Everything's Bigger in Texas!

Phew! After three horrible, exhausting, stressful days of travel, my little family of critters and I have all survived the long journey to Texas. It was really not THAT bad, in the grand scheme of things, but really, three days of 12+ hour hauling will wear you out, not to mention the three animals and mother you're schlepping along for the journey. But we're all here, and we're all okay, thank god!

After finding Gogo's nasty wounds, my trailer door nearly falling off, losing all my keys for good, and running my truck and trailer off the road on a snowy mountainside, we managed to get off to a relatively decent start on Wednesday morning. My GPS got confused on the first leg of the journey, and sent me down a parkway (which is illegal with a trailer) right through Yonkers outside of NYC. Which, if you've never been there, is NOT a great place to drive a trailer through. The trip took FOR-EV-ER, and I was hours and hours late to my final destination. I was trying to make a rendezvous with my mother in Virginia, where she was flying in and meeting me for the second two days of the drive. When I finally pulled in to the equine hospital where Gogo was staying overnight, it was 10pm - we loaded at 9:30am. Along the journey, she refused to drink a single drop of water. At. All. The problem began when I tried to offer her water while she was standing in the trailer, and all she wanted to do was eat hay. Normally I take her off when I offer water. I did the only thing I could think of, and dumped the water over her hay (it was too cold to soak her hay when I left Connecticut.... negative 10!!). This, however, only made her think she was getting enough water, and she continued to refuse to think. So I kept dumping it over her hay. By the end of twelve hours, I was thoroughly alarmed. When she got into her stall, she took a sip of water, and then continued to eat hay as though she wasn't in the least bit interested in water. I was so thoroughly put out at this point that I told the attendant to shoot her if she colicked in the night! Thankfully, she drank nearly three 5-gallon buckets full of water overnight.

Gogo's stop in some Pennsylvania town outside of a big rock quarry and a lake:




I did in fact trailer her in that blanket, which I never do. Normally she runs really hot, but it was so freezing cold in Colebrook that she was literally shivering when I put her on the trailer. I've never seen her get THAT cold. It was in the low teens for the entire first day's drive, and she stayed very comfortable with that blanket in the breezy trailer. Do your fierce-hearted mares run hot too? Nearly every mare with a similar personality that I know does.

Anyway. Matters were not improved when I made contact with my mother that evening and learned that an enormous winter storm was roaring up through Virginia and Tennessee that evening. I had been warned by my new boss that those storms were horrible, and not to travel in them if I could help it, but as my mother had a plane to catch on Saturday in Texas we did not have a whole lot of choice. The scariest part of the journey by far was the first leg; imagine sliding down the Virginia mountains with your ABS grating underneath your foot at you try to regain your braking system while your trailer sways behind you in the early morning light. We crept on in this way for several hours, wondering if we should just give up and try and find another barn to hole up at until the weather cleared. Somewhere along the journey, the sideways snow changed to sleet, and our spirits were slightly lifted:






But not much. It was still miserably slow, even though our speed has increased from 20mph to 40. Eventually, the sleet changed all to rain, and the roads became passable. As a northern girl I can safely say this: Virginia cannot intelligently deal with snow. And Tennessee cannot intelligently deal with ice. That is all.

Somehow, 15 hours later we pulled safely in to our layover in Tennessee. Once again, Gogo refused to drink a drop out of her buckets, and I had to soak all her hay as best I could. She seemed in good spirits despite the fact that she only drank a bucket and a half overnight. As for me, I was pulling my hair out trying to get her to drink. I had also, at this point, lost an entire gallon of aloe juice due to an accident in my front seat where the aloe managed to leak out all over my computer, which then sat in a puddle of it for several hours. I discovered this far too late to do anything about it, and my computer seemed to be completely fried whenever I attempted to turn it on. I gave up, turned it off, and left open it by a vent every time I had a chance. I seemed to have revived it, thank god, but it was not a very happy experience for me. Also I was none too pleased at not having anything to help Gogo's stomach along the way. I had used up all the Ulcergard I had with me, and discovered that the rest was buried in the bowls of my trailer, underneath everything I owned in the world in my packed tackroom. Sigh.




