Wabanaki - Plantation ‘20

This is a video intended for the Wabanaki Group. This is a quick video of Monty going dressage, a bit of show jumping and cross country on the weekend at the Plantation International. He competed in the three star level and Monty is very, very new to this level. I think he's had maybe three or four starts at this level and each start he's just got a little bit better. And Michael obviously rode him for me, sadly. Well, not sadly, I'm happy, actually. I'm. I'm back in action, but I just wanted to just compete a couple of horses at Plantation. So I, I picked out the, the old boys, the old season campaigners, and had Mike riding Monty just because I think we're sort of just using this event more to get mileage for Monty at this level. And Mike did a good job. I. There was a couple of. He lost. He got a score of 35 in the dressage was not too bad. I, I have to find the percentages because, Beth, I know 35 doesn't mean much to you, but I think it would be like 67, 68%. Now there was a couple, couple little things that Mike could have done better. There was a few little accuracy things like he did the canter walk transitions a little bit early and started the stretching rising trot early, which are all things that the, the judges would have taken points off. So I think if we had our time over again, he could have maybe got low 30s, which is pretty good considering how green he is. Good thing about Monty is he's very relaxed horse. This arena, it's on top of a hill and a lot of the horses get a bit hot and anxious there. And Monty's very, very laid back. And I'd actually say that's one of the best things about him. He's a pretty chilled character and for a venting dressage, I think it's good having a horse that's, that's not hot and fiery because it's just so much easier to, you know, this medium can. He could really go for it. He could have gone for it a bit more maybe, but having a horse that you don't have to walk on eggshells around is wonderful. And so Monty this year, obviously it's a new level that he's competing at. So the, these small things like the canter walk, which we're about to see in a moment, this was non existent at the beginning of the year and now they're getting better and better, obviously could still have a little bit more flow to it. I was Most pleased with Monty's show jumping. Monty's a really good jumper, but it's been really hard to get a clear round out of him. He often has one pole down or even sometimes two rails down. Not, not due to the fact that he's a bad jumper. More that he's a little bit unbalanced and long and strung out coming to the fences. And I gotta say, Monty jumped really, really well in the show jumping on Saturday. Mike's done a good job doing a lot of the schooling on him while I've been injured. And Silver's done a fair bit of flat work on him. And then obviously Oliver McCarthy came in and just show jumped him a number of times. Just making sure that he's in, you know, his training's been spot on while I've been out of action. Our game plan with Monty is to take him actually a big goal at the end of the year is to take him to Lexington, Kentucky. I think that's in about three or four weeks, three weeks maybe to do the three star long. And that's going to be a real test. That's going to be probably about three mile cross country course, probably the same dressage test here. And then the show jumping will be about the same or maybe a tiny bit bigger. But it's going to take a little bit more fitness and stamina for Monty. So I told Mike on Saturday for the cross country, I said you could go just a little bit quicker on him than usual just as it's quite a hilly course here at Plantation and just to use this as a bit of a fitness run. And he did a great job. We've got a bit of his cross country here in a minute. And Monty came through this event good and sound and healthy, which is a good relief. And this is his show jumping. So this is Saturday morning and Monty loves getting his nose a little bit high in the air. So you'll see that we've got a shadow roller on his nose band which sort of just sometimes can, if they put their head right up high, they get distracted by the shadow roller. So having his, the shadow roll just helps keep a little bit more shape when he's jumping around. But you see here like he's jumping in good technique. This would be one of the spookier courses and probably a little bit bigger courses than what he's jumped before. And for me the best thing is that he's not doing that sort of green run at the jump. He's taking his time to his fences and getting up in the air and he sort of had to keep traveling on this course to make the time. He's jumping well, jumped a clear round, which has actually been a bit hard to come by this year, even though, like I said, Monty is a good jumper. So I'm just gonna. I'm hoping to ride Monty at Kentuck and the three star long. I'm just doing. Trying to sort of do the bare minimum for the next sort of 10 days just to not overdo it with my legs. So it's a story of my life. I'm trying to contain myself back here and not push myself too hard. And by Kentucky, I think I'll be in good shape to ride Monty around the four star, the three star long at Kentucky, but we'll just have to wait and see. Mike does a good job. Obviously Mike's a bit greener than me, but he's a good pilot and he's giving Monty good sort of mileage and experience, which is sort of the name of the game a bit here. Especially while Monty's young like this, just having a rider that can safely get him around this course is a great education. We look forward to checking in with you. We'll got three weeks till our big goal at Kentucky and it's exciting times for Monty and I'm hoping to be the man riding him on the video for you next time, guys. So thank you for all your support and catch up soon.