A rider documents early-season work with his horse Barney Rubble, including a dressage test scoring 31-32 and the three-day Pine Top event in Georgia. Coach Peter Wild focuses on jumping drills to stop Barney from over-jumping, while the rider works on calming the high-energy horse through slower rides and hill work, building toward an intermediate trial and a three-star event.
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This is a video for the Barney Rubble Syndicate. Well, guys, things have been going well for Barney and myself down here in Aiken, South Carolina since the beginning of the year. Barney was very, very fresh and excited to be in Aiken when we first arrived. It was, it was terrifying. And slowly but surely he's starting to settle down. Let's see, we did a dressage show in, in January. I took him to a little jumping show and jumped him around a meter 15. And then this is our first horse trial this weekend. That was in Thompson, Georgia. And like most of my horses, they were just all excited and fired up and fresh and frantic at their first event of the year. So Barney was at the top of that list. We had the dressage in show jumping on Saturday and lucky for us, it was cold and windy. And I'm doing my very best to try and keep Barney settled here. He actually did a reasonably good test considering the circumstances. As we all know, Barney's. He's a true athlete. And to get him through a dressage test without him jumping up in the air for Glee was very satisfying. You know, as the season goes on, Barney will get better and more. When I say better and better, he'll get more and more calm. But a lot of my top horses were just, I think they've been waiting for months and months. And for some reason he was really quiet and calm at the dressage show and the jumping show. But they're pretty smart, these horses. They can see the cross country jumps off in the distance. And even still, these are such a beautiful flamboyant horse that I think we still got a good score. I think we can't remember, maybe got a 31. I was obviously not too worried about the result this weekend. I just sort of wanted to get his first event under our belt. And then in two weeks time he's going to do his first intermediate horse trial. So we're going to step him up to the next level. He's done obviously a couple prelims in England and then last year he did a few prelims with me there and then finished the year really well at second place at a FEI 2 star. And now it's time to bump him up to the next grade. So we'll do intermediate horse trials and then we'll find a three star short somewhere. And if everything goes well, I'd like to take him to the Pan American Games sort of selection event at Bromont three day event. And that's not until June, so we've got plenty of time to Work on the more difficult dressage movements and get him educated to the trickier cross country jumps. So the biggest thing in the dressage is trying to get him to obviously relax. He's a little bit tense and nervous here and if you look at his frame there, trying to get his neck to sort of stretch down and get him to sort of relax across his, his top line. Again, this is training and also, you know, with the more important events that we go to, we'll obviously get there a day or two before and ride him a couple of times near the competition ring and try to get him really relaxed. But this, this weekend was more of a sort of just a training competition. As you'll see in the, the show jumping and the cross country. He was quite a handful this weekend. So we did the dressage and show jumping on Saturday and then today, Sunday he did the cross country and it was pouring with rain and he was the very last horse to go in the class, so it was just a mud mess. Unfortunately, Barney thought he was at the Kentucky Derby, so this is the show jumping and I was really, really pleased with the way he jumped. He's quite excited. We had Peter Wild here earlier in the week and actually I've got some of his jumping training videos later on. This video you guys can all watch. And someone needs to tell Barney he doesn't need to jump 4 foot higher than the actual rail. And it's very hard to stay in balance in with him with my position. If you look at his back end, he just flies up in the air and sort of almost lands and pitches you forward. So I wasn't at all worried about the result this weekend, but I think we're. Because he was a bit tense in the dressage. We didn't get a great, great score, but it was decent. I think it was 31 or 32 or something like that. And then he, he didn't want to breathe on a rail. And then today in the cross country, he was a real handful. I've cross country schooled him once or twice here in Aiken and he was a good boy. But it was cold and wet and windy and been raining all night. And I just chose to ride Barney very, very slowly around the competition. Picked up a boatload of time penalties. One of the other reasons is, you know, in two weeks time he's got to compete here at the next grade up at the intermediate level. And you know, a big goal for this year is not the Pine Top Horse Trials, it's later in the year with the, the Bigger events that have a bit more prestige. But to be honest, I was holding on for dear life here at the early, early jumps. I mean he just jumped so big and unfortunately, as you see there, 40 or 50 horses went before us. So there was the takeoff and landing was quite muddy. But he's going to be a great cross country horse. Oh, this is the water jump. Not this jump, but the next jump. Look how high he jumps. Nearly throws me off. He's, he's great fun to ride but he's, he's quite sharp, especially early in the season, especially when it's cold and wet. So hopefully I got a little bit of his energy out of him or his freshness out of him at this competition and he'll be a little bit better at our second, second competition in a couple weeks time. I think this is the coffin. He had a bit of a spook here, But anyway, we finished the course well and I went around very, very slow and cautious just to look after his legs. And to be honest, mentally he wasn't ready to go very far. So I think it was a combination of a few things of wet, muddy ground early in the season and him being wild. So guys, we've got a couple videos of earlier in the week. Peter Wild was kind enough to fly to, to Aiken and coach me and did some great exercise, good work with Barney and not really jumping really high, but trying to work on trying to slow Barney down without him getting high in his head and neck. It's good to see a few of the syndicate in Aiken out here watching our work. Anyway, we'll keep chipping away with Barney and looking forward to his intermediate horse trial a couple of weeks. Then we'll get him up to Pennsylvania and might start galloping him up some hills just to get the energy out of him. But at the moment, guys, things are going well and I think we're in good shape for a great season. It. No, I got. That's better. It.