The third day of the trip dawned and nobody was even remotely interested in getting in the car. Gogo, on the other hand, still hopped right on the trailer without a moment's hesitation, bless her lil' heart. I think if it were me, I would have taken one look at the shipping boots and refused to have anything further to do with the whole ordeal. We cruised across the Mississippi river past Memphis, and hurried through Arkansas (honestly, who wants to spend ANY time there?). When we eventually stopped to let Gogo off the trailer, she FINALLY drank about half a bucket of water. My dog had also FINALLY eaten her breakfast (major car anxiety) and my cat had FINALLY also taken a sip of water and had eaten a few bites of breakfast herself. Despite being really weird about where she drinks her water - we discovered that normally she only drinks out of the dog bowl, but apparently refuses to drink out of it unless it is in an elevated holder, so we had to offer her a mug of water instead - my cat is an exceptionally easygoing traveler. The dog was having a mild panic attack for pretty much every waking moment of the car ride, and we finally let the sleeping cat out of her cage so she could go curl up with the dog and comfort her. The cat also spent quite some time as my co-pilot, sitting on the center console and watching out the front window:



Never a thought of getting in my lap, what a good kitty.

Finally, after another exhausting 12 hours, we pulled into the barn and unloaded. Gogo, being of course in head, squabbled a bit with the mini next door to her stall, but settled immediately and started munching her hay and dipping it into the water buckets. For having ridden in a trailer for three very solid days, she is as bright eyed and alert as ever. She must have been tired, but she didn't show it at all. She can't have lost more than just a few pounds... she almost looks like she may have gained a few. She looks amazing.


She's still not drinking well, much to everyone's surprise, but both the hay and the grain is soaked here, and I think that has quite a lot to do with it. My first day of work was today, and she drank about as much as everyone else, which wasn't much at all. We left her outside next to the mini for the entire day, and pulled her blanket off at around 11am to let her be naked and free. We didn't even bother putting a blanket on her this evening. She could not possibly be happier about this situation. She is also very happy about having wet hay, as she is a disgustingly messy dunker and wants her hay wet in the first place.


She'll stay at the ranch for now, but she may yet move to my backyard. Or something else might move into my backyard, I haven't decided just yet! The 5 acres behind my house is all mine for the using, although it's not ready for horses yet. Three of the perimeter fences are good, strong horse fencing, some combination of pipe fence and mesh wire fence made specifically for horses. The other piece of fence is barbed wire, which we will have to rip out and replace. It's just one top strand of barbed wire overtop a normal wire and mesh fencing, but I'll be damned if I put my precious jewel into a cow pasture where she can lose and eye and a leg at the same time. The barn area also needs work - it is primarily pipe fencing but has places with chain link to solidify the pipe, and they are bent. It's a weird labyrinth of holding pens, six in all, and an area with a nice overhang for animals to stand under. There is also what could be made into a very large stall area, totally shut in from three sides, but the rafters are low and there are lightbulbs and wires to get hung up on. With some hard work, it could really be great.








Three days on a trailer, and Gogo's legs look better than ever. The right is still warm and has a small hard lump, but the left has no more swelling and the wounds look very good. They sloughed off a bit of dead skin overtop part of the "Y" that the cuts made, but once that business was over, they set themselves to closing and needed no further bandaging. She is still marching around sound as ever at the walk, and you wouldn't know visually that she has any sort of injury unless you looked in very closely. My new boss wants me to get a second opinion on the leg and whether or not she will have any sort of competitive future. I would think she stands a decent chance, although I'm not sure at what. I just can't believe how good she looks, how happy she is, and how relaxed I am about this whole process of healing. We're just all so much happier now that she is booted out into a field. I guess I have to eat my words about turnout for injuries, even though I need a vet with diagnostic tools to really say for sure.

The stalls have runs off of them, but she is temporarily locked in at night because the tiny pony shares her run. She is not pleased about that, even though her stall is 16x16:




She really is such a nice looking mare, even just standing in a stall. Even nicer looking out in the field. I really do hope she returns to some sort of work someday. My new boss gave her some very nice compliments, and I was pleased. We're also trying to figure out some new supplement experimentation with her, because at this point we might as well play around with what we have... if it's done intelligently, it hopefully can't hurt. Still Gro N' Win for now as her meal base, but I have SmartFlex Repair to try her on, and we're adding Cocosoya and some UGard for good measure after that horribly long trip. I still have flax to give her too but I can't imagine needing it if she's on Cocosoya. Eh, now is the time for experimentation I guess!
Personally, all supplementing and speculation aside, all I want for Christmas is a leg transplant for her!


