Barney Rubble - MCTA - June ‘22

This is a video intended for the Barney Rubble Syndicate. Well, guys, Barney Rubble's been humming along since his debut at Tryon a couple of weeks ago. He pulled up really well from the. The one star there. And, you know, just the last few weeks, we've been jumping him a bit, working on his dressage and a little bit more fitness work. And great thing now is it's starting to warm up a little bit with the temperature. So Barney's not wild when I ride him. He's also being turned out in a big paddock for most of the day, and he loves it. So anyway, today we took him to MCTA horse trials, and MCTA is a little bit of a rinky dink horse trial down in Maryland. We put him in the open training division. This is probably one or two levels lower than what Barney's capable of, but I'm still sort of just making sure that his legs are in good nick. And also that, you know, this first sort of six months of our partnership, we're really getting to know each other. So trying to take him to competitions where it's a little bit easy for him with the understanding that if something little went wrong, the jumps aren't that big or we don't have to go that fast. And the good thing with MCTA is it's. It's always good footing there. It's. It's really, really thick turf. Had a little bit of rain a couple nights ago, so the, the footing. So the big thing for Barney in the dressage is trying to really get him to drop his neck and be round. And you can see in this stretching circle, it's a little bit better than the stretching circle that we had at try on, but he still needs to let go a little bit more. And, you know, the first part of this year, you know, I was really getting to know him and ever since Tryon, feel like we're really starting to train him and, you know, moving him sideways and bending him and softening him laterally and trying to get him quite loose, especially through the base part of his neck. Obviously, he's a fantastic mover and got beautiful paces and he's lovely to ride. So he did a good dressage test. We scored a 24.8, pretty good score. Like I said before, I wasn't too worried about the actual result today. It was more just a good performance, a confident performance, and it was a good course for him. We got a little bit of the show jumping in the cross country here. It was quite easy for him to be quite Frank, the jumps are a little bit small and we didn't have to go that fast. I will say, going back to his dressages, eventually he will put in an unbelievable test. And I've been lucky enough to ride some top, top horses over the years at the highest level. And Barney has all the ingredients to do a chipmunk test. Now it's going to require a lot of training and education and practice on my part. But he's got the criteria, he's got wonderful paces, he's got that championship look move. And he's also got the mindset like he's a little bit of a difficult horse mentally. Like he's a bit, little bit sort of keen and forward thinking and you know, every now and then when he's feeling fresh, he'll throw in a buck or rear. But I don't know, something apart part of me, when I feel him riding in the cross country, he feels like he'd jump anything. So that was our dressage test. Got a 9 actually for our second movement. This is the show jumping. And like I said before, this training level show jump is nothing for Barney. O obviously intentionally aimed him or entered him in this slightly easier class. Just, it's more just the, the exercise of going through the event. And I felt like he jumped a little bit more relaxed than he did at Tryon. Obviously Tryon was a little bit more of an electric arena with the grandstands and wanting. MCTA is just out in the field. But he, no, he jumped every now and then. He still puts his head up quite high. I don't think I'll ever be able to completely change that. But he loves sort of jumping his fences with his ears high. So I've got him entered for a dressage show down at Great Meadow in a couple of weeks. And then I'm also going to meet my jumping coach, Peter Wilde at Princeton show jumping a couple of times next month. And again, I feel like the more we get him out and get him exposed, the better he'll get because he does get a little bit nervous and tense at the shows. The next event I think we should do, we should do a preliminary event I might enter him for. There's one up in New Jersey in about three or four weeks time. And I just got to be prepared to withdraw him if the ground's hard. Promised myself that we're not going to run him on hard ground. This year I saw a big long distance of this jumper. Look at this, look at that. So, yeah, and then I think Great Meadow has a really good two star short. I think that's in August, so we'll try and fit one more preliminary horse trial in before then. And a bit of luck, nature will hopefully make sure that we get a bit of rain. And the good thing with the dressage and show jump shows is that we're always on soft footing. So, guys, everything's going to plan. At the moment. I'm absolutely thrilled with him and I really think that he has the potential to be a great, great, great horse.