Hurricane Fail, and JUMPIN'!

I forgot to mention the other day that I had my first brush with a real hurricane. So unimpressive was this supposed massive storm that I didn't even remember to write about it. Quick, steal food and horde gas!! Dry dock your boats, take cover!! And then we didn't even get so much as a light breeze. Hurricane Earl's new name = Hurricane Fail. Seriously, I was disappointed. And also annoyed because if we don't get some sort of rain sometime in the next century, all my grass will turn to dust. I can't imagine my boarders would be very pleased with that.

Gogo continues to be spectacular under saddle. Following our great dressage ride Saturday, I hacked her for 45 minutes bareback around the property on Sunday, and yesterday opted to give her a 'jump' day. I think I want her schedule at this point to go something like this: 'Jump' day, hack day, dressage day, 'jump' day, hack day, dressage day, day off. Or something like that. It's pretty flexible at this point, the only condition being that if she does good hard work one day, she automatically gets a nice hack day the next. Hacks right now consist of walking bareback around the rolling hills of our property for an increasing 5 minutes every time, and throwing in a little bit of trot if there is a flat place to do so. She did trot a few steps up a tiny incline today - she had SO much energy and felt SO good after yesterday! But I digress. Let me backtrack....


Last night, after a 15 minute walk hack around the property, I set up several trot poles as I have been doing, and then also added the world's tiniest crossrail, pictured right. We have been stepping over bigger logs on the perimeter trail every day, so it was time to try something at the trot - but only if she felt good and ready. The warmup she gave me was excellent, and it felt like her head was really in the right place, so I opted to give it a try. She walked over the jump while on the buckle, seemingly disinterested: "So what, big deal. I walk over bigger stuff every day." And then we tried it at the trot.

As expected, I got a lot of WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!




I had trot poles set up earlier in the line, but she saw the jump ahead of her and started leaping over them, so I opted to do a big circle around to the jump and not give her too big of a runway. She launched twice, left my butt behind, and celebrated on the other side with dramatic headshakes, leaps and a full-on bronc moment where she came to a stop but continues to bounce up and down with all four off the ground, arching her neck and doing what I quite imagine looked something like this. Alas, we missed that part on video!

Finally, it all came together like this:




SO AWESOME.


On September 12th, it will be a year since the original injury. That is something I can hardly believe. We've come so far, and worked so hard for moments like these. I honestly think she's moving better now than she ever has... she really grew up over the past year. Ups and downs, highs and lows, you've seen it all. In the end, seeing how happy she is and how good she feels, it's all worth it.

End of August Analysis

I can't believe it... September is here, and summer is fading fast. Although today you wouldn't know it, as it was a steamy 95 degrees with 9583891048592048 percent humidity. Ugh! The leaves are all definitely beginning to change though, which I am certainly happy to see, as it means we finally might have some RAIN and cooler weather coming. This heat is horrible!


August Goals:

1) Build up our canterwork by an increasing 5 minutes a week
Success! We did stop at 15 minutes versus 20, for reasons previously discussed - it just wasn't doing anyone any good to just go around and around the rail for an exhausting length of time. She is sound and holding up to that level of work well, so it's time to back off and start some slightly more complicated work without the intense time factor. It is too hot and there is no sense in exhausting her - she is fit and strong already. Too fit maybe!

2) Once in the second week of canter, solidify fall plans (AHHA, etc.)
I am calling this a success, because I solidified my own resolve and decided against making serious plans for the fall. I have no reason at this point to push her, and it would be silly for me to try and get her ready for anything serious, even if it was just Approvals. Fall plans at this point include trail riding and HOPEFULLY hilltopping. But as I said before, if I'm not completely comfortable with her level of fitness outside the ring when formal season starts, we won't be going.

3) Once in the third week of canter, start to add 30 & 20 meter circles at the trot to our rides
Success! Not much to report here other than damn, it feels good to circle again! A strange thing happened when I started to circle though... suddenly, I found myself fighting urges to throw in random lateral work, transitions to and from gaits and within gaits, and add various levels of collection and stretching to our work. Wait, we can't do REAL dressage yet! But I felt that itchy urge.... I miss it so much!

4) Once in the fourth week of canter, start to hack outside the arena again
Success! Like I said, we did not actually add a technical fourth week of canter, but instead started to hack out again. I've been hacking out every day for the past week and a half, starting little tiny hills and changing footings, and she feels amazing. I plan to keep hacking out little bits before and after most rides as well, both for the mental and physical benefits. Her legs were amazingly tight and cold all last week, but now that the heat and humidity has returned, the light fill has returned. Oh well, I will wrap when I have to, but it was nice to go for a week and a half without them (save for the one day when she was wild last week).

5) At the end of the month, check in with Dr. C - ask about jumping, turnout, etc.
Success! We had a great vet visit and Dr. C cleared us for full work again, so long as I am slow and careful with it. Don't worry Dr. C, I've got time!



September Goals:
1) Daily turnout in the medical pen (POSSIBLY to move into the next size paddock, but this may wait until next month) save for days when I will not be there to moniter
2) Jump our first crossrail in a year!
3) Return to a 5/6 day a week schedule - dressage, jumping, hacking out (schedule still in the works but I have a good idea at this point of what I want to be doing)
4) Trailer off property for our first real TRAIL RIDE in a year!
5) Just enjoy my mare. It's fall, it's beautiful out, the brunt of the rehab work is over and it's time for fun!