I already almost got myself shot fumbling for the lights in the barn last evening - scared the other guy that works there and he literally had a gun in his hand when he came to see who I was! I guess that was my Texas christening right there - apparently, according to everyone here, I also need a gun to keep in my house because everyone else has one too. If you handed me a loaded gun, I wouldn't hardly know which end to point away from myself. I guess when in Rome... do as the Romans do? Just don't ask me to kill animals with it unless they're already suffering.

Welcome to life in Texas!

Tarsus... I don't even know-arsus

So we all know Gogo likes to keep me on my toes, right? Well last night she upped the ante... AGAIN. She came out of her stall fine, went on the treadmill fine, wore her ice booties fine, peed all over her neighbor's face because she's in flaming heat, and then when I pulled her out of her stall to groom her in the afternoon..... HUGE ENORMOUS BALLOON HOCK. It was only on the outside part of her LH, and it was hard. It wasn't hot. It wasn't painful. She wasn't lame. She had no temperature. It wasn't sore. It didn't go down with coldhosing. It didn't go down after a night of poultice. It didn't really go down after a 500lb. dose of banamine in the morning. It sort of went down with treadmilling today, but not really. It was totally localized to the hock yesterday, but today it went creeping down her leg and now the upper part of the outside of her LH is filling slowly but surely. I wanted to sweat it tonight but knew she wouldn't keep that on, so I poulticed it and the rest of the leg tonight again, along with more banamine and coldhosing. Wtf, what is going ON? We'll see what it looks like tomorrow but geez. I thought maybe she kicked the wall but she's in flaming heat, I wouldn't think she would have? I dunno what the crap she did to herself. I could find no indication of a wound anywhere either.

Seriously, Gogo. You are KILLING me here! If it's still big tomorrow I'll get some pictures. I'm stumped here.




In other news, for the first time in a year I actually let someone else work on my horse's feet for a change. And that person also shoes... so that was a BIG DEAL to get his particular opinion. This guy has a very interesting history - he very nearly hung up his anvil and nails to do totally barefoot stuff, but couldn't figure out how to make it work in New England. Verrrrry interesting, as this is the question I always get as a barefoot person in this particular area. Because really, let's face it, wild horses are not frequently found in the wet, rocky forests of New England. A natural trim is universal, but so much of it is environment, and this environment is just that - wet and extremely rocky. Feet have a hard time drying out and toughening up here, and soft feet don't play well with big jagged rocks. Hell, shod feet don't play well with some of our rocks either! So every time he comes to do horses, we always get into these really animated discussions about what is out there that works better than shoes. He keeps everything in the barn bare that he can, and he does a very nice natural trim. So, the last time he was out (Tuesday) I asked if he would look at Gogo, who was due for a trim (only 3 weeks out too... she is spitting out foot now that she's not wearing it off). She has a very odd crack in her foot that looks like trauma but I, again, have NO IDEA as to how or where she could have done this. I wanted him to check it out. As it turns out, he had quite a lot of pointers for me, and so I at one point just said well, do you want to just go ahead and trim her and show me what you mean? Of course, at that exact moment in time my boss came in and asked where her next horse was, so I had to go start tacking. And then I got a ring from one of the employees saying he couldn't catch a horse, so I had to go help him. By the time I got back up to the barn, the trim was already complete... damn. He did some things I wasn't sure I liked - for example, he rasped off all her remaining raggedy-hangy-down periople, something I've never done because why do it? To his credit he was working down some flare so I guess that's how that worked. He also took the heels way down on her clubby foot, maybe a little more than I ever felt comfortable doing, but her feet do look very nice. I was thinking for the first few days she *might* have been landing a little flatter versus more heel-first but I could be imagining that because I want to find faults here. Other than being more invasive than I would have been, I think he did a very good job - left that tasty sole and frog totally alone and just worked exclusively with the wall that needed to come off. We'll see what kind of growth she puts out in response to this trim - but who knows, maybe that heel really was ready to just come off for good and I was not skilled enough or comfortable enough to take it off myself. Time will tell. That being said, in general I can NOT believe how much those heels have come down over the past two years, all of them. They look fabulous.

