Radish is back in Pennsylvania after schooling in Aiken and completing his third cross-country outing. The trainer is building confidence with simple exercises, noting his efficient jumping style and ability to handle complex obstacles like coffins and water. He's entered in a two-star short-level class at Carolina International next weekend.
Chapters
This is a video for the Fetiche des Rouges Syndicate. Well, everyone, things are going well with Radish. We're back in Pennsylvania and Radish was very, very excited to get out on cross country field for the first time. So this is our third time ever cross country riding together. Obviously we had a mini school in Aiken and then an easy event around Pinetop and then we've got back to Pennsylvania and I set a few of the fences out on cross country. Had a bit of a pop around yesterday. We're heading off to the Carolina International. We're going to compete in the two star short level, which should still be very, very easy for Radish. He's competed and won at the three star level. So again we're just taking our time, taking it steady, doing a two star short next weekend. So the training is going well. My wife gives her approval. Loves him on the FL and jumping wise. Peter jumped him down in Aiken and he was fabulous. And cross country, I love him. He's keen, he's fresh, a little excited, as you saw with the first few jumps. He sort of lands and he scoots off. So I kept it very simple and just did a lot of these sort of single simple fences over and over again. And when he lands and sort of rushes away, I didn't sort of reprimand him or rough him up or anything. I've sort of just understanding that he's a, you know, he's a pretty fiery horse and just gently trying to slow him down. You see him there get a bit fast and funny enough, the more and more I did, the more and more relaxed he got. And after I did sort of 15 or 20 of these single fences and landed and tried to sort of get him to fall asleep, he. He took a breath and as you can see, he's a very good jumper. He's keen, he's careful. And once the jumps get bigger, he really starts jumping over these smaller fences. He doesn't sort of give you that explosive jump, but you'll see in a moment we jump some of the bigger fences and then he started to really get himself in the air. I think the biggest thing I've been sort of calculating is spending this first couple of months of actually keeping it quite simple with Radish. He's still not my horse, if you know what I mean. He's come from a different country in probably a different training regime, different sort of rider, and just slowly but surely trying to convert him over to the system we use. If you Watch this next fence. We're getting a little bit bigger here over this skinny brush fence. And I mean, have a look at his hind end over this jump. He's got a serious jump. I love his jump actually. He's got a great technique, he's efficient, he makes a nice round fence. And some of the fences I just repeated over and over again. So after doing those sort of single fences, I asked him to do a bit of a turning question here, which I was really impressed with. He sort of jumped this and then hopped over that right corner. And he's very eager to, you know, once he locks onto the jump, he knows what he's got to do. And he's brave as hell too. I mean, over these big offences down the hill on an angle, he pins his ears back and says, hold on, boy. He's still a bit of a young horse mentally, I think, like he's got all the athleticism and energy and enthusiasm, but he's still what I found with him jumping. Show jumping and cross country still gets a little distracted, but even here off this short turn to the corner, he was very impressive. I repeated that exercise there. It's sort of a. A five star question, but over two star size jumps and he loves it. Even my wife was out there with her fancy dressage horse, giving us the nod of approval. And then this is the first time we sort of showed Radish a coffin. And again, I really don't know what to expect. So I took my time and just schooled the ditch a couple of times at walk just to show him what we're in for. We're back in Pennsylvania for about a week now. It's lovely to be home. The, the grass and the turf is beautiful. It's good to be back in the indoor arena and we've got the gallop track going as well. So we're going to obviously make a trip back down south with Radish next week down Carolina to contest the Carolina International. But then after that we'll be competing up here in the Mid Atlantic region. Ranch was very good over this coffin. They're the sort of hardest jumps when there's a jump and then the ground falls away or there's something to distract them on the backside. I finished him off at the water fence. Again, this is sort of pushing more towards intermediate type questions from memories. It was a little bit green here. It was that mound jump in and then four strides to a skinny in the water. And to Radish, his credit, he didn't quite read it and he did everything he could to get inside the flag. So I just did that again, repeated it once again, and he was much more relaxed between the fences. He drifted a little right over that one and popped the flag out, but he jumped that. I decided to leave him at that for the day. I feel like we just need to have these sort of constant little schools like this, and we're slowly building a partnership and using Carolina as another experience show. But he should be very competitive in the two steps.
