Big News!

Well... I'll let the video speak for itself...




Yep, that's yours truly riding Onyx! (sorry for the poor video quality... as previously mentioned, the lighting in the indoor arena isn't the greatest, plus my camera is exactly the latest and greatest either!) The video is of our second solo ride this afternoon. The first one was this morning! She is doing SO well. I've had a goal all along to ride her in the Black Hills Horse Expo this weekend and it's kinda crept up on me. It seems like yesterday I was thinking "oh, I've got a few more weeks, there's time..." And now it's in a few days! So I decided to gather up the courage and go for it today, alone in the arena. She started out by bucking a bit and spinning in a circle. She was trying like heck to get me off (or maybe it was the tight saddle, or both) but I didn't go anywhere, so she stopped bucking and hasn't tried to do it since. Then we did some circling and finally she took off on her own.

The first ride was a good 30 minutes of just letting her walk around the arena, packing me around. Then I said "whoa", rocked back and forth and hopped off. For the second ride we did it all again, but no bucking this time. I let her go where she wanted for the first little bit and then I started reining her around toward the end of the ride. She is SUPER responsive. Jeff was in the arena with us to get a couple of video clips and at one point he walked toward her and she tried to bolt away from him. She only got about one jump, before I pulled back and said "easy" and she immediately slowed to a walk again like nothing had happened. I was grinning from ear to ear! :)

I plan to ride her 2-3 times a day over the next few days and I'd like to haul her to another arena at least once so she can see new surroundings once before being surprised at the Expo.

So far so good!