Top picture was from the other day, and the bottom picture was from December of 2007:



Good picture of the removal of the raggedy periople. Don't really think that was necessary but there is still plenty of it left so there you are. RF looks a little weird in this picture because of the Tuff Stuff on it and for some reason the stain on it makes it look like her heel is running under... I can assure you that isn't the case!






Quite interesting to see just what is going on with those cracks. They were hard to see before. The one on the LF is pretty much totally closed almost, and the one on the RF is tighter than it ever was and looking way less threatening than ever before. Score!


And how do we battle the wet stall? With some super fun soaking and a layer of Desitin slathered on her already cleaned and treated frogs every couple of days... sounds totally odd but it does help keep the urine and ammonia out.







And of course, her tail is still gorgeous even though all the rest of her seems to want to fall apart on me every second of the day!





Gogo is great at this sort of thing though.... random mystery swellings that don't cause lameness or pain, which all seem to resolve themselves within a few days. So let's hope this is more of the same.

Elementary, my dear Gogo

Man, July just was not a good month for neither Gogo nor I was it? We are still dealing with the fallout from that, but I am thankful to say that the future is very sunny, and everything seems to be coming back together. Life may have imploded for me in July, but August is already looking way up, and September looks even more promising from where we now stand. It's not all back to normal yet, certainly no, but there is progress, always progress.


One of the things I do best in this world is honing in on a horsey problem and sleuthing about to find all possible answers to the issue, especially the physical aspect of things. I am a full believer in ruling out the physical issues before addressing the mental ones, and at the same time take full responsibility for all of them at once. If my horse is skittery under saddle and spooky, does that mean she's Lymey? High? Ulcery? What did I do to contribute to the problem, and what can I do to fix it? My horse is spooky and jittery on XC? Did I hang on her face, knock her in the teeth, chase her to a bad spot, slam on her back, overface her, scare her otherwise? Do her hocks hurt? Is she Lymey, ulcery, high? What did I do to contribute to the problem, and what can I do to fix it?

I never wanted to be a vet. No, I had no desire to play god and kill horses necessarily (or unnecessarily), or cut them open, live or dead. What I HAVE always been interested in is rehab once a problem had been diagnosed, and watching the progression being made. I thrived on taking care of my stall-bound Metro, day in and day out. Meticulously, I brought him back as best I could, and spent all my days wondering how better I could do it. That story ended sadly, but it didn't kill my enthusiasm for therapeutic work. In fact, for some time I wanted to open and run a rehabilitation center similar to KESMARC but with a homey feel, turnouts and such. That idea has long since been abandoned due to the enormous financial undertaking that would require... but discussing my future career options is a topic for another day. The point here is that I live for this kind of stuff. I want to make things feel better.

On Thursday, I had my first really successful dressage ride in two weeks. The preceding week had not been successful in the slightest, and Monday and Tuesday were quite awful as well. The Doxy has had 11 days in her system now, and I'm not feeling particularly as though it has made all that much of a difference. I will still give it another 5 days, and if there is still no improvement, I will pull her off it and save the rest of the Doxy for another time (not that I hope I ever need it ever again!). No need to waste money and eat at her stomach for nothing. Wednesday, it took a very long time to warmup, but I just let her do her thing within reasonable limits, and eventually, after endless 20-meter circles at the walk with occasional halts and reinbacks tossed in, she quieted and moved out without anxiety. We worked on transitions, improving the quality of her movement within movements, shoulder-ins, leg yields, and relaxation. We also worked a fair amount of counter-canter going left - we did several high quality shallow loops, and even went across the short diagonal to maintain counter canter halfway through the short side. She was lovely going left. Going right, I had almost nothing. She traveled very, very crookedly, her haunches way in at all times, and it was a struggle to straighten her. I decided it was foolish to try and do more than simply improve what I had to work with, so we left the more difficult stuff for another day when she's feeling better. This is still why I suspect hocks though. She was not being directly disobedient, she just didn't feel like she could do more beyond putting all our collective wills into simply traveling straight. That was the only real issue I had though, that right canter. She moved out very well the rest of the time, no other hesitations, and I felt very much like I was riding well too.

