Luke 140 - Pine Top - Feb ‘25

This is a video for the Luke 140 syndicate. Well, everyone, we got Luke off the farm for the first time of the year at the old Pine Top horse trials. I actually, I took him to a little jumping show about two weeks ago. It was an unrecognized jumping show and he was good boy there. And then this is sort of his first horse trial of the year and I decided to go a little bit easier on him. First event of the year, I'm sort of still looking after his legs a bit and I put him in the open prelim mostly because I'm sort of just, just coming back to full strength now. I had this big hip and abductor surgery in beginning of December and I'm cleared to ride and everything but I'm still, I'm still not perfect on trot up, if you know what I mean, so. And I knew Luke would be a bit wild here too, so I was sort of figuring smaller jumps and me a bit weak and out of fitness. Maybe it's better to play a bit safe and put him in the prelim but it wouldn't have mattered what class we're in. Luke was very, very good, I will say in the warm up for the dressage he was, he was on edge and I was very glad that you can almost see a bit of a buck in his every can of stride here. I was very glad that it was, it was nice weather there. The weather was actually warm so usually this one can be cold and windy anyway, Luke, he did a good enough test to be honest. These events aren't very, they don't really go in Luke's favour. The little sort of rinky dink horse trials where you arrive in the morning and spin them around and then like Luke's, he's a horse that loves to get settled in and the shows that he really thrives on are the big, big events where you're there for a couple of days and you can, you can get him familiar. But today was all just about giving him a nice easy run also always keeping his soundness in my back of my mind. So I didn't go very fast in the cross country. I, I was about 30, 30, 30 or 35 seconds slower than what they wanted me to go. But it's more trying to keep Luke sane, keep me fit and strong. But Luke felt very, very confident in all phases. So next week, if he looks good on trot up and his legs feel good, I might take him down to Ocala, Florida, Tuesday. And then I plan to jump Meet my jumping coach down there and maybe jump Luke on Wednesday and Thursday. Maybe do the big class, maybe a meter 25 and then the second day a meter 30. Just. I've sort of been pampering Luke and telling myself that jumping these little baby classes is good for his legs. But I think my goal is to, to either run him at Kentucky five star or Lemoul and five star. So we better start putting him in some atmosphere and over some big jumps. So it's not a huge shock and surprise when we get to a four star that this, this spring. The great thing with ocala, it's got unbelievable stadiums. There's a, there's a stadium in front of a hotel and there's another. I don't know, it's just. And the jumps are really dazzling and there's a lot of energy and excitement which will make him quite hard to ride. But I often think that exposing yourself to challenging competitions on good footing will serve us well in his training. He's a great jumper. If I had to fault him in the show jumping in cross country, which you'll see in a minute, he was very, very excited and keen and he was sort of running at the jumps a bit and I was. The jumps aren't quite small enough to slow him down as well. They're a bit too small. And he just sort of gets stronger and stronger and stronger. Saying that I felt like he wasn't horrible and I was sort of expecting him to be a bit wild for the first event of the year. One thing about him, he's just an incredible jumper. He's, you know, he's a wild, feisty horse. But just as you get to the jump, he pings off the ground and he's got, he can, he's what I'd call very cat like. He can really sort of twist his body and turn his legs upside down not to hit the jump. See, now he's starting to get a little bit bolder and bolder on me this week. We had a Peter Wild came and we had a good session actually. I didn't over jump Luke, he didn't jump a whole heap, but we put him through some gymnastic exercise. I think. I emailed you some of the footage and Luke's fitness is very good. He's still a bit heavy if you ask me. I think at the moment he's cantering or a slow gallop, four miles once a week and then he's doing once a week these two hour walking and trotting through the woods and then he's doing his dressage and jumping on top of that. So don't forget we've had him going since properly since sort of September. So I think it's fitness is an accumulation of fitness. But he hasn't until we start really doing the fast gallops which will start in March. He still looks a little bit tubby around his belly. Cross country is good. It wasn't all good to be honest. What you're seeing here is a good part. Stephanie videoed him and he was quite settled at the beginning of the course. These events here, well, this venue here is a great venue because it's such an open cross country and you can really work at getting the horses settled in as the course goes on. Luke got braver and braver and there was a couple of the jumps where I really had to wrestle with him. But like I said before, he's such a good jumper. He's a good boy. This was supposed to be a five stride line and I sort of cut the turn and got across there easily in four. He's got a really big stride and you just soften your hand and squeeze him a bit. He, his canter stride grows into feels like a 20 foot stride all of a sudden. The hard thing at the big events is actually slowing him down without fighting him too much once you get going fast. He really loves it. So this is the last third of the course. He'd already done a water jump out the back. I will say just in thinking about it now, the two water jumps on the course, he's always a bit weird with water. We practice it in school it a lot but at the competition, especially when they dye the water bright blue, he gets a little bit sort of a forefoot landing there. He's never going to stop on us but he sort of jumps really high and lands on all fours sometimes. So it's something I've got to keep an eye on. Especially when we get to the big five stars that sometimes he lands a little bit awkward. We've got the USCF vet evaluations. I think they're coming to inspect him on Monday and then Tuesday we'll drive down to Ocala and then I'll probably run him back in the intermediate here in two weeks and do another slow one. I think I'm just worried it's a little bit. It's a lot of jumping in two weeks but. But I also think we've got to. We're going to be ready for our spring five star goal. We've got to start sticking it to him a bit, and we need him, you know, have mileage on him, fitness on him, because we would have lost a little bit of fitness over the last year where he was healing up. Anyway, guys, so far, so good, and I'll check in with you again after we jump down there in Ocala, Florida.