Barney Rubble - Fair Hill - April ‘23

Hello, everyone. This is Boyd Martin and this is a video for the Barney Rubble Syndicate. Well, guys, we took Barney out to Fair Hill Horse Trials this weekend and we, we put him in the two star short class, which is one of the FEI classes, and he went like an absolute ripper. This is the dressage you're watching. This was on Friday, mid morning, and he went like a champion. He scored a 26 in the dressage, which is, I think it's our best score ever. More importantly, he felt awesome. I really start to feel like I'm clicking with Barney. He's always been a fancy, flamboyant horse, but now I feel like he's trained as well. One of the judges had him leading the class and. And then the other one was a bit lower, but he was just perfect. Like he's, he's quite a big, strong uphill horse. And one of my goals in his training is to try and get his neck stretching down and getting him reaching and soft and, and he concentrating. I mean, we all know that he's a, he's a bit of a lunatic, Barney. And having him focused and concentrating is really, really important. And he was with me every step of the way. Not just in the, in the dressage, but in the show jumping and the cross country. Unfortunately, we've had no rain at all in Pennsylvania for the last two weeks, and the ground was dry and hard and horrible, but they aerated it, so it was a little bit spongy, but it wasn't ideal. And really, you know, after, at the beginning of this year, I really wanted to spend the next couple of months with Barney just getting him super educated, relaxed, calm and, and trained. And I feel like we're really getting there. He was leading after the dressage and show jumping, and I feel like a big girl, but we went a little bit slow and he ended up finishing fifth out of 25 horses. But he's got speed, but I sort of was looking after him a little bit in the cross country. The placing at this event doesn't matter so much. You know, this past week we've had a good week's training. Peter Gray, who's one of the Olympic level dressage judges, came and helped us on the flat and sort of worked on his test movements. And then Eric Devander was here and helped me jump him on Wednesday, and he jumped awesome. It sounds strange, but we're working on making Barney jump lower. Most horses are the opposite. We're trying to make them jump higher and fold their legs up and spring off the ground. We're trying to keep Barney to settle down and not throw himself in the air so much and be more efficient in his jump. He's got springs in his feet and we're, you know, really working, trying to teach Barney that he doesn't have to clear the fence by four foot. He just has to use his technique and just, just clear the rails. He doesn't need to jump the standards. And we're getting there. I don't know, he just feels happier, healthier. And we're getting, getting to a place where we're ready to move him to intermediate or the three star level. The back of my mind, I'm thinking of keeping him at this level. Maybe one start or two more starts. Bromont's got a fantastic event, a two star long in June. Now Barney's already done a two star long at try on last year, but might be one more event like that might be really good for him. Bromont's a beautiful course. It's good ground, big jumps, and I do think that Barney would be very, very competitive there. And then maybe we give him a little bit of a short break after that and then move him to the three star intermediate level. But this weekend was fantastic. Dressage was great, show jumping great. And we got a short bit of footage in the cross country. But the cross country was fantastic. He wasn't going wild or throwing his head in the air or jumping too high. He was very, very professional. And most importantly, he trotted up perfectly this morning. So the run on the less than ideal footing yesterday didn't harm him at all. He, he's a funny horse. I mean, he's a, he's quirky and high energy, but I absolutely just love him. He's, he's a little bit wild, but I mean, just look at his back end. If you watch him when he's jumping, if you watch his hind legs and his tail, it just feels like when he goes, especially over an ox or his back end sort of goes up near my helmet. If you guys can imagine earlier this year when we had him down in Aiken, it was just a bit wild. And not just wild, but him a bit panicking, you know. And now I feel like he's with me every step of the way. He knows his job and he's sort of not throwing himself in the air so much anymore. So I think I'm off to Kentucky three day event this week. So we'll have a slightly easier week with his training this week and then we'll probably compete him in about three or four weeks time at an event in this area, probably, and just another sort of run like this to confirm, you know, just to build our partnership. And I don't know, it's just. I just get the feeling that it's getting better and better. This is towards the end of the cross country course and again, you can see that I'm just sort of holding him back and trying to not go really fast at the jumps and then pull him in the mouth and trying to keep it as smooth as we can. But guys, I couldn't be happier with Barney. I think there's big things coming up and I think our major goal this spring should be Bromont in June and then we'll be ready to move him up to the three star level.