Jack - Petplan Equine Ambassador

The past few months have been very busy and the event season is now well underway for us. It feels like the ‘Rocco show’ at the moment; we’ve put our main focus and attention into getting Rocco to The Mitsubishi Motors Cup at Badminton. His last planned full run was at Larkhill where Rocco was feeling on top form scoring a great 25 in the dressage. He went onto jump fantastically to win. Our first win of the season and I couldn’t be more pleased with how he went and felt.

Rocco is quite possibly the most accident prone horse, the day after Larkhill he was turned out in his paddock as normal, but came in having kicked and cut open his pastern. Although very minor, I did get the vet who gave it a really good clean, stapled it closed and bandaged it up. It was very bad timing! Rocco was given the all clear to carry on hacking out with the cut covered for a week and then start school work after that week. So unfortunately we weren’t going to able to compete at Ascot Under Wychwood, which would be our final competition before Badminton, this wasn’t the end of the world as I was only planning to do dressage and show jumping. Once his pastern was healed and staples out, we went off to West Wilts to run through a dressage test ahead of Badminton.

Well Badminton week came around very quickly; he picked up his first regional qualification a year ago and officially qualified for Badminton 10 months ago. We’ve put in hours’ worth of fitness work, trips to the gallops, dressage and show jumping lessons over the winter with just one day in mind. The day before I was due to compete I headed over to Badminton to walk the cross country course. WOW it was amazingly presented and had a true championship feel.

I headed back to Badminton early the next morning to re-walk the course to make sure I knew my lines and minute markers. I couldn’t quite believe how busy it was! There were queues of cars to get in and hundreds of people watching the course. I went back to the lorry, had the radio on and shut the door! Normally I’m fairly sociable at events, picnics, tea and coffee on tap but not today! I think I was looking slightly greener than normal. We headed off to dressage, Rocco was looking stunning (obviously I’m biased) and possibly the best set of quarter marks to date! He warmed up beautifully. He worked well in the arena just had a few moments of tension, it was very windy, lots of people around and noisy so I think he was just a little distracted, but overall I was pleased. We scored 31.4; the marks were all very close. Off we went to the show jumping where sadly the day started to go downhill. Rocco can be very tricky to jump, when it is his day he can be amazing and win and other days he can very easily go the other way. So sadly we had a stop and two down. I debated whether or not to run cross country after the show jumping didn’t go to plan. I decided to go and warm up and see what happened. He warmed up well so I decided that we were going to run cross country. He was feeling very good over the first few straight forward fences but then we got to fence eight; the first proper championship combination on the course. We had a good stride but Rocco stopped at part A of the coffin, represented and once again stopped, I decided to call it a day and retire.

It was a hard day as I’d worked so hard to qualify and keep Rocco in top condition to get there. The dream of galloping in front of the Badminton house was over. The day had answered lots of questions that have been niggling away at the back of my mind for a while and that Rocco doesn’t love eventing as much as I do and I’m making him chase my dream not his. This did however make the decision to retire Rocco from eventing a little easier. No one can ever take away what Rocco and I have achieved together, four wins, eight top five placings and 14 top ten placings, nearly always getting dressage scores in the 20s. He loves working on the flat and has lots of ability to move up the dressage levels. So I might have to turn to the dark side and get into a proper dressage arena, not trotting around muddy fields! Actually that does sound quite appealing!

It hasn’t been all about Rocco… Tim Gray’s Beechill Anglo (Ivor) has started his eventing career at Larkhill where he score an amazing 26 dressage, he’s still very green and spooky so picked up a show jump pole and a green stop cross country. He also ran at Ascot Under Wychwood, where he picked up another super dressage score this time 23, still green with the jumping, picking up some faults show jumping and cross country again. Between his green spooks he’s giving me an amazing feel and I really think he’ll pick up some super results later this season.

Tambourine Man (Jerry) has been kept busy running in the open classes at Ascot Under Wychwood, Broadway and Mount Ballan. He posted great tests and super jumping rounds at Ascot and Broadway picking up 4th and 9th place. At Mount Ballan we didn’t do our best test, a pole down show jumping so had a steady canter around the very wet and muddy cross country to finish outside the placings.

I’ve taken on Hannah Sandiford’s new horse Baidu M2S (Beau) to do a few events with and get him going before Hannah takes back the reins to go eventing with him. Petplan Equine organised a lesson with Lucinda Green so I took this opportunity to take Beau. He’s quite full on to jump and likes to take control so with Lucinda’s help we managed to get him to slow down and make him think about what he’s doing. This helped a lot with him running at our first event together a week later at Mount Ballan. We jumped a super double clear and a 33 dressage, he did post one of the fastest cross country times of the day picking up 0.8 for going too fast but still good enough to finish in 5th place. Good job he steps up a level next time out.

My super star dun, Jackson, has had a busy few weeks, he’s been to dressage and combined trainings jumping clear rounds and picking up placings each time out. He’s also started cross country schooling and taken to it really well! Well, actually he loves it!! He has such a wonderful attitude to work and has been a great project pony for the winter but it’s time to start thinking about selling him as I’m far too big for him long term. He’s going to make someone an amazing event pony.

The next few weeks look very exciting and just as busy as the last few!