Yesterday, given how good she felt on Thursday, I opted to go ahead with my original plan for the day, a XC lesson with Ann Bowie at Mystic. All I wanted out of the day was to see how much of this is a rider-caused issue, and to give her some confidence back if I was causing her any reluctance. Ann was very helpful, and we got quite a bit of simple but effective schooling in. Ann made sure to pick apart the pieces of my equitation that are likely contributing to the issue, mainly in the way my energies and balance are centered up higher in my body than they should be. Instead of directing my energy to my legs and having them solidly on, I tend to make too much of a move with my upper body instead of letting it smoothly roll. About 6 strides out, she had me transition from a forward canter/slow gallop to a more collected (term used loosely) canter, and I sat down and put my leg on solidly. This, at first, had the effect of lengthening her instead of shortening her because she had also had me make every effort to have more neutral hands - i.e. not pulling back in ANY way to make adjustments - which, I think, was stressing her out because it's much harder to go pelting at a jump and hope you make it over than it is to bring yourself back before a jump! I had to really think about sending energy forward but capturing it in the contact without restricting her. With equal legs on both sides and equal reins on both sides capturing that forward energy and rolling it into a bouncing ball (that's the best image I had in my mind, a bouncing ball of energy rolling forward with nowhere for the energy to leak out of, such as a slack rein or a weak leg), she adjusted herself perfectly and gamely and calmly went to every fence. THEN, and only then, did I feel major improvements in my equitation over the top of the fence. But before, when I WASN'T perfectly perfect like that, she found the weak spots and she told on me. She bolted sideways away from the ditch the first time, the same ditch she loped over in May. She did the same at the white telephone polls. She chipped in, or she took things long and rushed. I had to REALLY focus and it wasn't until the last six or so jumps that I really felt like I got exactly what Ann wanted me to do. Then, everything fell much more into place. It was really odd to see how randomly spooky she still could be though. I walked her towards one of the teeny little upbanks they have there while on a loose rein, and when she got to the base of it, instead of walking right up it like she has always done before, she stopped, snorted loudly at it, and backed quickly away with a rather terrified expression. I walked her forward again, and after a little bit of quiet coaxing, she hopped up it from a walk on a loose rein (it was about a foot tall... she's walked up banks approaching three feet tall no problem, although they were often times unintentional when I was taking a break and not paying attention!!) That kind of behavior was still very odd to me. We weren't doing anything out of the ordinary, challenging, fast, or confusing. Just your run of the mill walk, like she always has done before. On the other hand, she did chase after a herd of deer that I pointed her at in order to clear them out of the field, and she cantered through a flock of geese standing around grazing in front of a fence, the only sign that she had noticed them manifesting itself into one single, perfect change right in the middle of the group. All in all, the lesson was very good and very helpful, but I will need more of them before I really feel like everything comes fully together and I really can give her the kind of ride she needs. When we got it right though, it was perfection and harmony.

But the continued odd spookiness that has really exploded into a problem in the past month got me thinking again. Gogo has been scoped for ulcers before and came out clean in situations where I felt SURE that she HAD to have them, and the odd weight fluctuations and jumping issues she had last summer all stemmed from her hocks and barn management problems instead of digestive issues. When those two things were addressed, she bloomed again. But, you still have to wonder. Spookiness at things that normally aren't scary is a typical ulcer-type symptom. So are things like going into the ring (or XC course) to do a round, and dropping a shoulder and having a right fit for no particular reason. She HAS been traveling a lot, which can really be hard on them even though she has to be THE best trailerer I've ever met in my life. I don't suspect ulcers because of management issues either - they get hay very nearly free choice, at the hours of 6am, 9am, 11am, 2pm, 4pm, and 8pm, and Gogo gets out on grass for about 6 hours a day (the best I can do, and the most she's ever had really). She's also on a very tiny amount of fortified grain a day: 2lbs of Gro N' Win, recently upped to 2.5 with the addition of another little cupful of Triple Crown Complete to counter the slight weight loss she's had. Or rather, topline loss. Her topline just... isn't looking as good as it was. There are a lot of explanations for that though, so you never know. Her attitude, however, has taken a slight downturn. She's much more sullen than she has been, and it doesn't seem to be corrected with fun things. A good swim in the river the other day was great fun while it lasted, but back at the barn? Very blah. However, I would like to note that after XC schooling yesterday, and today while getting her groom and handwalk, she was MUCH cheerier than I've seen her be in two weeks. Maybe she just needed to get out and run.