Today was our first 'jumping' day, or what I plan on turning into our weekly Wednesday jump session. I took down most of the jumps set up in the arena and made them into two trot poles each, then set out on a 15 minute walk warmup outside the arena. Once in the arena, I trotted her on the buckle for a little while, doing a few walk transitions for good measure. She was listening well, so we cantered a bit, and she was just as quiet - love that! She did scoot off when she cantered by the trainer giving a lesson (the trainer said she thought she gave her a 'look' on accident and Gogo percieved that as a cue to take off) but she didn't get far, just took a few speedy strides and humped her back like a dolphin. Silly mares! One trotting over the poles, her energy level shot through the roof, and it took a few halt halts to convince her to just TROT. She listened perfectly to every single one. I had to smile when we came down the five stride line that had two trot poles for the first jump and an actual jump at the other end that I hadn't taken it down - obviously we were NOT taking the jump, but her ears were so far forward when she saw it that I thought they might snap off. When I steered her away from it, both ears swiveled around wildly in all directions, clearly confused as to why we would not be jumping it. We only did a handful of trot poles, but it was a ton of fun as she was obviously enjoying it. In two weeks, I plan on trying an actual tiny crossrail. Sweet!

And then, we went to cool out on the perimeter trail and found a massive flock of wild turkeys:



A bit hard to see but there must have been forty of them. She stopped, looked, decided they weren't important, and walked on. That's my girl!

And did I mention the best part of all of this? NO DRUGS! I haven't needed them since I started to hack her out again. She is definitely a little bit hot, but she isn't being stupid at this point. Thank god, I was so tired of having to drug her every ride for the past three months!



Gogo's favorite thing in the entire world besides food was also at the barn today - my boss' six year old son. If ever there was a mare obsessed with having a baby, it's this one. She LOVES him and he kisses her on the nose and leads her everywhere, her following along like a puppy. Even my boss commented, "she wants a baby!" Have you ever seen such a motherly, loving look?:



She never takes her eyes off of him. She is a perfect angel for him and always makes sure to keep her feet far from his.



If that isn't the cutest thing you ever saw, I don't know what is!

Jeff Cook Jumping Clinic 5/1/10-5/2/10

Last weekend, I had the chance to ride one of my boss' young green beans in our farm-hosted jumping clinic with Jeff Cook. Jeff trained with and worked for George Morris at Hunterdon for ten years before moving out west with his family, and comes back here on a fairly regular basis to do clinics with us. This was my first time meeting him, first time riding somebody else's horse in a clinic (while she watched... nerve-wracking as she is a far better rider than I am!), and first time doing an exclusively equitation-based clinic (versus dressage or eventing). As James is a little baby wiggly worm and I am a complete rust-bucket over fences, we did the baby section designed for the greenies. Mostly what I got out of this was polish on my basic equitation, especially in the canter. Suddenly, after all this time, I have discovered that yes, I too can two-point like a normal human being! THAT IS SO EXCITING.

For those of you that don't know my background, I started with a huntseat-type lesson barn, moved to a dressage and CT barn when I was a teenager (but did mostly dressage), and had horrible dressage-like equitation over fences for the LONGEST time. It has been a SERIOUSLY long and uphill road trying to counter that, and I've spent a lot of time in my past sitting in the saddle while on XC because I just couldn't figure out HOW to two-point correctly without losing my balance or getting exhausted. Last year, when I did the Eric Horgan clinic, he talked to me about keeping my base of support in my calves versus my thighs while up out of the saddle, and I tried but just didn't understand what he meant. The week before last, however, I was riding James and thinking about what he said, and suddenly I found myself up out of the saddle, base of support right there in my hugging calves, able to balance perfectly and comfortably out of the saddle. Wait, WHAT? WHEN did I learn how to do THAT? I used to ride up out of the saddle like a typical dressage rider, with my base of support in my thighs versus my calves. The problem with this is that you lose your lower leg over fences when you don't have strength in them, and you tend to tilt in the saddle because your balance is too high. Aaah, the things you learn as time goes on!(XC used to look like this. Trying to get in two-point used to look like this.)

Suddenly, I found that I could stay comfortably up out of the saddle. So much WIN! You'll see in the following video that I lose it in the beginning of the circle I made, and fall back into my tilty habits, but I regain composure halfway around the circle and continue onward. Go James go!



Obviously this is going to need a lot of practice. But hey, it's a start! Now we just need some finesse.


Something else Jeff pointed out to me, besides the things I already knew (keep your hands closed around the reins, bring your toe out a little more) was that I shouldn't have vetwrap on my stirrups. But.. but.. but..! It's so pretty and blue! That might be so, he said, but I'm really fooling myself if I think it's going to help me at all. In the end, all it will really do is give me a false sense of security and have me stand up on my toe more than I should. Same goes for the jointed stirrups I use, he said. Now, I know that George is a stickler for those old fillis irons, so I'm not about to go trashing my jointed stirrups, but I did cut off the vetwrap for the second day of the clinic. Awww, maaaan! Goodbye beautiful blue. But he's right, and as I have a tendency to lose my heel sometimes anyway, I can't take any chances. No excuse for not having proper equitation for the sake of having some shiny colors on my stirrups.

