Bruno - Great Meadow - August ‘23

This is a video for the Annie Goodwin Syndicate. Well, guys, it was great to have Bruno out and about again after his magnificent run in Lullmallen. We took him down to the plains in Virginia and it was his first run back and we put him in the four star short, which shows you a really, really sort of good, strong course, competitive field and a wonderful venue there at Great Meadow. Unfortunately, they hadn't had rain for about a month and when we arrived, I couldn't believe my eyes when usually that green grass in the background is lush and dark green and looked brown and burnt. Reminded me of Australia. So it was a bit heartbreaking by saying that this event wasn't the be all and end all for Bruno. Obviously it would have been nice to have a good run on him, but his health and soundness and his longevity is at the top of our priority list, especially after our fantastic run at Le Moulin. So this is the dressage. This was Friday lunchtime. He did pretty good. It wasn't our best test, to be honest. Initially I thought it was really good and then I watched it back a couple of times and it's just a little bit messy here and there. I've been working a lot with our German dressage coach, Bettina Hoy, virtually, and we've really been trying to get Bruno quite short and connected in his frame and, you know, I think it's heading in the right direction, but we still need him sort of carrying himself and a little bit of a sort of rounder frame. When I say rounder, not lowering his neck, but just a little bit of a softer look. By saying that the bulk of the test was good, I think we scored a 33, which was, I don't know about fifth place. But we really need to focus on getting Bruno down into the 20s, especially as we head towards our big goal of going to po to the five star in France towards the end of the year. Poe's it's going to be perfect for Bruno. It's the weekend after Maryland, five star. I think it's on like October 27th to 29th. It's in the south of France, down in the Pyrenees. Really, really hard show jumping course, really tricky technical cross country course. It's going to be perfect for Bruno and leading up to that, I think we're going to give him one good hard run at Plantation 4 Star Short. That will be his preparation event. That's going to be on September 22, 23, 24. We'll do a little cross country schooling between then and now. Obviously Just because we, we didn't get to run him at this show. So we did the dressage on Friday, then we did the show jumping on Saturday evening and then we drove him home late Saturday night and this morning on Sunday we took him to the synthetic gallop track down the road and instead of running cross country today, we galloped him up this the track a bunch of times and he feels fit. He still looks a bit fat to me, but I can't explain it because we're putting the work in and he still looks a bit chunky. But anyway, I think we're going to invest in a muzzle. So the problem is he's hard to catch. So we put him out the field after he works and that girls can't get him till about 8 o' clock at night and he spends the bulk of the day eating grass. He's got a bit of a grass belly on him so he's got to watch his figure a bit. Yes, it was a rough couple days for me. I was sick as a dog down there at Great Meadow. I had a number of horses competing and I arrived on Thursday morning. I just had the terrible flu and I had to battle through all Friday and Saturday feeling quite under the weather. I'm coming good now though. I'm about to hop on a plane to go to England to compete at Burleigh this coming week with Thomas and Q. The judging was a bit off. Like those two flying changes to me were quite very straight, very clean. And the judges, when you look at the marks on the live scoring, were a little bit in disagreement, saying that there were two actually pretty good judges doing the four star. We had Peter Wilde come give me a hand jumping all the horses earlier in the week and Bruno is obviously a fantastic jumper and he's feeling good. So I think between now and now and Plantation, we're obviously going to keep on Bruno's fitness by galloping him every five days. Got the great hill gallops here in Pennsylvania and then obviously the show jumping and the cross country is pretty reliable at the moment. Got to keep checking in on that. And to me the big thing is getting this dressage score down into the 20s for the five star Test at PO had a wonderful news. We got a grant to go to po, so the US Federation has contribute and they're not paying the whole thing. I think they're chipping in for 20 grand which at least be half of it, which it's a long trip to po. You've got to fly the horses from JFK to Liege or Frankfurt, and then it's a long, long truck trip to the south of France. He's a good shipper, though, Bruno. Obviously. We did the trip to Holland last year and then also the trip to Germany. He's a. He's a good traveler. So, anyway, looking forward to having a good run at Plantation in a few weeks time. Obviously it was disappointing not to run him in the cross country at Great Meadow, but longevity is the key, mate. And I really feel like Bruno is going to be at the top of the sport for a long time. So we got to always keep the big picture in mind. And at the moment, Bruno's just continually improving bit by bit, and I think we're in for a really good chance in Poe at the end of the year. It.