Conner - Pine Top HT - Feb ‘23

This is a video for the DSN Equestrian Ventures. Well, guys, we got Connor out to his first horse trial competition since getting him and he was very, very excited, obviously. We took him to a jumping show last week and he jumped really, really well in the meter 15. And then I also took him to a dressage show before that in January and he was very relaxed and these horses are pretty smart. We got here and I think you could see the cross country jumps in the, off into the distance and he did a good test. He did the, he was on the first horse to go at 8 o' clock in the morning on Saturday and he was, he was decent, but there's, he's going to be a lot better. You can see him just sort of as you did that transition from trot to canner, he sort of got excited and threw his head a little bit. And my guess is that he's after sort of getting this competition out of the way, he's going to relax a little bit more and he's going to be very, very good at the dressage. Like a lot of the horses, he was just full of, full of energy and very, very excited and flamboyant. Now the judge was a little bit harsh on us. I think we got a. I can't, I can't remember what we got. Maybe we got a score of 30 or 31 or something like that. But once I get, get to know him a bit better and actually compete him in the bigger ring, he'll be in the, I think he'll be quite comfortable getting in the, in the 20s. So we competed him at the preliminary level, which was very, very easy for him. It was the, the technicality and the dressage was very simple for him. And the show jumps were almost a bit too small for him. He didn't respect them very much. And then the cross country we did today on Sunday was brilliant. Now it's pouring with rain, you'll see a little bit of video. But he just gave me a fantastic feeling around the cross country course. Had a fair bit of good training the last couple weeks. Had a dressage trainer called Bettina Hoy, that's won a couple of gold medals, come over from Germany and help me with the dressage. And then on Tuesday of this week we had my jumping coach fly in from Florida, Peter Wild. And we've actually got a bit of his jumping round on the, the video a bit later. And then Eric Dander, the former Olympic team coach, was here helping me and worked with me a bit on Tuesday and Wednesday. And the general consensus is that it's a very, very nice horse and it's very, very exciting. I sort of chose this event. Obviously it's not a very glamorous event. It's out in the the back blocks of Georgia, in a place called Thompson, where there's not much civilization. The one good thing about this event is the cross country. The dressage and show jumping is a little bit primitive and on the side of a hill for the show jumping. But the cross country course is really, really good. We did that today. It was a. I want to say it was a six or a seven minute course and you can really sort of allow them to just gently gallop on. And like I said before, my main intention for this competition was just to get to know Connor and get the hang of him and make it quite easy for him. And in the cross country, we intentionally just coasted around very, very slowly. We were like an old grandmother, about 30 seconds too slow. So this is the show jump. He was a bit disappointing, actually. Obviously he's a great jumper and you can see there he's just a little bit fresh and frantic. And on top of that, the jumps are almost a bit small for him. And here I made a little bit of mistake of sending him a bit fast at this one down the hill and he just touched it behind. I would have been better off just gently slowing him down for that fence. I sent the video to my jumping coach and we all agreed that he's just a little bit fired up. I think with my training over the next couple months, I want to try and get him jumping a little bit rounder. And again, this is another railway head where you're sort of going down the hill at the jump. And I got him a little bit close and he just touched in front. So it was not our best show jumping around. But in the scheme of things, it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean anything. It was maybe a good lesson for me that when he's feeling a bit excited not to accelerate at the jumps, especially if they're going slightly downhill, it'll take a couple of months for him to become really my horse. We really don't know each other at all. And the best thing about this competition was the feel he gave me on the cross country. He's really, really light in the mouth. He's got tremendous sort of speed and he's brave and he really knows his stuff when it comes to all the jumps. It was really impressive. Just I've only cross country schooled him a Little bit at once or twice at home and sort of the first time that I got to feel of what he, what he's going to be like at the big stuff. And you can even there just see how he just jumps things out of, out of step, out of stride again. They had a monsoon last night. So as you see him galloping along, we're galloping through puddles and I mean I would have gone slow anyway, but it was all the more reason just to take our time, I think. He's obviously fast in his speed, but the best thing about him is he doesn't fight my hand or anything coming to the jump. So I feel like I can sort of just gently let go of his mouth and here comes the jumps in a really, really good bal. So anyway, I think I'll take him show jumping a little bit somewhere next week, just get the feel for him show jumping again. And then in two weeks time we're going to move him up to the intermediate level at this competition. And like I said before, the dressage and show jumping is pretty crap here at the, at this competition. But the cross country course, it's well designed, it's, it's very good footing and it's nice and open in the course. The cross country is really the make or break of the sport. So I think it's important for me to just build up partnership and try and pick these competitions that have good open flowing cross country courses. Because that's the name of the game as we build him up towards the four star at try on three day event. I think that's in May. That would be our first real big one. That'll be the four star long at the try on three day event which would be a big stepping stone in getting him qualified for the five stars that we hopefully do on him next year. But at the moment everything's going well and slowly but surely building up a partnership, getting an understanding of each other. And like I said before, we'll run him back at the intermediate level in two weeks time back at Pinetop.

Slow down a little.

There you go.

Work him a little bit there. Work his frame a little low. That's gotta feel good.

Yeah. What do you think?