We did a lot of basic w/t/c work with the young horses and the green riders, so there wasn't much for me to get out of it. We jumped some tiiiiiiiiny little things, which James was SO unimpressed with....



.... but it was still very fun. My take home message from the clinic was mostly that I need to practice, practice, practice and not let my skills get too rusty while waiting for the mare to get back on her feet. Jeff was a fabulous clinician, very nice and super helpful, and I recommend him if you have a chance. I only wish it had been Gogo instead, I know I would have gotten a TON of stuff out of it with her.






And for something a little more interesting than James hopping over a six inch crossrail, here is my boss riding one of the Florida horses. MUCH more exciting!






Mare is getting primed for her next vet visit in a few weeks. Her legs have been quiet and tight (sometimes with minor fill, but nothing alarming, and it usually goes with fill in the fronts too), and she's actually been well-behaved for once! I better not say that outloud though, because you know it'll never last!

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!!)

Huntington Farms H.T. 9/23/09

BACK IN WINNING FORM!!

Or well, almost ;) Gogo and I took 5th in our division at Huntington this weekend due to a bad ride to the planks on my part and a subsequent slip in the mud during stadium, which cost us a rail even though Maresie did her very best to get us out of a bad situation. Oops! Rails happen, and when they're my fault combined with Mother Nature... oh well!

Huntington was GREAT fun. The drive wasn't nearly as bothersome as I expected, and I spent it cruising along with good music enjoying myself. It got wilder and more woodsy the further north I went, and I was reminded of driving through nothern Michigan. Except for the "Bear Crossing" and "Moose Crossing" signs. Bears?? Moose?? I've never even seen a moose, I don't think. I almost hit a bear wearing a giant radio collar with my Durango when I was driving through Sequoia National Park in California. I saw bears once outside a restaurant in the Yoop (that's Michigan's Upper Penninsula for those of you not from there... believe it or not, yes, Michigan is actually two states with one name, separated by water.) But it certainly felt like I was heading into the Wops the further I went.
Gogo settled in like a good girl upon arrival - we were in the upper barn on top of a hill, overlooking the rest of the valley we were in. Huntington has a ton of land, it seems, or at least had permission to use an awful lot of land! The barn had a narrow little entrance door and low ceilings, but the stalls were big and roomy and she seemed very comfortable there. She even only tried to attack her neighbors once or twice, how sweet.

As for me, once I got her settled I headed out to walk XC, where it promptly started to rain on me. From that point on, I'm pretty sure I didn't dry out until I got in the car to drive home the next day. After getting a good look at the course (and getting thoroughly soaked), I gave Gogo her night check, and settled into the trailer for the night. I had one of her blankets spread onto the floor of the trailer (after it was cleaned out of course!!), a sleeping bag and pillow on top of that, and my cooler of snacks, backpack of stuff, and Harry Potter to keep me company in the rain. And it rained alllllllllllllll night. Lights were out by 10pm (unusual for me!), and I awoke the next morning on my own at 6:30am feeling refreshed and ready to roll.

Dressage went well. I did not achieve nearly the level of relaxation that I usually do, even after an hour of warmup (easy there beast... still hot to trot after an hour? Well... here goes nothing...!) but she put in a very solid test even though it felt like if I had needed a half-halt anywhere, I wouldn't have been able to get one! We came away with a test of solid 7's, two 8's, and one deserved 6 for our freewalk. Still, that gave us a 29.5, our best score of this season so far, and putting us in 3rd behind a tie for 1st with two 28.5s. Pretty respectable! A friend I had made at Mystic was in 5th with either a 31.0 or a 31.5, I can't remember, but that gives you an idea of how close the scores were! I can't rememeber where our winner was sitting after dressage, but it must have been right around there. I was pleased with the score and the test, but still got the same old comments as always - needs more activity behind and needs better left bend. Well... I guess the hock injections didn't exactly solve that issue either. Guess it's back to a rider problem... d'oh!

Onto XC, which I was understandably a little nervous about. It had been drizzling on and off, and I was feeling a bit anxious, because how could I not after our past two shows? But I needn't have worried. The course was quite long for Novice - optimum time was nearly 6 minutes, I think Groton House's was a little over 5 minutes, for comparison - and it was very long and gallopy, like a lot of people had told me ahead of time. The first fence was very inviting, enclosed on both sides and simple to look at:



And she jumped it like a champ. From there, it was a nice long gallop to fence 2, another attractive brushy fence with a turny approach to it, which she took slightly crooked but showed no hesitation to. Up into the woods from there, down a long road which put you back out into a small field where fence 3 was:



Again, fairly sizeable, very inviting, and she gave it a very good effort. Up into the woods and down the dirt road again, and around a corner to the biggest field where fence 4 was waiting, which again gave no problems:



Fence 5, which barely missed being included in that picture, was a big swing around to the left, easy for her, another simple palisade/coop type jump, and from there you headed to fence 6, a very sweet tire jump which she looked at in a sort of curious way but never hesitated to on approach. It was like she was going oh, that's nicely built isn't it? And on we went. Fence 7 was a simple palisade, and on we went to fence 8, which was our first real question:



