Barney Rubble - Pine Top - Feb ‘23

This is a video intended for the Barney Rubble Syndicate. Well, guys, we took Barney to the Pinetop Horse Trials this weekend, Thompson, Georgia, for Barney's first ever intermediate competition. And sadly, he definitely showed a little bit of greenness. And on top of that, we were faced with quite a challenging course. And in all three phases, poor old Barney was a little bit green. And in hindsight I think I might have made a little bit of a mistake putting him in the intermediate division. As you know, obviously I love the horse's quality and flamboyance and ability and I got a little bit of a reminder that I might have got to the level a little bit too quick. As in the show jumping we had a bit of a wonky round and then in the cross country he was all over the shop. This is the dressage that was on Friday morning and it wasn't too bad. I think we scored like a 34, which is pretty good considering it's the first time he's been asked to do shoulder in and travair and counter canter and canter walk, walk, canter. So to be fair to him, he was a little bit nervous as you can see there, which is sort of how he goes a little bit at the, at the dressage in these one day events where we just roll up and throw a saddle on him, away we go. And I think in time, once we get him settled events, he'll do a cracking dressage test. You know, Barney had done some prelims in England obviously before we bought him. And then he was fantastic last year at the two star level. If you remember, his last big run was at Tryon and he was fantastic there around the two star long. And I don't know, I really thought after that run he's ready to move up the, up the grades. And this weekend he did definitely told me that he needs a little bit more time at that two star level. Saying that the cross country was pretty tough. If you have a chance, look at the scorecards, it was a demolition derby. I mean, I thought the guy built a really good track. It was just on the stronger side of things. And on top of that, Barney being quite green and sort of inexperienced at the level, I wish we sort of found a slightly easier one to take his first event. But I got to take my hat off to Barney. Even though he was green and over jumping the fences, he dug deep and jumped everything we pointed him at. Sadly, right at the end of the course we misread a very narrow skinny coming out of one of the water Jumps and unfortunately I didn't get it on video because it was right out the back of the course. But it was a proper four star question. And Barney jumped part A and part B really, and we were off our line and he never really got his eye on the skinny anyway. We took a circle and he jumped it fine. The show jumping was horrendously embarrassing. I don't think Barney's ever had a rail down in his whole career. And again, it's a bit of a tricky show jumping course there. It's on the side of a hill and you'll see in a minute. We had a perfect soft chip at a very airy vertical and I nearly, nearly went over his ears. I think it's important for me to remind myself that even though Barney's got this amazing quality and flamboyance and huge jump and unbelievable gallop, I think just looking back on our show this weekend, he still needs a little bit more experience. So I think it would be smart for us to actually go back to the two star level for couple of events just to try and get the horse back what I had at the end of last year. And he was, he was fast and wild at his first prelim this year at Pinetop a couple of weeks ago. And then to be fair to him, he was a little bit more settled here, but the jumps were way bigger and way more technical and I could just feel Barney's sort of eyes popping out of his head. So just need to steady up a bit and give him some more mileage at the prelim level. I'm still certain this is the champion of all champions. Just need to give him a little bit more time to get consolidated at the, at the lower level. You know, looking back, I think we've only done five, four or five prelims last year. And so maybe on paper I did rush it a little bit. So this is a show jumping. He warmed up great, knew he'd be a bit wild. That was fence one and fence two. This was caused a lot of trouble. He almost looked through it. I felt like I got him a good distance this jump and he just misread it. See, I did well to hang on and I lost both stirrups here and about. Now I'm thinking, all right, boy, how about we take a circle and find your stirrups here and regroup a bit. Champ sort of gave me a moment here to calm Barney down and. And after an atrocious start to our round, he actually then finished the course really, really well. And it's a shame. He's been show jumping really, really well and again he's a amazing jumper and honestly he sometimes gets a bit distracted. As he was coming to that fence too, I think he was looking over at the spectators and it was a bit of an airy jump where he didn't quite look through. You can see now we starting to settle and he actually finished the round quite well. So on paper it was a disaster. I think we got two rails and because I did a circle, they gave us a stop. So it was, yeah, it was a bit of a mess. But then as the course went on he got better and better. Barney will head back to Pennsylvania on Friday, back to the farm at Windura in Pennsylvania. Most likely I'll try and run him again I think in about three weeks time, probably at the Carolina International, but we'll drop him down to the, to the two star level. So this is the cross country. It started off quite well and then early on in this course there's this massive hanging rail, sort of tricana. And this is where he gave himself a little bit of a fright. He over jumped it by a mile and then from this moment on he was got a little bit worried. But to his credit this was a hard jump. This was two corners and on a bending five stride and he jumped it well. But he was, as you can see here, he was a little bit out of control. So about now I just thought, okay, let's just see if I can get him to settle in and relax him. And it didn't look, it doesn't look quite as bad as it felt. But yeah, the feeling I got was he was coming to the jump and then he just jumped so big and high over the jump and then sort of land in a bit of a heap and still jumped all the fences. And obviously sadly, out the back of the course we had a, a little glance off a narrow fence and so anyway, I feel like him being a little bit wild here is a bit of a reflection of him being wound up and excited and probably a bit nervous and unsure. So I think part of my job over the next couple weeks is maybe just jumping him over some smaller fences, getting him relaxed and confident and sort of getting back the horse that we had last year. He's such an amazing jumper. Sometimes it gets a bit confusing as a rider that he, the higher he jumps, sometimes he's a bit of a sign that he's a little bit unsure. Like he. Some horses when they get a little bit unsure, they go even higher and he's one of those horses that he doesn't want to touch the fences. And it's an incredible feeling. It's very hard to stay on, but it's also one of those attributes that I was drawn to when we selected him. So, anyway, guys, this is. This is horses. This is the sport. We've got to listen to our horse here, and I feel like it would be crazy for me to push on and make him do this level again. And I think it's the next couple weeks, we're going to just consolidate, drop him down a level, get him calm and confident, rebuild, rebuild him to the horse that we had last year, and we should be ready to rock back to intermediate a little bit later. This, this. And on number 70, with the 11 year old Thurman rising. Bad mo.