Onyx is Awesome!

That was the text of a message I sent Jeff yesterday from my cell phone after a session with Onyx. We did some in hand work yesterday. I was curious to put her through her paces and see what all she has learned. There were a couple of firsts along the way. We were finally able to use the outdoor arena, it's dry at last and the weather was beautiful. So we had our first outdoor training session in quite a while. Also she was introduced to the bit yesterday and she wore it while we worked. I figured it'd be easy to get her to take the bit since she is so cusrious and likes to play with things with her mouth. Sure enough all I had to do was hold it by her lips and she took it. Outside I lunged her a bit and then walked around with her. We walked and trotted around, changing speeds and practicing "whoa". She was very good at that, we'd be trotting around, I'd say "whoa" and she'd slam on the brakes and stop right where she was. What a good girl! We also did some backing (something I know she's quite proficient at - ha!) and she was wonderful. So, I feel pretty darn good about the In Hand portion of the competition. Now to work on more riding...

Oh, she met the clippers for the first time yesterday too. She accepted them quite well. Hopefully I can get busy on making her more presentable now! I'm planning to trim up the longer areas and hopefully make her coat more uniform. She's been shedding out nicely and on the big areas of her body she's looking pretty good. Her legs and face are pretty shaggy though.

Oh! One more thing, haha. I also picked up both of her front feet yesterday. I've touched her legs and picked them up for an instant or two a few times, but yesterday I held them up, tapped her foot, wiggled it around and so on and she was just fine. I also worked on the back legs and she was letting me run my hand all down them, on the inside and out, all the way to her hoof. I haven't picked them up yet, but I think she'll do ok.

The opening line of my text message to Jeff yesterday was "Onyx is awesome" - the next part was "I think we might just do ok as long as *I* don't screw things up" haha Yeah, that's pretty much it. Now we have to get busy on the riding part and I've gotta get busy realizing that I can do this!