That's the backside of it. Notice the funky hill right before it? I know that seems uncomplicated, but Gogo has this tendancy to gather speed going down hills, and I was not about to be going a thousand miles an hour at the bottom of this little speed bump here only to have her go hmmmm I am going too fast and can't POSSIBLY be expected to jump this! What I had planned to do was come down the short side of the hill at a trot and risk a steering issue rather than risk a speed issue coming over the hill. I needn't have worried, however, because even though she simply would not trot, she came around that shorter side of the hill and was completely game to it, jumping it just fine. Hooray! From here, I don't have any more pictures (it was raining pretty hard at that time and I didn't want to get my camera all wet), but I will describe it as best I can. I wish I had gotten to take more pictures, there are some things I wish you guys could see! After fence 8 was a hard right turn to a one stride combination of simple logs, and fence 10 was a white barn/doghouse, all of which she handled easily. It got trickier from there - fence 11 was a set of airy logs at the top of a pretty steep hill, which you had to jump while you were still going up, and she gave it a mighty effort which I was very impressed with - I'm pretty sure she's never jumped anything quite like that before. The meat of the course started at fence 12, the ditch, which was kind of weird looking. From the ditch, you had just a couple of strides to make it to fence 13, an offset coop off to the right, and then it was onto the upbank, with another offset approach to it - it was basically arcing around these three all going to the right in a circle. The bank was interesting - it was set at the top of a hill in a circular shape, and they called it The Castle. In the middle of The Castle was a chevron from Training the day before, so you had to crank left in order to not run into it when you reached the top of the bank. From there, it was down a fairly steep little section of hill to a set of brushy logs at the bottom, which was complicated to get to because you had a fairly narrow path going left off of The Castle (so you didn't fall off the other sides), and then you had to go right down this steep-ish hill to the brushy log. Complicated for her, to be sure, but she took all of it in stride and was completely game and relaxed through the whole thing. She never hesitated once, even though it went so fast I don't think I had time to register hardly any of it! It was a loooooooooooong gallop down a dirt road from there to fence 16, a set of logs set on a downhill slope, which she hopped over easily. Down a pretty turfed up hill we went, at the bottom of which was the water complex. I had planned on trotting this hill, but again, she came back to me instead in a very controlled canter and so I let her cruise comfortably down the hill that way. She looked at the water for a second - it was a large puddle mostly - but a couple pops with my beater and she trotted right in, and out over the logs right after it. Wheeee down the final hill to the big white at the end, and I came home whooping and hollering like a backwoods redneck at the Friday night hoedown. My friend came in behind me and was equally as pleased with her ride, and we walked back together to stabling discussing our rides. I was thrilled. THRILLED! She was perfect!

I have no pictures of stadium either - bummer. The course was very turny, with rollbacks and some tight turns, and I think it would have been great fun if it hadn't been raining like crazy. Even though the XC footing had been fine, by the time we went for stadium, the ground there was very turfed and very slick. You know when the ground is so saturated that giant clods of grass just come loose when you step on them? It was that kind of slick. The first fence Gogo took in the warmup she knocked, which should have been my first clue that I should take it conservatively. She handled the course well through the 5th fence, but felt unstable in the footing, as did most everyone else, I think. It felt like it didn't have anything to due with her barefooted-ness either, because I know that question will get asked! I saw a shod horse with big ol' studs go sliding vertically into the first fence of the combination, simply because he said no after he had had a rail at the fence before it and just couldn't stop himself in the muck in time to not crash. I saw some earlier crashes too, while I was checking out the course for a second time. Ohhhh well, sometimes Mother Nature has some tricks up her sleeve! Anyway, it was onto a sort of awkward bending line onto fence 6, the evil planks on flat cups - o horrors, flat cups! - which I gave her a decidedly bad ride to. She landed on her right lead, and when I went to ask her to switch left, she cross-cantered. I'm not sure if she ever switched, really - the fence was approaching and I stopped paying attention because I didn't see a spot and I don't think she did either. As a result, she tried to save both our butts by leaving long, and just flopped through it, taking it down with her as we landed. The rest of the course she jumped her GUTS out though, which was super sweet and I was very proud of her. I came out of the ring feeling crappy about the injections - after all, this was the first time in the past 9 events we've gone to that she's had a rail, and this was the first post injections, you know. That theory didn't seem to make all that much sense to me though, and when we went back into the ring for our victory gallop, I took another look at the fence. Yep, there they were, skid marks from two hind feet losing their purchase as a horse tried to take off! Ohhhhhhhh I get it, she likely just slipped in the footing while trying to cover my butt for me and just couldn't quite manage it. But she tried, and that's all that matters to me.

We finished 5th on our final score of 33.5. That's pretty respectable if you ask me for our first time back out, and in very stiff competition too. The top 5 places ALL moved around after stadium, it was crazy! The girl that was in 1st also had a rail, so had we gone clean, we would have moved into 1st for our 4th win of the season - d'oh again! - but as our winner pointed out in a comment on my last post, karma was throwing her a bone after a very bad week, so I will totally agree to the universe's choice here ;) (By the way, I DID notice your horse's huuuuuge ears... I LOVE that, my last gelding had MONSTER ears so I have a soft spot for them, lol). I also have to say I think I would have keeled over dead if we had actually won another one. Winning three is freaky enough for me, and winning three in a row? TOO freaky. Winning FOUR? If we do win another I think I'm going to die of a heartattack.


