Wabanaki - Jersey Fresh Three Day Event - May ‘21

This is a video intended for the Monty group. The Wabanaki group just come back from an epic week of eventing in New Jersey where Monty did his second ever three star long. So the three star long is sort of the highest level of the three stars. It was an eight minute 30 cross country course which is, must be like three and a half miles. So it's sort of getting to be quite a little bit more of a test of endurance. And what you're seeing here is the dressage test on. So we were the, we were number one. I think there were 50 horses in the class. We were the very first ones to go. So this is Thursday morning at 8 o' clock and I gotta say, Monty, dressage is not his strongest phase. I think the jumping and the galloping are. But I was really, really pleased with his dressage test here, to be honest. It was nearly one of probably our best tests at this level. He stayed steady in the contact. I felt like our transitions were good. Now I've had to be a real whinger. You know, I would, I would say that the dressage judges were a bit stingy being the first horse and often the case at these big classes as the day goes on or this, that, you know, there were so many horses the, as the tests went on to the next day, they, they start scoring better and better and better. So I think we got a 31, which is a good test score for Monty if you look at his history. And we've been sort of getting 34, 35s on him. Now in my, what's that humble opinion? If he would have gone at the end of the day, I think he would have been in the 20s because he, you know, he was steady. He's obviously got a beautiful walk. The trot was, even the can of walks were good, which have been a work in progress. And you know, I really felt like we got the best out of Monty on the flat, which has been our main focus because he is so talented at everything else. Eric Devander's sort of been on a mission to improve him as well. The last two weeks. Eric's been kind enough to come to the farm and he's ridden him a bit for me and Silver's obviously helped me a bit. And it's hard because sometimes obviously you're comparing him to the other horses that he competes against at these buildup events or even at this, this big sort of championship type event. A lot of the horses he's competing at, a 10, 11, 12 year old, you know, they've got a couple years more training on him and, and a lot of them are have, you know, a lot of the horses that he competes at definitely will not have the ability to compete at the advanced level or the five star or the four star level in the jumping or cross country. So you know, it's something to keep reminding myself all the time that you know, this horse's strongest, strongest part is still yet to be really shown off, which is the speed, the endurance, the, the his bravery. Cross country and then show jumping. He's turning into a really, really reliable show jumping horse. He's careful, scopey, clever and we've got a little bit of his cross country on this video and he's show jumping around. So my game plan is to give Monty just maybe two weeks vacation. Now he's been, been sort of into him a fair bit this winter and spring, pushing him quite hard and I think mentally needs a little bit of a break. And physically he's been really, really healthy and sound. But I think it's important just to give his body, just let him ease up. Just we've been training quite hard on him and pushed him quite hard at this event. So he just needs a little bit of time to freshen up. Peter Wild was there on Sunday to help us warm up for the show jumping and Pete has been a really good help improving the horse's jumping and rideability and just little things, you know, he's got a really, really big stride and sometimes a little bit hard to adjust and we've been improving that and you know, trying to balance him without pulling on his mouth too much. Now this cross country was good. This is the beginning parts of the course. In hindsight I wish I went three seconds quicker. I misjudged the time a little bit. This is the first couple of fences, cross country and just trying to jump all the jumps out of rhythm. And as the course went on, unfortunately I was the first one on the course so I didn't quite know how the time was going to work. Missed that by just a couple of seconds. It was an 8 minute 32 course and then here's the end. I realize I'm a little bit slow so I put the foot down and you can see the great gallop Monty has. And then I got a bit close to that one. And then just to show how big he stride is, this next fence was a five strides and I nearly did it in four. So I had to sadly sort of pull back on him at the end there. But he gave me a great round of cross country. And then this is the the horse inspection Sunday morning. Got to present the animals to the the ground jury to prove that they're good and healthy and ready to jump. And like I said, Monty pulled up really, really well, iced his legs a couple of times, he had a massage and he was raring to go for the show jump. Quite a long horse, which makes him actually really, really fast in the galloping section, but a little bit hard to balance for the dressage. So obviously Monty's got a great jump. The hardest part's been to sort of balance and slow him without him sort of fighting your hand. And I have to say, he's improved a lot. He got a little spooky there, but, you know, a lot of these combinations. He sort of started to set himself back a bit now and Peter's advice is to let his head and neck mouth stay up uphill and out in front of you and you balance him. Try not to pull back on his mouth too much and try and get him to sort of sit down behind and rock back. She did nine strides there. I was supposed to do eight. So that's again, a little bit of rider error there. He's quite a careful horse. Like I remember, he's doing this round of show jumping after going flat out and fast and galloping around the countryside the day before. So it's, it's quite impressive thinking sort of what he's gone through the day before. So anyway, we got Monty back home now. He's started his well deserved break, he's having a bit of a rest and I think we're ready to move him up to find some easy advanced horse trials in the not too far distant future.