Could she be ulcery? Maybe. In the same way that she could have been Lymey, I suppose. I am not going to have her scoped and treat her with thousands of dollars of Gastroguard though, as my evidence is just not hard enough to really suspect it and my pocketbook is not vast enough to spend enormous chunks of money on possible whims. What I AM going to try, however, is something I got from The Barb Wire some time ago. This is a holistic alternative therapy, and given Tamara's gelding Aaruba's difficulty in responding to previous treatments and Tamara's serious knowledge on the subject, I completely trust in the way she raves about how good he felt after just three days of the treatment. All it is is just 1/2 cup of aloe vera juice or gel (I opted for juice as I felt she would eat it better), and a teaspoon of human-grade MSM. You can find these things at your local Whole Foods Market, or even Walmart. Is this curing the ulcers, or is this just helping tummies feel better? We wouldn't know unless we scoped before and after, which is not the case here. At about $2 daily, this is a far more economical option (Gastroguard is anywhere between $30 and $50 daily), and who knows? I've heard many good things about it, so it's worth a shot.


I finally have a hold on all the flyaway tethers that have broken loose from this hot air balloon basket we're journeying in. We've lost a little altitude, but we're retying them on, one by one. The Lyme tether is secured and no longer a concern. The ulcer tether is currently being repaired, and the hocks/eyes tether will be secured next week. The rider error tether is in my hands and is always a priority and a never ending work in progress, but it too will be secured, last but not least. And then, we will regain all our lost altitude with a vengeance, and break through the clouds to fly higher than ever before. It might be a campy little description, but it's an accurate one.


Gogo says, even with my tub of fresh water and my grass AND hay and my flymask and flysheet and flyspray.... I still want to come indoors.

Continual Lunging FAIL

D'oh. Well, for whatever reason I continue to have lunging equipment failure. We had another wardrobe malfunction on Friday when I was lunging in Vicki's chambon. Like I said about it, it is THE most rudumentary chambon I've ever seen - it's just a piece of string with a nylon strap on it. I have to hook it up with double ended snaps to my surcingle! So off we go, we're lunging, we've been lunging for all of five minutes. I dunno if she did this on purpose, because it was hard to tell, but one instant she was trotting along and the next, POP! the ring on my girth that the chambon was attached to suddenly came flying off and cracked her in the face. She proceeded to do Very Big Trot for a few strides before realizing she had no need to be freaked out. It might have been partially torn out last week when she ripped on it freaking out momentarily, I dunno. It sure didn't give last week, but this week? Rrrrrrrrrip.

Well, I had certainly learned my lesson a few weeks ago on how NOT to lunge new-and-improved Volatile Gogo, so I just put her back on the lunge line and let her cruise for a minute. But she is SUCH A LLAMA when she's moving on her own that it just HURT to want her boinging around super inverted, and so I decided to try something I hadn't done in a long time. I dug out some sidereins.

Gogo the llama at Lake Erie, just so you know:



So sidereins. Put them on, walked off, she's cool, moved into trot. AHHH, Gogo said. Very VERY Big Trot and some panicked running at the canter, which is ALL just a leftover from her having such a mental breakdown a few weeks ago. She normally lunges in them just fine, but hangs around behind the vertical and doesn't use her body at all, and therefore I don't normally use them. This time, she was REALLY worried when we started out, I think because she felt trapped for a moment, like she gets sometimes. Then, she settled into them and gave me THE most gorgeous trot and canter - she actually was using her entire body fluidly instead of doing the whole put head down, move legs fast sort of thing that she used to do in sidereins. She had a few moments where she looked worried, but then really just relaxed and really used herself in full. Something else interesting to note - instead of curling behind the vertical or leaning on the sidereins, Gogo actually held herself up actual correct self-carriage. I was impressed... really impressed. I won't be using sidereins often, but it's interesting to note what kind of reaction she had to them. We finished with a nice, steady, relaxed siderein-y trot (had been doing lots of transitions) and called it a night.

