Barney Rubble - Bromont FEI - August ‘24

This is a video for the Barney Rubble Syndicate. Well, everyone, we're at the top of the sport. We took Barney up to Bromont Canada over the weekend and he did the premier class, which was the FEI four star short. And it was one hell of a competition. There's not many horses. I know that first advanced horse trials would be at Bromont. Bromont's basically the, the toughest of toughest courses. It's designed by Derek DeGrazio, who's the designer at Burghley in Kentucky. A wonderful competition. Barney's really stepped up in the last couple of months, actually, now that he's sort of at the top of the top of the sport now. Silva's been helping me quite a lot with him on the flat and I feel like we're getting some very, very good work on him in the dressage. Silver's been riding him a couple of times a week for me and working on his flying changes and his general throughness. And we did the four star B test here and he was bloody good. Like, there was a couple green moments, which you'll see in a minute. But the general work to me has a real championship look. We scored well. We were actually fourth after the dressage. We got over 70%. We had top, top judges. Actually. Jane Hamlin was one of the judges. She was from the Tokyo Olympics. And Peter Gray was also judging and he was at the world championship. So it was a real score. We got a 30. The great news is there's lots of improvement to be made in the dressage. There's still a little bit more lightness in the way he carries himself. And the little details are still a bit dodgy. Like, you'll see the walk pirouettes here were not so good. And the flying changes, I think one was really good. One was a bit dodgy. I have to say, when I walked the cross country, when I went up there, I felt sick to my stomach. I really thought, oh, God, have I bitten off more than I can chew? And we got a little bit of cross country footage. Not that much, but Barney was brilliant. I mean, it was a tough, tough course. And it had, I mean, it's just a big course too. They use all of the big four star and five star fences and it was super technical. We had a really tough coffin. The water jumps were tough and it was big. And Barney loved it. He's very, very game cross country. And I, I, I knew he'd be up for the task. I will say, though, the cross country, my next, my next competition is Going to be at, I think at either a plantation or try on. They're one weekend apart either September 12th or September 19th. I'm thinking I might actually just go back to the three star for one event. Barney gave me his absolute heart and soul in the cross country yesterday and I'm just nervous that sometimes when you do a really, really tough course like that, they get through it but it rattles them a bit. And I'm just a little bit concerned if I faced him at a super hard competition next, that it might undo some of his confidence and his bravery which are his best asset. So my gut feeling is a three star short start next. Just to make it a little bit easy for him again. This was a, like I said, a very tough test here at Bromont and then, then we'll go back to four star short there at probably Morven park and maybe do one more event after that. But then look at doing a four star long next year. So that flying change, it was clean, but it, he actually did it by himself. He knew it was coming up so I, I, I just pretended that I asked for it. We still got a decent score I think for it. I was sort of half thinking about doing a four star long on him at the end of the year but I'm just worried it's getting a little bit greedy. He's had a pretty big year and I don't know, he, he's so impressive. He's a, he's a very difficult horse. He's a handful, he's a pain in the ass and, but he is such a champion at this level. When I say he's a pain, like he's always fidgeting when you're tacking him up. He did get loose when I first got there. I was hand grazing, he got loose. Typical Barney fashion. Had a bit of a run around Bromont but all his energy and enthusiasm pays off once we start going over the big jumps. And he was born for this four star, five star level. So that dressage there was Friday and then the show jumping course was Saturday morning. I gave him a little ride in the morning just to get him loose. He warmed up very well and again it was a killer track and the time was hard to make and I was, I think, one of the early ones to jump. And Barney is just an incredible jumper. The biggest thing, as you can probably see on the screen here is trying to keep him settled between the jumps. He will do everything in his power to turn himself inside out, to get out, you know, to get away from the rails and he just jumps super big sometimes. What my jumping coach, Peter Wilderman, have been working on is sort of his rideability or his adjustability between jumps. He's also got a huge, huge, huge stride, which sometimes means you really have to pull back or slow down. When the jumps are sort of related to each other and they're striding, that's also a bit of an issue. Cross country sometimes jumps part A so big that he ends up getting quite close to part B. So it's a work in progress. The good thing is this horse just wants to. To jump high and get his legs out of the way. And if I can just keep him relaxed, he. He'll jump clear every time. So we jumped, we jumped the clear round here with Barney and the cross country course was huge and the ground was quite muddy, so I just, I said to myself, okay, Boyd, if you can just get him around this course, you're a champion. And so I didn't push him between the fences. I tried to set him up a long way between the fences and he was keen. It was hard, though. Like, I really felt like we were. He was sort of grunting at the end and it was a very, very big, challenging course and Barney just jumped everything. But I could feel his greenness. There was, especially at the coffin, he was a little bit, Whoa, where do I go? Where do I go? And right at the last split second, he jumps it. So we got home. So it's Monday morning. He trotted up good and sound this morning. Like I said, we went quite a bit over the time. I just wanted to go slow and, you know, try and give him a good ride and not be too hard on his legs. You can see here he got underneath part C there. He just got over it. Anyway, we finished in sixth place at our first four star short. And great thing with Barney. He's a very fast horse, so when we need him to go quick, he'll go flat out. Anyway, I'd like to thank everyone on the group. It's been a long road to get to this four star level, but we're here now and I really think the next part of Barney's career is going to be very exciting.