Contessa - Pine Top 1 - Feb ‘23

This is a video for Club Contessa. Well, girls, we finally got Contessa out to her first horse trial of the year in the mighty Thompson, Georgia. It's not a very glamorous place, but what it does have is a great cross country course. So I always like bringing the top horses here just because it's usually a good run. The footing is pretty good, as you can see. The dressage and show jumping, it's a little bit primitive, but it provides just a great outing for horses like Contessa. And Contessa's been going well. I took her to the jumping show two weeks ago. She just did a nice little easy meter 15 round and jumped well. And then we had Bettina Hoy come to Aiken and coach me for a couple days. Also had Peter Wild come into town earlier this week. He was, we had a great jump session with Peter on Monday and then Eric was here on, on Wednesday and Thursday coaching me and he helped me with Contessa on the flat. And then obviously this is Friday morning and Contessa was breathing fire. She, for some reason, she knows when she's at a competition and she can sort of almost see the cross country jump. So it actually looks better than it feels. And I got up quite early and gave her a little bit of a ride in the morning. I got, got on her about 7 in the morning and just worked her for about 20 minutes, half an hour. And she was pretty spicy then and then had about 30 or 40 minutes to warm her up for the dressage and she was, she was puffed up and raring to go. And then typical Contessa, she actually went into the ring and did a pretty good test. She is moving better, she is feeling better, but she is a, a tense horse. And all the horses where I rode two other horses in Miss Lulu herself and Ancestor Leg today and they're all just excited to be out and about again. So, you know, it's a, it's a good event actually because obviously it doesn't mean anything in the scheme of things. And I feel like Contessa just needs to get out and sort of get over the nerves of being at a competition. And obviously the last competition we had, it was quite a tough test. So obviously the trot work you just saw was pretty good. Now this walk is, I'm walking on eggshells at any second here. Contessa's thinking about the canter. So I'm sitting as quietly as I can and begging her not to. Jogging the walk. We, you know, obviously the Intention here this weekend was to give her the, the, obviously the biggest weakness in her is, is the cross country, not, not actually the cross country jumps, but just her bravery, slash wildness and out of controlness in the cross country. And so I, I tried a new bit today which was pretty good. It worked actually quite well towards the end of the course. At the beginning of the course she was very frantic and a little bit nervous and racy, which you'll see. And, and then it was a good, I think the course is like six and a half minutes long. So it was a good track in the sense that we got to, to relax and settle her as the course went on. And I wrote her about 40 seconds over the time, which was my plan. So I think, you know, going forward she's such a good show jumper. Obviously keep going with the show jumping and you know, I'm sort of half always looking after her legs but I'm gonna have to cross country school her a little bit more just in the rideability and I may play around with a different setup in her bridal. I mean she just sees the jump and charges in and then she evades a little bit by sort of curling down and hiding behind the bit. So it's a work in progress. She's pretty game though. Whenever she sees a jump she's going over it. It's just that she gets herself so wound up. So obviously we're playing around with supplements and we got her on ulcer medication and we did some treatments to her back. So we're using every trick in the book to make sure that Contessa's feeling well. I think once she relaxes and I'm going to run her again in two weeks time and I'm gonna just keep taking her out and just seeing if I can get her just a little bit more chill. I'm actually starting to get quite confident with her soundness. I think the key is not to run her too fast at these competitions, which is important for her brain but also important for her legs. So obviously this is the show jumping. It's a terrible show jumping ring. Maybe it's good in a way. Every now and then we have to, we have to compete at the big events on grass. But she jumped fantastic in the show jumping as you can see. We had a good session with Peter Wild on Monday and she jumped incredible. And then today she was just, she didn't touch a fence. She was just absolutely brilliant. We had her in the open intermediate so it was a notch lower than what she needs to do I think look looking forward. I'm going to run her back here in two weeks time. I might try a different bridle on her for the cross country like I said. And I think the, you know, the biggest challenge getting her towards Kentucky five star is, you know, having the ability to sort of go and gallop at the jumps and then slow her down close to the jumps and have her a bit calm and waiting. Also got her on couple muscle building products which I'm sure makes her feel fantastic, but she's just full of energy. And you can see here this is about fence four or five and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. That was our worst jump. And sure enough my, my groom Gemma was videoing right next to the fence. Anyway, she did get better as the course went. This is I think towards the end of the course and you can see she sort of took a little bit of her breath. Obviously I didn't run her fast, just trying to sort of keep her calm. And also it's obviously the first event of the year so we're gently trying to, trying to preserve her for the big, big stuff at the end of the year. And so yeah, two weeks time we're gonna go again to Pinetop and then we'll probably head home for March. But at the moment everything's going to plan.