I can't believe how amazing she was. This pink ribbons means a lot more to me than all the blue ones it's next to. She galloped her heart out, jumped her guts out, and did her very best through some very tricky coursework and some very ucky footing. She wasn't spooky, looky, hesitant, or balky in any way. She really gave it her all for me, and I couldn't be happier with how she was.

The best part? Look at this face after we were done:



That is one happy horse with energy still left in the tank. She was plenty tired today, but yesterday she was still buzzed after we were done and searching for more cookies. She's back to her old self, and I am SERIOUSLY excited for the AECs. The official countdown is 15 days starting tomorrow (Tuesday), and we leave on the 7th. Gogo had a chiro adjustment today, which I will write about tomorrow cause this is getting LONG, and because of it she'll have a couple of days off. It's back to work on Thursday with a nice long hack, and then it's down to business. The wire is approaching, and I can't believe it. How are the AECs right around the corner already??

It was a great weekend, and I'm so glad to have my horse back to her good old self again.

The Return of the Queen

SHE'S BACK! The Gogo I know and love, the cross-country machine.... oh she's back.

Thursday evening, Gogo, Shan and I all headed out to Red Rock Farm in Rhode Island to get some XC schooling in. I was slightly anxious about it, seeing as our last schooling at Mystic was only partially a success - but this was before the aloe juice and the hock injections. She came off the trailer and out onto the field like an old pro (which is normal for her... but hasn't been so much as of late!), and quietly wandered around behind Shannon while we checked out the grounds. It was a fairly small place, but there was a ton of stuff to school and it was all well built and well maintained, with banks, water, and a lot of varied jumps from teeny-tiny to Training. There was a ditch somewhere down one of the wooded trails, and Shannon stepped over it in front of Gogo. I let Gogo pick her path, remembering all too well how when we went to school at Mystic the other week, the sight of the ditch caused her to bolt sideways repeatedly. This time, she went, oh that's nice, never hesitated, and hopped over it practically ON TOP of Shannon! That's when I knew things were just going to go well.

And they really did. She was supurb, start to finish - acting just like her good ol' normal self again. All the brightly colored, funny looking ones, she never looked at. The bigger ones, she never hesitated at. She never hesitated at anything, really, except for the water, but I can understand why. The water was actually a stream that they had backed up and worked on, and it had a big bank out, a tiny bank out, and an open side, but the water was BLACK due to all the caca that grows in a pond in the August heat. They warned me about this ahead of time over the phone, so I knew it was coming and planned accordingly. She took a little while to convince that she should really go in, but once in, she walked and trotted in and out like a pro, up and down the tiny bank option. There was a bigger, Novice-sized bank next to the little one, and she and I were standing in the water in front of it, just relaxing for a minute. Much to my surprise (and delight, really), she went, okay we're facing that so it's time to go! and hopped up out of it from a standstill without me asking. Luckily at the last second I managed to grab onto my saddle as she was leaping so I didn't go flipping backwards over her butt into the water, lol. Boy look at those HOCKS MOVE! I haven't seen them flexing that much since she was 5!



We also found the actual bank complex, which was great - it had a tiny bank, a medium bank, and a large bank, all with very nice footing, and the medium bank had a two stride option after it. And this was where I found that I REALLY had my horse back! At Mystic, they have several banks, one of which is weenie teenie. Remember the nightmare at Riga, about the banks that she has ALWAYS done no problem all her life? Much of the same there at Mystic - I walked her up to the bank, and she put her head down and snorted at it like she had never seen a bank before, backing up as fast as she could as if terrified. But here? This is how Gogo normally walks up banks:



Woohoo my horse is back!! Don't mind the mad head tossing - she REALLLLLY hates bugs.



And she really just cruised around everything in the field perfectly. Approached every fence exactly the same, even the super scary ones. She didn't put a foot wrong anywhere. She did clock herself pretty hard on a bigger table, as you'll see in this next video, and even though she flopped over the next fence, she came back around to the table and jumped it with all her heart. Awesome.



Seriously, she was perfect. Perfect. PERFECT. If she takes on Huntington's XC course like she did this one.... we'll win. Horses can be unpredictable and you never know. But I am feeling REALLY good about this coming weekend and I can't wait to get her back around a full course. I can't even describe to you how good she feels. This is the Gogo that knows and loves her job. This is the Gogo that locks on to every fence with her ears forward and takes it all in stride, no matter what it is. This is the Gogo I know is in there.

We're ready. Two days.

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.

End of July Analysis

July has completely flown by. All for the better too, really: between the moldy apartment and a month and a half of sleeping on the couch, the drama with Alex, and Gogo's only semi-explained spooky-nuts behavior at our last two events, I am READY for August and a clean slate!

