getting off and calling it a day, but I went on to work more. And, of course, the more we worked, the hotter she became. And she got HOT. Not sure exactly what happened, but wow, she was HOT AS HELLFIRE by the time we were nearing the end. Our second canter was, in fact, a large disaster, although for some reason this didn't really bother me. She was racing around a 20m circle completely inverted, flinging her head in my face, completely in gallop mode for whatever reason. I just sort of sat chilly and waited... and waited... and waited. Finally, she quieted down and gave me something resembling a quiet circle, and I went back to trot and cantered the other way, which was much better. Much, much better, actually. I dunno if her brain just finally settled down or what, but after that, we did a little more nice quiet trotwork and called it a day on a perfect halt. Mares!

This is the eternal dilemma with a pretty fit event horse like mine. It might be only Novice but the fitter she gets, the hotter she gets. I wonder how confusing it can get for her doing everything in the plastic snaffle. She now hacks, gallops, does dressage AND jumps in it, which is great and kind of bad at the same time. She has no real way to differentiate between what we're doing based on tack alone - and she's the kind of horse that would definitely know what different bits mean. I don't ask her to come round while galloping, as I want her to have her own head for balance, and while actually doing a course I don't bother to mess with her head while I'm jumping either. Hacking is usually done on the buckle or a loose rein. This is the other problem - I'm working all sets of muscles, the bad ones included. I'm no fool to think that all this dressage is going to eliminate her ewe neck, especially when her natural balances lies within a high head carriage. I'm not going to fight nature when she needs to balance that way. Her neck looks awesome for her right now, but in the grand scheme of things, it's a pretty unimpressive neck. We do what we can, and I try my hardest to make sure she knows a distinct difference between everything we're doing. King Oak was proof enough that if you leave her alone, she'll go there on her own. Home is for trying to school her through that mindset. Dressage is slowly and steadily becoming more of a conversation between the two of us as opposed to me quietly hoping she'll decide to play the game that day. Now, I feel as though I can ask her a little, and while she'll have moments where she's not totally connected, she'll go where I ask her to go, and she'll take my corrections instead of fighting them, although sometimes it's with a grain of salt. I like this new direction.


And... um.... Gogo's fat. I mean really, I look at her and go oh man. Fattie. I tried and tried to tell everyone here that she's an easy keeper, and nobody believed me until now. I put a little weight on her over the winter seeing she was on the thin side after the long trip out here, and that seems to have backfired as now she won't LOSE the weight! I've cut out all the Ultium except for a tiny cup of it at nightcheck just to give her a little something along with everyone else, and she's now eating 2lbs a day of the Triple Crown 30% ration balancer, which I actually don't think I like much, and about 10 flakes of okay-ish quality hay. Not sure what else I can cut out, as she's at the low end of the Triple Crown's recommended poundage for a horse doing her kind of work! I MAY have found somewhere to get Gro N' Win though.... here's hoping that works out!! I thought about putting her on Platinum Performance instead of the ration balancer, but I'm pretty sure she won't be getting all the protein she needs on that system. Nothing replaces a quality ration balancer in my book.





Vroom vroom!!

No Rest for the Wicked

I'm tired. I'm reallllllllllllly tired. I work really hard and I never seem to really catch a break, or feel refreshed after my days off. This weekend should be lighter, because Vicki and a bunch of clients are at shows, but I still find myself crashing at around 8:30 at night unintentionlly, only to wake up at 11, annoyed at myself and STILL exhausted. It's hard to complain when the world is so fresh and green and beautiful, but man, life is hard when you're a broke kid who can't afford to eat enough greens or protein to not feel utterly exhausted during the day, or to get more than four consecutive hours of sleep... ever, much less four hours total a night.

Hence my lack of posts this week. I've been a zombie.

And yet, training and conditioning goes on. Monday was a day off, and Tuesday I took her for a lovely half-hour walk hack around our property - not that there's much property to hack around. I looped the GORGEOUS orchard a few times (full of dogwoods in full bloom, enough to make you dizzy from the smell), went around the paddocks, went up the driveway, went back around the orchard... etc! It's pretty small here, and I have to get creative sometimes.

