The tricky bit about going “behind the stall door” with newly minted Pan American Games gold medalist Jewel’s Goldstrike is that, if you look behind the door bearing his name, you’ll only see an empty space. 

Unless it’s flooding or temperatures have dipped into the single digits, “Goldie,” who won individual dressage gold with Julio Mendoza Loor last month, will be in his field near Tryon, North Carolina, keeping tabs on farm activity and enjoying life outdoors.

Having clinched an individual spot to compete for Mendoza Loor’s native Ecuador at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, Goldie is back at home relaxing while his owners—Mendoza Loor and his wife, Jessica Mendoza—work on a plan to show in Europe ahead of the Games next summer.

The 12-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding (Bretton Woods—Zilia, Watermill Scandic), didn’t always spend his days and nights enjoying the great outdoors. In fact, when Julio met the horse in 2020, he had a laundry list of issues to sort out. 

“When we first got him, when he came from Florida, he had all sorts of things going on,” said Jessica, who is Julio’s business partner and Goldie’s main caregiver. From shoeing issues to behavior problems to an equine protozoal myeloencephalitis diagnosis, Goldie came with a list of maintenance and riding challenges.

“I was like, ‘Really? Are you sure? I don’t know if we need another problem horse,’ ” Jessica recalled. But for Julio, the connection was instant.

During the first six months, Goldie was turned out with a group of mares. But the former stallion, who has offspring coming up the ranks in Europe, grew so attached to his mare herd that he eventually needed to transition to a bachelor pad(dock).

From his spot next to the Mendozas’ covered arena, Goldie watches over the stream of clients trailering in for lessons and the daily training of the Mendozas’ nine current horses. While he doesn’t share the field with another horse, friends are all around him in their own paddocks—and they, too, are nearly all turned out 24/7.

“Most of them take to it right away,” Jessica said as she walked between the paddocks.

Round-the-clock turnout is just one of the Mendozas’ unconventional management practices. For the most part, they feed a grain-free diet and the majority of their horses are barefoot. Goldie, however, “wasn’t gifted in the hoof department,” Jessica said, and wears four shoes. Julio, who once worked as a farrier himself, collaborates closely with farrier Aaron McAbee and Goldie’s veterinarians to manage what Jessica called the horse’s “complicated feet.”

Walk out into the field to meet Ecuador’s first equine dressage gold medalist and learn more about how he spends his days.

• He’s not as big as you might think.

When he and Julio are dancing their way through the Grand Prix, the gleaming chestnut gelding looks like a towering powerhouse of a horse. But standing rugged-up and relaxed in his field, the 16.2-hand Goldie comes across as an average equine. And his head is surprisingly refined.

“He has tiny pony ears,” Jessica said. “He wears a cob size in some bonnets and bridles.”

• Rolling is his favorite pastime.

“He’s obsessed with rolling,” Jessica said as, right on cue, Goldie got down to business, really grinding his blanket into the turf. “He usually flips over both ways.” (He did.)

When he’s traveling, lots of hand-walking keeps Goldie’s body loose, and plenty of rolling on the lead line makes him happy. But Jessica has to stay alert: Goldie knows how to rub his halter off his wee ears while he’s on the ground. “I have to always be ready to throw it back over his ears,” she said.

“The one time—the one time!—I said to Julio, ‘Hey, I have this meeting. Can you take him for his hand-graze?’ He said sure. So he was videoing him, and Goldie threw the halter completely off!” Jessica recalled with a laugh. “But thankfully he didn’t go anywhere. He was in a big field, so he really could have, but he’s a good boy.” 

• His regular, forage-based feed got lost in transit on the way to Chile, so he had to make do with borrowed grain at the Pan Ams.

For a horse who loves living out, Goldie is good on the road. To get to Chile, he shipped from North Carolina to Miami, then flew from there to South America. But while Goldie arrived at the show grounds safely, somehow his feed did not. 

“Out of the 50 bags that were sent from the U.S., his was the only one that went missing,” Jessica said. “So we were like, ‘Oh [no], what do we feed him?’ ”

A generous jumper rider stepped in to offer some grain, but it was very different from what Goldie is used to. Jessica typically feeds Cool Stance Copra, a non-GMO ration balancer mixed with forage-based carriers like coconut meal and beet pulp. Rice bran and flax provide additional calories for horses who need them. 

“I did bring his supplements with me in my checked bag, and I was like, he’s not probably going to eat the supplements by themselves,” Jessica said, so she blended them with the borrowed sweet feed-type grain. The extra sugar and starch made an immediate difference.

“He was so hot for Julio those first couple of days,” she recalled. “Because Julio was competing as an individual, the Grand Prix test and the Special didn’t really matter [to his final results], but he made a lot of silly mistakes.”

• Jessica is his dedicated traveling groom.

At home, Jessica, a U.S. Dressage Federation bronze and silver medalist herself, manages the Mendozas’ busy farm and household, as well as Julio’s teaching schedule, but on the road, she is focused on Goldie. 

“I just always prefer to do it, even cleaning his stall,” Jessica said. “It tells you so much about how they’re feeling, how their night was.”

• Especially at higher-level competitions, where opportunities for hand-walking are tightly scheduled and sometimes conflict with training times, Jessica leans into therapies she can do in the stall or on crossties to help balance the demands of travel. 

“This year I did a lot of research and took a clinic on the Balance Through Movement Method,” she explained. 

She feels that a routine of nerve release techniques and stretches helps maintain Goldie’s muscles and spinal health, even when he can’t move as much as he does at home. “This last show, we saw a big difference with that,” she said.

• Julio is the only one who gets to ride Goldie, per the gelding’s request.

When Goldie first came to the Mendozas, Jessica would sometimes hack him out. But not anymore. In a session with an animal communicator, Goldie let it be known that he only wanted Julio in the tack. Jessica and their three children—Francis, 22; Mateo, 20; and Justin, 16—are relegated to ground duties.

“He says that riding is so intimate to him, he only wants Julio to ride him,” Jessica recalled. “I used to ride him, like, just on a trail, loose rein, not asking him to do anything. He’s like, ‘No, she can hand-walk me.’ So we all hand-walk him when Julio is gone and that kind of stuff, but we don’t ride him. So it’s only Julio that rides him, but we used to.”

Fortunately, Julio loves their hacks, too, so long walks on the trail system that’s steps from the farm are a regular part of his and Goldie’s routine.

• What else did Goldie tell the communicator? He pays attention to everything, and it stresses him out a little if Julio’s students don’t progress. 

“He’ll say, ‘Oh, they’re coming every week, and you are telling them over and over the same thing, and they’re just not listening,’ ” said Jessica with a laugh.

• He has a home with the Mendozas for life.

Both Jessica and Julio agreed that Goldie is a permanent part of the family—and that has a lot to do with his lifestyle.

“He’ll never be for sale, because I know that if someone were to pay what he’s worth, they will not turn him out,” Jessica said. “He’s going to live in a stall, and then he’s going to fall apart. So I feel like we owe it to him to give him that life.

“A lot of the horses that we have, they usually came to us because no one else could deal with them,” she continued. “So then, you don’t necessarily want to put them in another place where they’re going to fall apart again or they can’t move, right? Usually when they come to us, they stay with us.”