Penhill Celtic - Jersey HT - Sept ‘22

This is a video for Roger, Lauren and Bec. Well, guys, Donald's back in action. Had a bit of a whirlwind couple of weeks over in Italy jumping around Pretoni and then got home Monday and Donald's in fantastic condition so we popped him in at the Open Intermediate at the New Jersey Horse Trials, which is Horse park up in Allentown. Sort of Donald's first bigger competition since coming back into the swing of things. Obviously we did a nice easy training in August, I think, and then a couple of jumping shows and now we're slowly but surely getting back to the big stuff. And he's an incredible animal, Donald. He's laid back and a little bit lazy and at home and then at the competitions he's such a champion, he just gets a little bit more excited and a little fresher and he's a completely different horse at the show. So, yeah, really, really pleased with him today we did a great dressage test, got a 27.2. And then the show jumping, it was really, really good. Jumped the clear round and, and to be honest, I just coasted around the cross country. Want to push him too hard? The ground was a little bit firm and we're still not quite at peak fitness, so I thought I'd play it safe. That being said, we still finished second, which is really, really pleasing just because I was sort of more using this competition as just sort of a fitness builder. While I was away for a couple of weeks overseas, Peter Wild came to the farm, jumped all the horses for me a couple of times. He jumped Donald twice and Peter loved him. He jumped really, really well and he definitely gets an A for the jumping fitness wise. He's starting to lose a bit of weight. I've started taking him up the big gallops. We're using two big gallops. One's a synthetic footing and then the other one's a grass hill called Nelson Hill. And he's going up both gallops, usually twice a week, not real fast, but we're just slowly but surely trying to, trying to get him back to full fitness. I think our next competition will be in about three or four weeks time. I'm going to take him down to the Kentucky Horse park and run him in the three star short there he's ready to go back to advanced or four star, but unfortunately three stars, the highest class that they offer at this competition, won't do him any harm. Actually today, I mean, I've got a little bit of the cross country. He was so good in the cross country like Nothing really phased him and he doesn't care how big the jumps are. So our ultimate goal for this year is to get him to the four star short. Maybe the four star long, but most likely the four star short at Tryon three day event in North Carolina in November. And at the moment he's definitely on track for that. He's trotting up really well, his legs look good, he's jumping well, he's feeling good and yeah, I feel like he's matured a little bit more too. Like obviously when he was a bit younger, he used to be a bit sort of silly and wild. Know, before the show jumping round started, I think it's still in there, but it's, it's not as prolific as it used to be. Say at the Kentucky Horse park in three weeks time, we will go a little bit faster. I think today we're 20 seconds over the time intentionally and as we get fitter and the competitions become more and more important, then we'll press him a little bit harder. But for me at the moment there's no real need to go really, really quick on him. The risk to reward is not good enough. So his health and longevity is key here and I think the key is to find a couple of really big marquee events this year and next year, then really go for him then. But everything else is sort of training and slowly building up towards those big events. For a big horse, he's a very, very good jumper. He's careful, he's got scope and he feels a bit clumpy over the small fences. But as soon as you put it up, he really starts to open up his back end and you sort of can feel his tail swish in the air. So I think, you know, a very reliable horse in the, in the show jumping. Eric Devander was at my farm this week and he, he coached me on Donald a coup of times. We did a little bit of cross country work, let's see, on Wednesday or Thursday of this week. And it's a pretty good session actually. It was a lot of just trying to make him agile and like he jumps a big jump out of speed really well, but he's got to become more nimble and nifty and I feel like our training that we did with Eric earlier in the week definitely paid off. Like this was a turning exercise in Oxford or a big corner. Donald jumped it beautifully. So anyway guys, we'll give him a easy couple of days and start building him up towards the three star short at the Kentucky Horse park. Three weeks after. That's our ultimate goal at the four star level at Tryon. And, yeah, very, very pleased. We finished second today. And I think once we get him a little bit fitter, he'll be unstoppable.