The dogwoods.


Wednesday it was back to dressage work, and Gogo just seemed to know she'd been a rock star last weekend, because she went right out and strutted her stuff right off the bat. She really worked with me right from the very start. We had a few moments somewhere about a half hour in where her neck got a hair short, but as soon as I went back to some slightly less complicated stuff, it dissapeared immediately. We did tons of transitions, leg yields and some shoulder-in, and at the end of the lesson I played around a bit with some walk pirouettes and even a bit of reinback. She understands the concept of the walk pirouette, actually better now than ever before (don't just plant that hind leg and pivot, USE it!), and the reinback will take more time but it's coming. In the past, the reinback totally FREAKED her out and she'd rear like a maniac (I introduced it to her before I went to New Zealand and she understood, but when I got back and Crazy Trainer had messed her up, it was totally out of the question for a little while), but as long as I take little baby steps, I can eradicate that behavior. Praise, lots of praise. I was totally pleased with her and she was totally pleased with herself.

Back to gallops on Thursday! This week's work schedule was totally messed up so I had Wednesday and Thursday off instead of Friday and Saturday, so I was up early before the rain rolled in in. The grass in that field is growing out of control, and I'm not sure that the landowner has any plans to mow it, so I'm not really sure what I'm going to do - I don't know how accessable it's going to be as the summer progresses. As it stood Thursday, it felt a little bit like riding in deep snow, only less dramatic. By the end of our third gallop set, she was tired and so I was.

Warm-up: 20 minute walk hack
Sets: Trot 5 minutes
Walk 2 minutes
Trot 5 minutes
Walk 2 minutes
Trot 5 minutes
Walk 2 minutes
Canter 4 minutes, 350mpm
Walk 2 minutes
Canter 4 minutes, 350mpm
Walk 2 minutes
Gallop 5 minutes, 470mpm
Cool down: 15 minute walk hack home

I had to push a bit the last minute or so, and we were both tired. Back at home, she got a nice cool rinse, a liniment bath, and a good half hour of grazing while I lazed in the grass nearby. Safety first!

And today, it was back to work, and it's going to be a long, seven-day stretch this time. She seemed to know I was delighted, however, about my truck arriving yesterday with my parents, and pranced around for them like a pretty fancy dressage horse (they came to watch). She was right there from the get-go, for the second time this week. I did a whole mess of leg yields right from the start, which helped connect her - Vicki said today, and after most gallop days, her body is a bit disconnected, like the area in front of the saddle wants to do dressage but the area behind it wants to gallop. A lot of leg yields really seemed to help that, and we did some fabulous trot work, including a bunch of high-quality lengthenings. The compression at the end of the lengthenings is what really helped bring her body part all back together, I think. On days after gallop days, I will have to rememeber to focus mostly on quality walk-trot work - the canter just wasn't there today and I wasn't going to push it. I had some small moments of good quality canter and I left it alone otherwise.


I was going to hack tomorrow BUT A) I'm supposed to trailer a horse to a show (WITH THE NEW TRUCK!) during work hours no less, B) the Preakness AND Rolex are both being aired on TV, also during work hours, and C) a former boarder and friend of ours want to take us out to dinner at 7, so I think tomorrow will be a day off, and then we'll hack or jump on Sunday, and then do the other of whatever we were supposed to do on Monday.


14 days until Mystic Valley H.T.!!!! Can you say R-E-P-E-A-T!!

Rolex Bound

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Rolex! As for today, I had another absolutely stunning dressage lesson on Gogo. I widened my hands again when she went to come above the bit during our warmup, and she really seemed to accept that and move into my contact. We had an AMAZING canter near the end, some fabulous transitions, some fancy travers-renvers transitions, and some outstanding moments of sitting way back and taking a nice load of weight onto her hind end during some of our half-halts. We even had a lovely stretchy circle at the end where she came right back to me, how bout that.