Summer is really here in the thick, but it's a bit sad that I only started to really think that starting just last week. It's been raining so much that it sort of felt like the eternal end of spring and not the nice, hot, steamy days we've been having for a little over two weeks now. But the dog days are now here, with blazing hot sunshine, humidity so thick you have to carry a machete to cut your way through it, and daily afternoon thunderstorms that arrive at around 4pm and range from mildly annoying to pretty darn scary:







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Onto our July analysis.... there's quite a lot to think about:


July Goals:

1) Place Top 5 at the Area I Novice Championships (my real goal is to WIN them, of course, but I know that that is a pompous goal to make and that I'll jinx it if I do!)
Psh! Well we all know how that went! Certainly, you win some, you lose some, and that's really how the game of eventing goes: it's more than just talent. It really has a ton to do with circumstance and really, when you think about it, luck sometimes. We rolled our way through our first three events like they were crumb cake, but we didn't go into Areas feeling strong due to all the drama and mess that my life had become in the preceding weeks. Add in there, if you will, the Lymey-ness that Gogo has been exhibiting and voila! Recipe for a poor outcome, sadly. We've rehashed it, we've analyzed it, we've treated the medical issues and we're well on our way to addressing the mental ones, too. We will bounce back from this, no doubt. These things can and do happen, and all we can do is figure out how we can twist them to learn lessons our of them and make us better as a team.

2) REALLY focus on my position over fences - stop that leg swinging and upper body ducking!
Thankfully I have been able to work on this, thanks in large part to the Eric clinic, which was very helpful. There's still a long way to go, but tomorrow I plan on setting up a series of bounces and work on me, me, me. Focus is on my position now, because that is the key to making everything better.

3) Continue to fine-tune our gallop speed and fitness via GPS, and, if possible, work at higher speeds over XC fences (not really a goal for this month, but definitely for next)
Yes, as expected, this is more a goal for this month as opposed to last month. My GPS is, unfortunately, not all that reliable (it's a cheap model, and I will be investing in a better one for next year for sure), but I am still going to use it and take it with a grain of salt when I know it's reading wrong. We will not be working so much at speed over fences as we will confident and quiet rides to fences, but I would like the concept of balanced speed to be introduced when she is feeling particularly bold.

4) Continue ironing out the kinks in our Novice test - transitions, freewalk - and continue to work on more complicated Second Level movements (and develop collection further!)
We certainly are coming along pertaining to our kinks - unfortunately, now it's the other stuff that was so solid before that we need to focus on, like the quality of our gaits in general! I've been told many times that I am the type to find a problem, seek it out, and pour all my energy into fixing that problem, often times overcorrecting it and sliding off in the opposite direction - for instance, I used to round my shoulders and slump in my halfseat, but now, according to Eric, I have overcorrected and have too much arch in my lower back! I need to make sure I don't miss the forest for the trees, and focus on the bigger picture as well as the finer details. But I do have to say that at King Oak, our weakest points were our halt and our freewalk, things that have always been less than perfect unless EVERYTHING leading up to the movement was perfect and Mars and Venus and Pluto were all correctly aligned. We got 5's on both those movements. But at Old Chatham, I received an 8 on my final halt, and at Riga, I received an 8 on my freewalk! Woo hoo! Improvements made!

5) Figure out exactly what I want from the month of August, our last large span of time before the AECs in September
I have spent a good deal of time figuring out what I want from August training and show wise. I want, first and foremost, to get our XC schooling as much as we can and as successfully as we can. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done, I'm afraid. I don't really have access to a groundperson, and lessons with big name local trainers are difficult to secure (and often times more expensive than a month's worth of groceries). The rain has closed almost every open course around, and I don't know when I'll be able to really get out. I've been dropping lines EVERYWHERE - Town Hill, Mystic, Riga, Walkers, Jenny Goebble's place, Babcock Hill, Willow Creek, Oakendale, Ayer Mountain, etc!! - and so far I've only heard back from Town Hill and Walkers, both closed due to rain. Poooo. Also in August, I want to make sure I successfully make it around Huntington's XC course during their H.T. I think once everything is addressed, we won't have a problem. I need to focus on my equitation over fences, I need to make sure our gallops are up to snuff, I need to make sure all the issues contributing to our problems are addressed (treating Lyme, checking eyes, checking hocks, checking ME).... and we gotta have some fun doing it all! :D Summer is hot and sticky and fun, and we are spending every evening rolling around together in the grass and enjoying the sunshine (well, I am anyway, she's too busy eating grass) and we have plans to make it over to the river and go for a swim hopefully this week too. Summer is the BEST!



August Goals:

1) XC school our brains out, and successfully!!! And make sure our gallop fitness is to a T! AND make sure my jumping equitation improves!
2) Successfully complete the Huntington Farm H.T. WITHOUT XC PENALTIES!
3) Make sure every possible issue with Gogo is addressed: treat Lyme, check eyes, and hopefully not but maybe if we have to, inject her hocks... please let's hope not!
4) Finesse our Novice testwork, continue finessing First Level work and continue to work more Second Level movements in
5) At the end of this month, be fully ready, prepared physically and mentally, and excited for the AECs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And 6) Make sure we've having fun doing it all :D




With the apartment now back in top shape, I can finally say I am getting good sleep again, and with that sleep comes the need to start focusing on my body in other ways again. I've dropped weight - who wouldn't in this situation? - but it's not because I'm being healthy, it's because I'm not eating. And that's just the wrong way to go about all this! So added to the list, I want to make sure I am getting enough exercise and EATING WELL, because how can I expect her to be in top shape when I myself am not?



My spirits are back up because this is what I see when I look up from my computer now:



The fruits of this year's hard labor so far. We will add more blues before the year is out, I promise you that.





