{"id":35202,"date":"2017-06-06T11:17:26","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T01:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=35202"},"modified":"2017-06-06T11:23:28","modified_gmt":"2017-06-06T01:23:28","slug":"meet-the-saddleworld-little-horse-of-the-month-bb-to-his-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2017\/06\/meet-the-saddleworld-little-horse-of-the-month-bb-to-his-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Saddleworld (little) Horse of the Month – BB to his friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rebecca Ashton meets BB \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kamber Pryderi and Fern Wright have been a team for a very long time, 11 years in fact. The pint sized Welshie\u2019s personality dwarfs his 150cms and has helped him to dressage victories against the \u2018big horses\u2019 at the top level.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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BB and Fern back in 2012, competing Prix St Georg<\/em><\/p>\n

I first encountered the duo at the Dressage Nationals last year, accumulating ribbons in the under 25 classes. Since then they have had success at the Dressage Festival where they came 5th in the CDI-W and at the Victorian Young Rider Championships winning the Inter 2, the Under 25 Grand Prix and freestyle where they scored over 71% with Mary Seefried awarding them a whopping 74.7%.<\/p>\n

A week later at the Boneo Classic they won the CDI Under 25 tour followed in April by a successful Sydney CDI where they received two seconds and a third in the CDI Under 25. They\u2019ve also reached 19th in the FEI Under 25 world rankings and remain the highest ranked Aussies.<\/p>\n

Despite the successes, the bold little horse, known at home as BB (\u201c\u2026.he had to be called something,\u201d explains Fern of the horse\u2019s stable name), has had to overcome some hurdles.<\/p>\n

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Probably changes are the most fun for him…<\/em><\/p>\n

Fern tells her best friend\u2019s story, \u201cHe was bred by Sandy Foster and Sue Coghlan. Sandy owned a mare that she kept at Sue\u2019s place and Sue owned a stallion. They shared the foals produced from those two horses and Sandy ended up owning BB. We knew the next owner who had bought him as a breeding stallion, but she decided he wasn\u2019t going to be suitable for what she wanted, so she sold him to us when he was 18 months old. My brother and I were going to break him in for my mother to ride. We had never broken in a horse before, but we did it and I sort of just kept on riding him. Mum rode him a few times but she was happy for me to have the ride.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was so quiet, had a lovely temperament and was a very curious, sweet horse, but he\u2019s definitely got more arrogant over the years. When he was young, he thought everybody loved him but no one loved him at all. All the horses would snarl and snap at him. As he got older things started to change. The horses all started to like him and wanted to talk to him and he wouldn\u2019t have a bar of them. Even to this day, he hates other horses. He\u2019ll snarl or scream at them or he\u2019ll bite them. He\u2019s a bit horrible really! I\u2019m sometimes in the firing line too. If he runs out of hay, he\u2019ll double barrel the stable wall until I come out and feed him. If he wants a hug at 02:00am, he\u2019ll do the same thing. \u2018I want attention and I want it now.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd of course he\u2019ll hurt himself doing that for half an hour so we all come charging out, so he basically has us all perfectly trained. It works very well for him! He\u2019s naughty but he deserves to be a bit naughty. He\u2019s worked so hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever BB is a lovely horse when you ride him. He wants to make you happy and will really work hard for you. He really enjoys his work as well. If you try and give him a week off, he gets crabby and sour until you bring him in and ride him, and then his ears are pricked and he\u2019s all smiles. I take him out as well. We have brood mares and foals in the paddocks and he likes to go out and look at them all. He just likes being busy.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a very, very quick learner but he just doesn\u2019t have much energy. He\u2019s naturally a lethargic type so he has to be worked hard at home to get him ultra fit so he can survive the competitions. BB\u2019s probably one of the fittest horses at the competitions, but the first to get worn out!<\/p>\n

\u201cPiaffe and passage are a highlight but they\u2019re the first things to go when he loses confidence, which can sometimes happen at the big shows. He internalises it, and you lose a lot of the power. We\u2019re still trying to work out the best thing for him when that happens, but we usually give him a longer warm up, more walk phases. Probably the changes are the most fun for him. We can do those on the circles and he seems to enjoy all that. It\u2019s a very safe movement. He never makes a mistake in the changes. If they go wrong, it\u2019s usually my fault.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Disaster struck in 2014 when the pair had just reached Grand Prix. The chestnut broke into the feed room which resulted in a colonic impaction, plus laminitis from the grain fermenting in his stomach. The vets couldn\u2019t operate and they thought he had next to no chance of making it through the night, and the chance of competing again was non-existent. Fern continues, \u201cFor a week Mum and I would go down to the hospital and stay with him as soon as they opened in the morning until they went home at night. He was always more relaxed when we were there and I think he really appreciated that. He seemed happy, safe and confident when we were there with him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still have to manage a few things as a result. If he\u2019s not worked, he\u2019ll lose his muscle, but he won\u2019t put on any weight and looks like a rescue horse no matter what we feed him. We\u2019ve tried him on a few special feeds but nothing seemed to help. He\u2019s just on hay and barley now, exactly what he was getting before and that seems to work fine. The only other thing is that I don\u2019t put him out in the paddock for long periods because of the grass. He\u2019s also more sensitive to touch and sound. I haven\u2019t clipped him this season because last time he couldn\u2019t cope with it. Mounted presentations are also a bit of an issue for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s pretty incredible though. They really didn\u2019t think he\u2019d get to where he is now. He\u2019s a tough little thing. The first day he went to hospital I made a goal that we would compete in the Dressage Festival and we were going to win the CDN big tour in 2015. We almost managed it; we almost made that absolutely ridiculous goal! We lost it on a count back and ended up reserve. I think staying positive and not giving up on him was key in getting us all through that tough time.<\/p>\n

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\u201cNow he rules the roost. You have to pat him first and feed him first and he has to get the first and the last treat. He\u2019s the king and a real member of the family. When he was sick, Dad even said that he would gladly give up five years of his life for him to survive\u2026\u2026and Dad is not horsey at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like any diva worth his salt, BB has his preferred treats. \u201cHe loves muesli bars and persimmons from our tree. My grandfather also likes the fruit so there\u2019s a bit of competition between both of them. Maybe we need another tree! At every competition, he always gets a muesli bar after his test when he\u2019s having a gear check. His favourite brand is Carman\u2019s fruit free. He\u2019s not really into dried fruit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rebecca Ashton meets BB \u00a0\u00a0 Kamber Pryderi and Fern Wright have been a team for a very long time, 11 years in fact. The pint sized Welshie\u2019s personality dwarfs his 150cms and has helped him to dressage victories against the \u2018big horses\u2019 at the top level. BB and Fern back in 2012, competing Prix St […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":35218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-dressage","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35202"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35217,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35202\/revisions\/35217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}