She also had her feet done tonight, and they looks beautiful if I do say so myself :D I have a bunch of pictures and I fully intend on writing up a post about them, but as for now, I need to keep packing for tomorrow. I will, however, leave you with a picture of the shirt I made:



We're cheering for The Good Witch!! :D

Tomorrow, Gogo gets a very early morning modified conditioning hack (like the ones we did all winter), and then she'll have three days off. Not really ideal right now, but that's the way it is. I'm not about to let anybody on her at this point, or ever! I still have to work in the AM, so it's going to be a REALLLLLY early morning for me - probably starting at 4AM. Suck.

But it's all worth it!! I'll get a zillion pictures and video, I promise :D I also promise I'll put up some of my pics from the last three times I've gone, cause I have some AWESOME ones!

YAAAAAY ROLEX!!

Rain, rain, PLEASE go away

All last week, I had been hoping that I was going to get to go x-country schooling on Monday. It was gorgeous and warm allllllllll week, and Monday was the only day I could have a groundperson, so I was hopeful that it would hold out. And... it did not. Of course. Why would it? Yesterday was dreary, cold, and sleet-y. On top of that, my dog came in from her morning romp absolutely three-legged lame, so we had to go to the vet in the afternoon anyway. (As it turns out, being a greyhound she has a corn on her pad... which I had to diagnose myself, the vet was TOTALLY unhelpful and a waste of money and time!)

So THAT sucks. With this weekend being Rolex and all, I won't be able to do anything until NEXT Monday, if the weather holds, and if the weather doesn't hold? I've got one more Monday (or maybe a Saturday if I can convince Shannon) and that's IT before King Oak. I am reallllllllllllly jittery about that! We NEED to get out and at least get over some jumps in a x-country setting so her brain doesn't explode the first time we do it. Historically, the first course of the year is always a little bit hairy, just because she hasn't done it all winter. Maybe this year will be different. But I'd really rather NOT take that chance, thanks very much! So keep your fingers crossed that the weather holds.

In other news, we had another awesome conditioning hack on Sunday, this time back to the Larkin Bridle Trails where I went for our first 2-hour hack. We're up to 25 minutes of trot now, with the remainder of the two hours walking. She's still having an easy time of it, and didn't break a sweat or hardly breathe at all by the end of it. She did, however, have a total panic attack about the bugs - head flinging, twitching, tossing, obnoxiousness all the way home, unless there was an open area where there was a breeze. At some point, I put her to work and did leg yield zigzags back and forth and back and forth across the trail to try and get her mind on something else, but to no avail. I eventually just gave up and listened to my iPod and ignored it. We passed two horses at some point, and she didn't even slow down or look at them once - just trotted right on by like they didn't exist. But later in the ride? We passed a tiny little farm, and a rooster crowed. CUE FLAMING HEAT. She started screaming uncontrollably and peeing all over the place. And when the rooster crowed again? You bet, more screaming and peeing. Seriously, Gogo? Not even the same species! I could make a very lewd joke right now but I'll refrain.
So that explains why she's been so touchy about the bugs, and a little bit tense through her topline starting out. I'm hoping once her flaming-ness goes away a bit, she'll be a little more tolerant. I hear through the grapevine that King Oak is very buggy. So let's just hope for a 120mph hurricane that morning so all the bugs will blow away.

Yesterday, I was bumming about not going x-country schooling and figured I ought to jump instead, but I was just in a bit of a funk over my poor dog's lameness and all the dreary weather, so I decided that I'd take a bit of a break from our hectic show schedule and just have some fun. I was totally inspired by Daun's post about just going for a nice bareback cruise, so I did too. (One of our boarders came into the tack room after I was done and proclaimed in a very put-out voice that I was clinically insane for doing it. Thanks.) We hacked out through the orchard for a few minutes, then went into the outdoor (which is not fenced in, by the way) and actually did some legitimate bareback dressage. I've had some difficulty in the past with Gogo's relatively bouncy trot (for a bareback ride, that is!) and her very up-type canter while riding bareback, so I figured I'd see what I could do. And lo and behold, when she came round (or, well, roundER than she had been going), I suddenly had a place to sit that was totally comfortable. And when we cantered? Totally balanced, totally comfortable, both ways. I didn't feel like she was dropping out from underneath me during every stride like she tends to want to do, and like I've felt bareback in the past with her. It was lovely. And comfortable. And FUN. I used to ride bareback ALL. THE. TIME. when I had my first horse in his semi-retirement. All winter long before I bought Metro, I never put a saddle on him. I even jumped him 3' bareback a few times (wasn't supposed to be doing that... thank god we didn't get killed!). When I first got Metro, I used to take off his tack after every ride and go lope around bareback... he had THE most rocking horse canter in the entire world and it was so comfortable. I miss those fuzzy boys.