Yesterday, I had a lesson, considering the fact that I was supposed to have a lesson on Thursday but it was dangerously cold out and so we all went to Neptune's Diner instead of working (the boss included!) XD She felt a bit tense right from the get go, walk work included. It really felt as though I had, well.. worked her in sidereins. It wasn't that she was doing the whole sidereins curling behind the contact thing... but she was yanking (gently yanking!) on my hands, something she's never done before. Not hard, and not forcefully, but just pushing out against my hands in an unpleasant kind of way. It felt like she was testing sidereins for give. She was also doing the obnoxious thing she does when she is tense and feeling confined - clacking her teeth. It's not really all that visible (doesn't get sneer with her lips like a lot of horses that do this do), but if you're near her you can hear it. Drives me insane, because she doesn't do it when she's totally chilled out and relaxed. We did a lot of walk-trot transitions to start, just trying to give her something simple to focus on, and then we progressed from there to some shoulder-in, very steep leg yields, decent quality trot lengthenings (not as stellar as they have been), fabulous canter lengthenings, focusing less on the technical difficulty of each exercise than the ability to maintain relaxation. By the end, she was suburb, but still not totally without tension - the teeth clacking was still going on. Vicki said she looked excellent and I believe her, but I could still feel that she was holding it somewhere, even if it wasn't visible. We were challenging her though, working her in shoulder-fore or haunches-in through every transition between gaits and within gaits, which were all coming rapid fire. Vicki also had me do something interesting that was instantly successful - I tend to jam downwards a bit with my right heel, which makes my calf come off of her side a little more than it should. Vicki had me think about unweighting my stirrups during each downward transition - making the transition as though I were about to remove my feet from the stirrups, which put my calves on her more during the transitions - and VOILA! Instant amazing transitions. Love that! We also talked a bit about positive and negative tension in horses, and how you physically have to have some sort of muscle tension in your body to do anything at all, simply because engaging a muscle creates tension. Sometimes, Gogo has only positive tension in her body, and some days, like yesterday, Gogo borderlines on negative tension. It's a very fine line to walk. We also ALSO talked about the Comfort Zone, the Achievement Zone, and the Panic Zone. The Comfort Zone is where Gogo is doing exactly what she knows how to do already, and is totally chill about it. Pushing her into the Achievement Zone maintains that steady mental mindset, but goes into more challenging work and learning new things. The Panic Zone is when you push too far into the Achievement Zone and have a meltdown. Gogo's Comfort Zone is fairly small, her Achiement Zone is a very tiny area that you have to be careful to stay in, and her Panic Zone is HUGE. If you push just a little too hard out of the Comfort Zone, you'll zoom right into the Panic Zone. Again with the walking fine lines thing! In all honesty though, that's what makes dressage fun for me. I love being able to try and toe the line where I can, and feeling just when I feel to back off, or just when I can ask for a little more. That developing sense of feel gets deeper and deeper with every ride, and has been gettng deeper and deeper since I was the age of 7 and first getting on a horse for lessons. It never stops developing, and I love that.


Hooray Gogo's new supplements are here! She's officially off Cosequin and Mare Magic (and consequently, Smartpak) for the time being, and is instead on bulk raspberry leaf (which I found for $4.20 a pound.... two pounds of Mare Magic is $55.99. $55.99 vs. $8.40? EASY CHOICE) and ProMotion EQ, the joint supplement I talked about. She just started it on Thursday, so I'll give it a few weeks and keep you updated on what I see and feel.


And what am I doing today you ask? Well, the 95 thousand Pony Club kids are all coming in again for their 9am-4pm clinic, so jumping isn't going to happen. I wanted to go hack out.... and then I had a better idea. It's supposed to be 55 today, which is awesome. There is a beach about an hour away (a real OCEAN beach with real SALT WATER, not just Lake Erie!!) that allows horses on it in the offseason (which is right now). So, that is where we are headed! Oh my god excited. SO excited.

A Big Hodgepodge of Things

There was a whole bunch of stuff I meant to blog about this week but did not, so I'm attempting to get a jump on that and remember all the little blurbs of stuff I had in my head....

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1) Gogo had her 4th trim this week, on Monday specifically. It was nice because I had ridden her out on the pavement, so she wore her feet down a little for me already! It was a hair over two weeks, and I have to say I much prefer the two week schedule to the three week schedule. I'm getting better and better at this! Once again, I didn't ever manage to get any really good pictures, but I have a few decent ones.





It's becoming fairly easy to wield the tools now that I'm building a bit of muscle memory about it. By the way, her cracks look AWESOME. They aren't going anywhere anytime soon, I don't think, but they look very tight right now and as long as I keep touching up the roll there's no reason for me to believe that they won't stay tight. I've been reading about Pete Ramey's special soaks he does for horses with chronic cracks... perhaps I shall look into this more and maybe give it a try. Or maybe try the tea tree oil thing that was suggested to me....