EDIT: By the way, did I mention Gogo continues to be completely insane? Today when I was tacking up for our conditioning hack, I put her saddle on and girthed her up, and she was standing there like she was completely glued to the ground for whatever reason. She looked awkward, so I walked in front of her and put both hands lightly on either side of her halter to ask her to step up out of it. What was her response? Broke her halter and left it hanging in the crossties, turned around, humped her back all the way down the aisle like a rodeo horse (as if she'd never had a saddle on before), and skidded to a stop at the end of the barn aisle. I can only imagine that I must have temporarily pinched something somewhere, because removal and checking of tack was inconclusive, and when I asked her to step forward again in the crossties exactly the same way, she moved forward as she normally would have done. MARES! We are now onto ANOTHER new halter....



Seriously, she keeps my life interesting. That's one thing I can safely say is NOT about to change!

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 :)



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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!

Riga Meadow H.T. 7/19/09: Contemplating

It's been the better part of a week since Riga now, and I'm finally breaking my silence and writing about it. In all honesty, rehashing it over and over in my head hasn't done much to make it any clearer. But thankfully, as the week went on, I went from feeling completely miserable to much, much better and way more positive after getting to ride with Eric Horgan for two days (awesome and tough). I'll have more about the clinic later (and videos, yay!).

It all started out just fine at Riga. It was a gorgeous, warm day, not too hot and not too breezy. Gogo warmed up very easily and well for dressage, but as per usual, we were a little pokey (even though it felt like we had plenty of forward... something we'll need to really work on) and were in first after dressage with a 34. The higher score came entirely from the lack of push from behind, which was more laziness on her part and me not wanting to push the envelopen than anything... just wanting to have a good time. We did get an 8 on our freewalk though FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER! And she got an 8 on gaits, the cheeky thing :) Once again we were poised to win our fourth one of the year, right? Stadium went well, although it wasn't as smooth as it could have been. My position has been suffering over the course of the summer, and I was trying hard to compensate for it and ended up giving her much less of a smooth ride than I wanted. I have video but I haven't actually looked at it yet, so we shall see what it really looked like. I came off the clear round feeling pretty good, and really looking forward to XC.
And then, of course, we headed out and warmed up for our run. She was dead quiet this time compared to at Old Chatham, which was good, and I was feeling quite positive about the whole ordeal. Over the first eight fences, she was just awesome - had a huge gallop between them, was super game and rhythmic to everything, didn't look at a thing, even the bigger and lookier jumps. I was feeling pretty awesome as we came over fence 8 and approached fence 9, the up bank. Now, Gogo has always been a pro at up banks. Always. It was the first cross-country obstacle I ever introduced her to, and she got it right from the start and never, ever hesitated, not then or since then. She was jumping up and down them before she had ever even put a full stadium course together, before she really was cantering many fences even. She's always been super at them, and I could always count on her to take an up bank. So when we got to the very base of the bank, I was completely shocked when she did exactly the same thing that she did last week, only in the other direction - dropped her shoulder and spun. This time, I had my leg on. This time, I rode her strongly to everything. Was I getting a false sense of security? Did I relax, did I do something to make her lose her confidence? We shall never know. What I do know, however, was when she did the 180 spin, she got a nasty jab in the face from me clinging to whatever I had in order to not get slung off again, and after pitching a small Gogo Fit, I represented her to the fence and rode her no differently to it. She took it. Easily. Which is later why I questioned something like Lyme - why would she bail on something so benign and easy, and then come back around and be like, "oh hey, a bank! I didn't notice that before!" It was like she got to the base of the fence and drew a total blank even though she KNOWS banks like the back of her, well, hoof. We took the up, took the down, took the fence after, and continued to cruise around the rest of the course like it was a piece of crumb cake, no hesitation or bobbles anywhere - combination, ditch, and looky final fence included. It was SO WEIRD. I was totally thrilled with the rest of the course, but geez, wtf happened?

And I still can't figure it out. Was it the way I was riding? Did she see something totally weird? Was she trying to pull crap on purpose? Is she Lymey? Is she fresh/tired/hot/cold/sore/sad/happy/weird? I cannot for the life of me put it together in my head. If it was a spooky fence, yes. If it was a challenging approach or a difficult question, yes. But it was on a straight line and she had a ton of time to look at it, and she knows what needs to be done at a simple question like that. I had my leg on. She went over it totally fine the next time around. I just... don't get it.

We did pull a Lyme titer and a Western blot on Monday, much to my wallet's dismay. But since then, all week she hasn't given me much of a reason to further suspect Lyme or her eyes, except for when she oogled at the pile of jumps in the arena. But she just does that sometimes. So I dunno. We went from first place and another potential blue ribbon to last place in that one totally weird moment. Oh Gogo....



There is much, much work to be done, much work. We shall see what the Lyme titer says, but I am also very aware of the fact that my equitation needs a serious overhaul out on XC. We are going to get out there and SCHOOL LIKE CRAZY over what courses we have available to us - Walkers, Town Hill, Mystic, Riga, whatever we can find. And we're going to try and pick up another event in August, most likely Huntington, just to make sure we can confidently get around a full course before the AECs. The clock is ticking down and the opening date is just days away. I know we are worthy and we've worked so hard all year to get to this point. It's just sad that my level of stress has finally overwhelmed both of us, even if it is just temporary. But after getting my butt kicked by Eric these past two days, I have a new outlook on things and am feeling better than ever. We can do this, we can rebound. That mare skipped around at 3'6" like she was sleeping yesterday, totally quiet and round and lovely, and I did a pretty good job myself. I don't need to win every single event to know that I've got a damn good horse beneath me, and that we're going to go far even if we have plenty of challenges to face along the way.