Today, I had a rather fabulous dressage lesson. She started out pretty tight in her back, and I tried something different - when she came above the bit, I widened both hands. When she relaxed and stretched down, I brought my hands back to normal position and relaxed them. She figured out pretty quickly where I wanted her to be! Maybe this is one more tool I can work into my warmups. Our transitions were rather stellar today, and we spent a good deal of time schooling crisp halts - Gogo tends to want to kind of shuffle into them, and cross her front legs over from right to left (escaping through my apparently wide-open left aids!), so we made a real effort to make sure they were PROMPT, SQUARE and STRAIGHT. That REALLY improved the quality of the trot we had too. We also got to school some shallow canter loops, which can be difficult for her due to her rather enormous canter stride. I can play around all I want with exercises to develop collection in the trot, but her canterwork is going to be HARD to try and collect. I haven't really even gone there at this point much, because the quality of her working canter is very imporant to me, especially at these lower levels of eventing, and I want to make sure that it's seriously 100% before we delve into these harder questions. I don't doubt that she's ready to work on some exercises to help develop collection in her canter though, so I imagine we'll start asking her to load those hind legs more and bring the enormity of her stride into a more contained way of going. Her lengthenings/mediums are getting HUGE. I love it.


All the leaves on the trees are starting to explode, giving everything a green fuzzy haze. The grass is growing rapidly, the forsynthias and apple blossoms and daffodils are all in full bloom. The rain smells fresher, the horses' sweat sweeter. Summer is coming, and I can't wait. Aside from all this wicked rain, I love springtime around here. We had thunderstorm roll in today with one ENORMOUS thunderclap - I was bringing the three year-old in from the field, of course, rather hurridly from the suddenly downpour when suddenly lightning flashed. I had about two seconds to register what it was before the thunder, and the little thing jumped on top of me and about trampled me in his panic. Back in the barn, I discovered a bunch of wide-eyed, worriedly nickering horses, and one of the horses that had been in the crossties had broken his halter, left it still hanging in both ties, and had wandered away naked to the garbage can and was eating something out of it. Hmmm...



Twelve days from now, it'll be the five-year anniversary of Quincy's death. I don't think I quite understand where that time has gone.

And two days from now? I'll be in Kentucky screaming for my favorite riders, running pell-mell around the x-country course, shopping 'til I drop, and snuggling with my fiancee. Seriously, could there POSSIBLY be a better way to spend a weekend?

Gogo developing a lengthening across the diagonal. And me posting awkwardly.

OH, THE HUMANITY! BUGS!

The title is pretty much Gogo's reaction to springtime, in a nutshell. BUGS! NO, NOT BUGS! SAVE ME FROM THE BUGS! She went out without clothes on for the first time all year (yay!) on Thursday, and less than an hour into her turnout I heard thundering hooves. I looked out - it wasn't anybody in the front two fields. Well, that meant it was Gogo. What was she doing? Running around at full tilt, smashing into the fence, performing back-cracking aerials, and screaming her head off. I went over there to try and comfort her, and she stopped running while I was there, but was still flinging her head around, swishing her tail, stamping her feet, and biting at the bugs. Violently. She had bug spray on! She quieted down and went back to munching hay, so I started to leave. I got about 10 feet away before she started galloping around like a crazy woman again, and I finally had to just bring her in because she was going to run herself into the ground, or hurt herself. She had already adorned her hock with a new wound earlier in the day when she tweaked out at another horse while in the crossties. I didn't see the incident, but I heard the other horse squealing like a pig and a lot of crashing and clambering, and I came out of the tack room to find my horse with one broken crosstie, standing there looking rather terrified. She had a big ol' bloody cut on the back of her hock.... nice.

