In this video addressed to Club Contessa, the owner provides a detailed recap of Contessa’s recent competition weekend at Plantation International. The weekend featured a dressage test on Thursday (score 27) and show jumping and cross‑country on Saturday, both in the three‑star short class ridden by Michael (Mike). The speaker praises Michael’s gentle handling, notes a hard ground condition, and highlights Contessa’s relaxed performance despite occasional canter‑walk errors. Peter Wild, who had schooled Contessa the week before, assisted with a warm‑up and contributed to a strong show‑jumping round, which is shown in the video. The cross‑country round was smooth but not filmed. The owner discusses upcoming events in Lexington, Kentucky, and a later competition in Tryon, while mentioning personal health constraints limiting riding. Attention is given to Contessa’s diet and supplement regimen after previous issues at Great Meadow, aiming to add muscle and weight. Equipment updates include a rubber bit with a two‑rein bridle to keep her head up. Overall, the update conveys Contessa’s solid performance, ongoing fitness work, and plans for future competitions.
Chapters
This is a video intended for the Club Contessa. We took Contessa to the Plantation International this weekend. It was a dressage on Thursday. And then the, the show jumping and cross country were on Saturday. We had Mike ride Contessa in the three star short, which was a. You know, she's obviously been at this level for a while. And I thought Mike would do a good job just, just gently taking around the course. To be. To be honest, the ground was a bit hard. The, the. We haven't had much rain in Pennsylvania for, let's see, for a couple weeks here. So my instructions to Michael was do a great job in the dressage and show jumping and then just gently coast around. The cross country is a bit of a fitness run. And Mike did a ripper of a dressage test. So Contessa got a score of 27. And even, not to be too critical of Mikey, even he did the canter walks in the wrong place. So a score of 27 could have been more like 25 if Mike was a little bit more accurate. But he did a good job schooling her. She can get hot. And Contessa stayed relaxed and did a great test. And then in the show jumping, we were very, very lucky. Peter Wild was there helping us and helping me. And Peter obviously had schooled Contessa the week before. And once he saw Michael riding her, he rushed out and warmed her up, which was very nice of him. Contessa did a great round of show jumping. She's a brilliant jumper. And we actually got the video of her show jumping on the video on today's video. Unfortunately, we didn't have a videographer out there on the cross country. The girls are quite busy washing horses down and calling them out. So she had a good round in the cross country. It was a nice smooth round. Like I said, Michael just was a little bit cautious and steady. She doesn't like the hard ground that much. I think our next event is going to be probably Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, in a couple of weeks, three weeks. And she'll do the same class there, the three star short. And then depending on how she's looking, we'll probably take her down to try on. They have a big event in Try on at the end of the year and I hope to be riding again. I'm just being a little bit cautious with my health at the moment, trying not to ride too many horses at the competitions. And I'm very, very lucky. Mike's able to give them a good ride around these competitions because these shows, obviously they're good to win, but we also more trying to just give the horse mileage and fitness and so that she's sort of ready for the big stuff at the end of this year and next year. Contessa actually finds those canter walks quite hard. She's got this big, long canter, big expressive canter and she has trouble sort of sitting down and collecting. But again, he got a great score and I mean, she's beautiful in the dressage. She's, you know, obviously a gorgeous type. Long legs, an elegant mover and the judges seem to love her. Obviously we had a little bit of trouble with her at Great Meadow and that's all behind us. We've changed her diet, she's on some extra supplements. We changed her hay around a little bit. Everything you could do in, in that you can think of to make sure that that never happens again. And we're also just trying to put a little bit more muscle and weight on her. So we've got her on a few different supplements just trying to get her top line a little bit stronger. But she's in, in good spirits this year. Contessa. It's been a frustrating year obviously with events getting cancelled and me being injured and. But she's sort of just been ticking along nicely and we're lucky. We've had Silver doing a lot of the dressage work. Mike's, you know, ridden her at a couple shows for us and then riders like Peter Wild helping school and now and then has been brilliant as well. She jumped unreal in the show jumping here. She, she's a careful horse. She had a great warm up and I've got to say, Michael did a good job riding her around because she can sometimes get a little bit excited which, you know, and she can rush the jump. Now Peter's got us just with a rubber bit with two reins on, which sort of just sort of keeps her frame up in front of, you know, she sometimes wants to get her head down a little bit low and having this, this particular bridle just keeps her ears up and her looking for the fences. But I mean, look at her jumping there. She's jumping awesome. Like I said before, our next event's going to most likely be Kentucky and then probably after that, a couple weeks after that try on and then we'll give her a bit of a break for next year. She looked good on trot up this morning. Looks good and healthy and I'm very, very keen to get back on her myself. She's obviously one of my favorites.