We have tons of homework, and with my room finally carpeted, painted and with furniture back in it after an entire month of complete misery and half-homelessness, I am putting everything back together, getting some REAL SLEEP, sorting out the plans, and getting us back on our feet. Now, if only the rain would stop....



Winning the dressage.

I will have a longer update later.

I promise to have a longer update later. Right now, I am running a sample of blood to the vet so we can pull a Lyme titer on Gogo, because at Riga we went from first place by a huge gap of points to dead last in the matter of one complete meltdown on XC over a very small, simple upbank, a question she knows and could do backwards and forwards in her sleep - it was like she reached the base of the bank and drew a complete blank, and panicked. She had an enormous fit and it's somewhat of a miracle she didn't flip herself over, because she half tried to throw herself on the ground. With the outrageous, completely uncontrollable spooks she's been doing lately, I question whether or not Lyme is finally to blame - we are, after all, only about 20 miles away from Lyme, CT, and I knew it was only a matter of time before she contracted it. I'll have more about it later.

But it's very clear to me that something is wrong with her. Normal, bold horses don't just start melting down at simple things like staircases, rocks, and up banks. We had this one, it was in the bag... and then she freaked, and it was without explanation. I will write more later, I promise. We're both okay. But, as I said, I question Lyme, or perhaps her eyes. God forbid her eyes. And if those two come up empty, then we had a very weird training issue on our hands. But she's just not that kind of horse. This isn't my horse... she just doesn't do these kinds of things.

We shall see. Off I go.

Ready for Riga Redemption!

That's right, tomorrow is close at hand and Gogo and I are ready to step back out and jump right back in the game. We may have had a bobble last weekend, but that's not gonna be the case tomorrow! After Patron's oil change, I hopped on Gogo for about 20 minutes and did some stretchy w/t/c and popped over a very simple gymnastic - just a crossrail to a 2'9" vertical. All I wanted to do was remind her of exactly what we need to do tomorrow, and make sure that, since the last thing we did over fences was fall off at them, that we weren't about to do that again, even though I knew she'd be fine. And of course, she was. She was utterly perfect.

Bathing, braiding, clipping, tack cleaning, packing, and making sure everything was all done and set to go all ensued, and then I headed up to Riga to check out the courses. And boy, they are going to be exactly what we need to bounce right back. The facility itself is quite beautiful, set at the foot of a little mountain, and has some spectacular views:





The stadium course looks straightforward and very fun. There are 10 fences to the course, 9 actual marked obstacles, and it flows very nicely on perfect flat, grassy footing. We ride at 11:14am, and look, we're even channeling Michigan!




And XC? Totally awesome! It's all very flat and straightforward, which is exactly what she needs to make sure her confidence is all still intact. It starts off small and simple, in a straight line right out of the startbox:




And continues to roll right along to a bigger brush at 3. Fence 4 is on the TINIEST downhill slope, and is a very small log, which is uncomplicated and nice, and fence 5 is around a corner and very attractive:



On to fences 6 and 7, we come up to what I would consider our first sort-of question, but it's not hard at all. The two are fairly close together on somewhat of a bending line, but it's simple to get from point A to point B. The fences are larger, and she should jump them very well.



It's hard to see in that picture, but you can make out 7 on the far right of the picture, to the left of the other obstacle. Fence 8 is beautiful!




That is totally sweet. And onto fences 9 through 11, which is easily the toughest thing on course and it's not tough at all:





Totally gorgeous. She hasn't done an up bank in awhile, but it was the first ever XC element I ever introduced to her and she's loved them every since. The drop down is very small, and the red barn is a good long way away from the drop even though it is a hair offset. If she takes any large leaps off the downbank it will be very easy to get her back in time long before that fence ever comes up. Fences 12 and 13 are simple and well-constructed, even though they are on small turns and are harder to see until you are close to them, and fences 14a and 14b are big brushes:




Fence 15 is the ditch, which is enclosed but fairly shallow and small, and fence 16 is a big cordwood going off to the left. Fence 17 is a simple set of logs framed in by really tall telephone poles (with weird nest things on top of them!), and fence 18 curves back off to your right:




And the course finishes over 19, a beautiful set of logs frames in by lincoln log type towers. Beautiful!

As stated before, this is the perfect show to attend right after last weekend. I would have loved to go to Stuart, but I have to say, at this point I'm glad I'm doing Riga, for more than just money reasons. If I am still out east next year, I will hit the big shows more - Stuart, Groton House, Millbrook, Fitch's, GMHA - but this year, money was just too tight to travel, stable, and book places to stay. Riga was a good choice. Tomorrow should be a BLAST!

We sorted ourselves all out this week and we are ready. Life is looking as though it is about to return to normal - my room is painted and everything!! - and tomorrow is going to be great fun. Tomorrow's forecast is for sun, sun, and more sun, with a light breeze. Sounds perfect to be!

We ride at 9:04am, 11:14am, and 11:58am. Therefore, tomorrow comes early, and I need some SLEEP!

Wish us luck!!!!!!!!!!!