She's been a little kooky lately. She just was buggin today about the little gnats flying around her face while I was riding. I adorned her with this stupid thing today:

To no avail really. She was really quite good at the very end of our lesson, but it took 50 minutes to get there, and I ended up riding her for almost an hour and a half, not doing much more than w/t/c and some leg yields. The work was REALLY quality and REALLY good, and our trot-canters especially were amazingly excellent, but thrown into all of that goodness was a lot of bug-related twitching and some flailing too. I know that this happens every spring and once she gets used to them, she'll be fine, but it's a bit annoying for now. My ride on Wednesday was also very good, mostly. I felt though that today's gait quality and transition quality was higher, although the degree of difficulty in the work we did was a lot less. Really, with all the buggy nonsense I felt it wasn't worth it to do beyond w/t/c and some leg yields today. And she agreed.
And then, in the crossties after our ride, I grabbed her halter a little too hastily when I was going to brush her face, and she tweaked, sat back, broke her halter, and walked away. I caught her, brought her back, and put her in the stall to finish grooming. I put another halter on her and was working on groom, groom, put your head down, groom, put your head down, etc, and she was being totally fine. I said, oh mare, what am I going to do with you? and hugged her head. Suddenly, I found myself literally in the rafters - she had freaked about that too and had lifted me like 8 feet off the ground with her head. Chiropractor, anyone? Gogo, WHY? Sometimes, there is no answer.

We also had gallops yesterday, and she was excellent. We upped the ante a little:

Walk hack to field (15 mins)
4 minutes trot
1 minute walk
4 minutes trot
1 minute walk
4 minutes trot
2 minutes walk

4 minutes 350mpm canter
2 minutes walk
4 minutes 350mpm canter
2 minutes walk
4 minutes 470mpm canter
2 minutes walk
1 minute 520 gallop
2 minutes walk
1 minute 470 canter
Walk hack home (10 minutes)

She was superb. Absolutely superb. Unfortunately, she remained gallop-y during our lesson today - hence why it took 50 minutes to just chill out - but there you have it, I suppose. She was totally happy to just book around the field like a wild woman. And tonight I ordered a GPS watch off of Ebay! It's a decent quality one that I found for CHEAP, so it might be caca after all, but here's hoping we'll be able to at least gauge our speed.

The Novice tests are simple. 20 meter circles, w/t/c, serpentines at the trot, and going across the diagonal. It's really no more complicated than the BN tests. So at this point, while I'll keep gymnasticizing her laterally and longitudinally through all our sideways and forward-and-back movement, the main focus for the beginning of summer is quality of gaits and transitions. As long as we can keep our relaxation, we'll sail through those tests like they're a piece of crumb cake. (Although now that I think about it, how DO you sail through a crumb cake?)

And we MIGHT get to go x-country schooling on Monday!! Although we actually might not... it might rain on Monday. We are running out of time here... I can only school when Shannon can go with me, and I can only school when the weather cooperates. Between the two of those things, we've not been able to get out for a single schooling yet this year. We won't be able to go next weekend because of Rolex (YAY ROLEX), and then after that, we'll have less than two weeks to get a schooling in. So cross your fingers, or else King Oak might be a little... erm.... wild.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


ROLEX!!!!!!!!!!!! Rolex is in FIVE DAYS!!!! I am so excited to go, you don't even KNOW! It's SO much fun and if you've never been, take the time to do it next year because it's WORTH IT. I'm gathering up a laundry list of things to shop for while there, and so far we have at least a new schooling dressage pad and some rad polos, and since I have money from the saddle that I sold, I can actually GET that stuff! Although that being said, Ebay's got some great deals... but getting them at Rolex is way more fun anyway.

I'm rooting for The Good Witch at Rolex. She is an incredible mare - was actually USEA's Mare of the Year for 2008, and was short listed for the Olympics - and had a great showing last year at Rolex, where I fell in love with her.

Here's the best part - she looks just like Gogo!

MARE POWER! I'm totally making a shirt.