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2) Supplements. Supplements are always an interesting topic to me, as is anything relating to nutrition. Currently, Gogo is getting regular Cosequin and Mare Magic as her two oral supplements, which I get from Smartpak. I LOVE Smartpak, and I'll totally keep using it if my other plans don't work out, but I was thinking about both supplements and wondering if I should change them.
Mare Magic is red raspberry leaf in a pretty package. That's all it is. And it REALLY helps. It's not something that prevents mares from coming into heat. What it DOES do it make her heats much more tolerable and much less crampy for her - she stays loose and giving in her back, whereas before she'd hold a lot of tension just behind the saddle, and it also keeps her head MUCH more level during that 'special' time.. lol. Mare Magic, in monthly Smartpaks, is $10.95 a month. Now, that doesn't sound so bad, right? But think of it this way: the actual bags of Mare Magic are either 8oz ($19.95) or 32oz ($55.95). There are 16oz to a pound, so that's half a pound and two pounds. Online, you can buy bulk red raspberrry lead (the kind you make tea out of) for between $9-10 for a pound. 32oz is supposed to last 240 days... so 16oz would last about four months. Which equates to about $2.50 a month. $2.50 a month or $10.95 a month.... well, that's easy. Buy bulk, screw Mare Magic.
Regular Cosequin is good stuff. It's REALLY good stuff. Now, however, they have a new product on the market called Cosequin ASU, which I keep hearing is a far superior product. Directly from that website: "Cosequin ASU goes above and beyond the traditional glucosamine/chondroitin sulfate products on the market. Cosequin ASU contains NMX1000™* avocado/soybean unsaponifiables (ASU) formulated with FCHG49®* glucosamine hydrochloride and TRH122®* low molecular weight chondroitin sulfate. Plus the addition of high purity MSM! This sets Cosequin ASU apart from any other joint health supplement for horses. And all in a tasty, easy to administer powder!" Cosequin ASU is also more than double the price of regular Cosequin. Hm. The options here are to find it really cheap somewhere and buy it in bulk (not huge amounts of bulk, just enough bulk to save money), OR to try another product I'm interested in: Promotion EQ. Go read that website... does that not sound too good to be true? You get a FULL money back guarantee if you're not satisfied, so what do you have to lose? I recently talked to someone in person who is a total believer - had a very lame mare with stifle issues who had been on Cosequin for many years and was still lame, to the point where they were going to euthanize her. She put her on Promotion EQ, and within a few weeks, the mare was running around the pasture. She no longer drags her toes, and she's not lame (not rideable either, but not in pain). So I'm very interested in that! I don't think it currently comes in Smartpaks though, so that's the other problem. If it doesn't come in Smartpaks, and I'm not going to use Mare Magic anymore, well.... sorry Smartpak.

What I'm going to do I think it order one more Smartpak, and then next month order some Promotion EQ and bulk raspberry leaf. I reaaaaaaaally love the ease of Smartpaks, but..... well......


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3) I am very angry right now at Dover. In November I ordered a sheet for Gogo, and.... well, it's January and no sheet. I finally was like, all right, this is ridiculous, and I hunted for hours to find all the tracking codes and things to see where the package ended up (or didn't end up). THEY SHIPPED IT TO OHIO. IN NOVEMBER. I did NOT put Ohio as my shipping address... I put Michigan!!!!!!!!! So right now Dover is on my shit list, and I shall have to call them and yell at them. On the other hand, isn't that sheet pretty in ice blue?


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4) I cannot wait for the summer months to come. Why? Because there are some awesome clients here who keep saying things like, "oh you want to go conditioning? I know ALL the places to go, I'll totally go with you, I'm not afraid to gallop!" and "Hey want to go swim your horse in the ocean with us? We go every year, it's great!" And one more thing: "Hey, Heidi White is coming for a clinic, want to go with us? You can stable with us for free at my friend's house!" NO WAY! I totally want to go to the Heidi White clinic. I've heard she is refreshing, insightful, kind, and really intelligent, and breaks down exercises carefully so each rider has success at them. The clinic is in June, which works out perfectly because I have no shows at ALL in June... sweet!


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5) Dude. My grandmother called me the other day and was like, "I know you're poor and you want to horseshow. How much money do you want."

AWESOME. More on that later.