Retiring Without Respect: D’Niro’s Last Piaffe With Olympian Jacqueline Brooks

Retiring Without Respect: D’Niro’s Last Piaffe With Olympian Jacqueline Brooks
Retiring a horse with respect does not mean giving it a victory gallop around the ring at the Global Dressage Festival in order to acknowledge its accomplishments! I have been waiting for Jacqueline Brooks and D’Niro or Goose as he is known, to enter in the Grand Prix freestyle on Friday night all season. Jacqui has never missed a freestyle in the 6 years that I have been in Wellington, she uses the money to fund her habits, so his lack of presence in the freestyle suggested that D’Niro was showing some signs of wear and tear and unable to compete.

Sure enough, Jacqueline Brooks and Goose attempted one trip down centerline during the season and excused themselves half way through their Grand Prix Freestyle performance. Today they announced that this would be D’Niro’s last piaffe down centerline.

What pisses me off, is that Goose deserves so much better! He has accomplished a lot, been to an Olympics and given Jacqui a steady performance over and over and over and over …. no really that many times. So why wait until he is completely finished until he has to be retired. Give him a respectful farewell the way Charlotte Dujardin gave Valegro. Show you horse the respect they deserve and retire them before they go downhill.

In this video you see D’Niro in all his glory and you see his final performance last night. I also show it in slow mo so you can see the difference a bit better. Time to push our top professionals to be better people not just better riders.