Barney Rubble - Plantation FEI - Sept ‘23

This is a video for the Barney rival syndicate. Well, guys, we've ticked another box. In Barney's career, he competed at his first ever FEI CCI three star short class, which was at Plantation Field, not far from where we live in Pennsylvania. And Barney was electric in the dressage. Our test didn't start very well with a big spook and a shy at the judge at the very beginning of our test. Obviously not the ideal way to start. It's a, it's a very sort of nervous or high atmosphere or high energy ring. And Barney, being a very electric horse, was breathing fire. His dressage test was on Thursday. We got in there early in the morning and I worked him quite hard in the morning up in the warm up and I thought he was going to be good for the dressage. But he, yeah, he was definitely excited. It's a real shame actually. We've, we've had him going very well and obviously he's very green at these new movements and it's a bit tricky. You know, Barney's a very energetic animal, so trying all these fancy new movements like shoulder in and half past and counter canter and him being a bit hot and nervous is quite the challenge. Saying that after our first spook he actually, he did the, the bulk of the test pretty well. He scored a 32.7, which honestly is for his first time at the three star levels, not a, a bad, bad result. And also considering we got a score of 32 with a number of green mistakes in the test. So I think as he sort of gets more experienced and, and settles down a bit, I think he'll do a very, very good dressage test. This weekend was sort of all about getting Barney just from the start line to the finishing line in all three phases. I knew he'd be a little bit nervous and inexperienced and green obviously being his first three star. And I sort of said to myself, okay, even if it's not a great, great performance, if we can just get him through it this first time, you know, he'll learn from it and it'll give him a little benefit of experience in the future. You can see here he's got a wonderful canter, but I'm little bit nervous. That's supposed to be an extended canter. I just sort of went a little bit fast. I was just trying to contain him here in the dressage. So this is Thursday. If you can see the, the weather there, it's absolutely beautiful. 75 degrees, sun was shining. Unfortunately, starting on Friday, the, the weather turned on us. Friday Evening it really got cold and wet and windy and by the time Barney did the show jumping in cross country on Saturday, mate, it was horrible. This ring that he's in turned into a swamp and the cross country was so muddy and I was very, very impressive. Barney, he got through it all and there was many, many horses. About half the field didn't finish. You know, I think there were 60, 60 horses in his class and only, only 25 of them actually completed the event. So for Barney to be one of those ones is a credit to his sort of toughness and his will to compete. Definitely made it hard in the, definitely in the show jumping in the cross country. You can see here like as the test went on he actually got better and better and I feel like there's, he's, he's got the capabilities of a magnificent dressage test. Just because he's such a good mover and he's a flamboyant horse and you know, once he takes a deep breath and gets a little bit more schooled and experienced at this level, he's going to do a ripper of the test or probably we're going to do one more three star short I think in three weeks time at Morven park. And then we'll probably leave the eventing for the year and just keep working at his dressage. But come next year, you know, our big goal would be next spring to do a three star long and by then I believe his dressage is going to be sensational. We had had a good week's of training actually. Bettina Hoy was at the farm on Monday and Tuesday and worked really well with, with Barney. And then Peter Wild was here on Wednesday, had a great jump school with with him as well. So we've had no shortage of world class coaching. And. So with those mistakes it sort of left us a little bit off the pace with the leaders. But this is two days later, this is the show jumping and, but it was windy and wet and we start a bit like the dressage. We started a little bit wild here. He actually had a spook at the people behind this rail. But after he clocked that one he actually steadied up a little bit and jumped a good round. Unfortunately, with Barney's energy and the cold weather and the mud and the rain and the wind made it quite difficult to keep Barney settled. But he actually jumped quite well. And as the round went on I felt like he got a little bit more and more relaxed. He's a very good jumper. He. What we've been Working on with his jumping is trying to get him to drop his, drop his neck. When he gets a little bit fired up, he puts his head up quite high in the air and makes it a little bit tricky to sort of steer him and relax him. Because it doesn't look that bad on the screen. But because the ground was so wet and muddy, it was very, very hard to get a good round of jumping out of the horses. But other than a sort of dodgy start to the round, he, he jumped very well. And then this is a couple hours later. This is the cross country. So this is Barney's first ever three star short cross country and there'd been a monsoon of rain. So I sort of said to myself, okay, if we could just take our time and get him around this course, that be a good, good experience and see how windy it is there. As the course went on he got easier and easier to ride and there was a bit of everything in the course here. I mean it's hard to see, but this is quite a tough coffin where it was rail one one stride to a very spooky ditch, then up the hill two strides to a, to an angled hedge, hedge corner sort of thing. And he jumped that well, that caused a lot of trouble. So we were just sort of coasting along a little bit because of his greenness and a little bit just because the ground was very, very muddy and wet. But he really gave me that five star feel. You can see most horses were getting a little bit tired. This is towards the end of the course, galloping up the hill and Albani was still pulling my arms out. So I feel like this is a great step for Barney's career. Obviously we're at the three star level now. My goal for him next would be in about three or four weeks time there'll be another three star short which will be at Morven park, which will be another competition equal to this. And by then I feel like we could be a little bit more competitive. Dressage and he should show jump better. He loves the cross country. I mean this was a tough line. This combination caused a lot of grief for other horses. And see Barney still flying through and nearly jumped me out of the tack there. But he pulled up well. The ground was obviously very soft so there wasn't too much concussion on their legs. Very proud that Barney's completed his first three star. And I think our next step is just to get him very consolidated on this in this level before we look at moving up to the final stage of four star. Sometimes next season. But all in all, good, guys, I'm very, very pleased with Barney and feel like he'll do one more run at this level this year, and then we'll give him a good rest.