Mandy lost track of time; she was so sick. There was just the consistency of Aaron or Ted always being there with a cooling touch when she was hot, or a hot touch when she was cold. It was two days before they were able to get her tummy to stop rebelling at even just water, and when the vet stopped by he frowned a lot after examining her and making her cry – even though he didn’t really do anything horrible to her – she heard that she might have to be taken to the infirmary if she didn’t start getting better because he was worried about dehydration.
Finally, Aaron gave Mandy a spoonful of vanilla yogurt, and it stayed down. Then he gave her a sip of water. And it stayed down. She seemed to be on the road to recovery, but she was so weak it took her several days to fully recover. The first day she was put back on her regular routine of training Aaron didn’t even put her in the paddock with the girls – that she still wasn’t socializing with anyway – but brought her back to her stall to rest before lunch, which turned out to be an excellent idea because as soon as he got her settled down on her blankets in the fragrant hay, she dissolved into tears of exhaustion. Aaron stayed with her throughout her rest, holding her and stroking her even after she fell asleep.
Ted, who had gone to see to his other girls, stormed into the stall when he saw that Aaron was back in the position he’d been since Mandy’d took sick.
“She’s fine, she’s fine,” Aaron whispered fiercely, knowing Ted had been at least as worried about their charge as he’d been. “Just a little overtired.”
Ted let the breath he’d been holding out explosively. “Poor baby.”
Despite her illness, they were able to get her ready for her first show within the next couple of weeks. She would be entered in the conformation competition, which was against other ponies as to how they stood and looked within their pony regalia and on a couple pulls of the sulky around the arena, as well as beginning obedience, and the sulky class, which was put on just before the conformation contest. When Aaron had told Ted what he was entering her in, Ted chuckled. They were in the midst of grooming her for the night.
“Well, Boss,” he said as he made long, broad strokes through her luxurious mane, “I can see the sulky – that’ll give her a chance to show off her mane, and she does pull fairly well, although I doubt she’ll title in it. And the conformation, well,” the pride shown through his voice as he talked about the beautiful animal beneath his hands, “she’ll take tops in that, I can tell you here and now.” He had to laugh again. “But obedience? This one?”
Mandy shook her head within her halter, stomping her front foot down hard. These were perfectly acceptable ponygirl behaviors she’d learned from watching the other ponygirls with their grooms, but Ted knew what she meant.
Aaron was smiling, she could tell it in his tone, although it was also no-nonsense. “Settle down, Mandy.” He patted her bottom, where he was working her over with the loofa. “I know, I know,” he agreed with Ted.
Mandy repeated her agitated movements even more emphatically, only to receive a sharp swat on the wet bottom for her efforts.
“What did I say, ponygirl? Be still or I’ll get the cane.”
Mandy blew an annoyed breath threw her lips.
“You really want to put Miss Stubborn here through an obedience test?”
This time she growled as she had at Merry in the paddock that time, and the men had to laugh. “Someone doesn’t like you making nasty comments about her,” Aaron chuckled.
Ted washed Mandy’s face vigorously, but there was a broad grin on his own face. “Well, then someone out to be a more obedient little pony, shouldn’t she?” he said, as if she couldn’t hear and understand him.
Without taking a step, which would have earned her a session with the cane, Mandy lowered her head and pressed it against Ted’s chest, pushing him away from her as a horse might.
She caught him off guard and he stumbled back a few steps. Both men dissolved into laughter at her antics. When they’d recovered, Aaron said firmly, “Okay, Mandy, Ted’s got the picture. No more disparaging remarks about your obedience or the lack there of. Let’s settle down now or he’ll have good cause for what he’s saying, won’t he?”
The within the next few weeks – not that Mandy paid any attention to the days of the week at all any more – she was shown for the first time. The paddock had been transformed into a show ring, and there were tons of people there – much more than Mandy ever expected. As she was brought into the ring to take her place in the Obedience I class for beginners, Aaron whispered into her ear reassuringly over the murmuring of the crowd, which had lulled then heightened once she’d entered. There had quite a bit of buzz about her before it was even announced that she would be attending. “Don’t pay any attention to any of these people. None of them mean anything to you at all. You concentrate on Ted and I, and do just like we did in training these past weeks and you’ll do beautifully.” Her training had been stepped up before the show, but the concentration was on conformation – her overall look and her obedience to staying still while strangers inspected her – and pulling the sulky.
Just before the obedience tests began, Aaron and Ted stood in front of her. “We just wanted to tell you that we’re both very, very proud of how far you’ve come since you’ve gotten here. We know we’ve been very hard on you, and we’ll continue to be very hard on you. It’s what you need. But you have exceeded our expectations in every area, and you are one freakin’ gorgeous ponygirl, regardless of anything anyone else says or what happens here.”
“Damn straight,” Ted agreed, nodding.
Their kind words brought tears to her eyes, which threatened to ruin her make up. Ted tsked and did damage control on her face. “I told you you shouldn’t have told her that until after the competitions.”
Normally, no ponygirl at Generations was allowed to wear makeup – Aaron much preferred his ponygirls looking their natural best. But in the ring, it was necessary to highlight and enhance a ponygirl’s best attributes – that’s why her nipples were rouged, also, as well as the entire of the crease between her legs, although not to a flagrant extent. Instead of a plume as most of the other ponygirls wore, though, Mandy was the only mare there wearing a solid gold tiara that had the GS logo carved into its peak to set off her hair and compliment the gold in her harness. The harness served her up nicely, forcing her breasts into prominence, splaying her nether lips to show off her bejeweled clitty and holding her cheeks well apart in the back to accent her thick ponytail. Mandy had inadvertently added enhancing accents of her own by getting into trouble yesterday – somehow she couldn’t seem to do anything right when they were rehearsing, and her bottom told the story in livid red welts and bruises that everyone could see had been laid very recently across her bottom. To her, it was a mess and terribly painful.
To the ponygirl community, it showed that she was well disciplined, especially considering how nicely she performed, and her stance went up because of the atrocious condition of her generous cheeks.
Obedience trials required that a ponygirl be absolutely obedient to her handler as she was put through her paces – all while maintaining proper ponygirl posture of head up, eyes forward, breasts out. She was required to stop and start again and again, walked and trotted around the ring with everyone staring at her bouncing, jingling boobies. Mandy’s bounced even more so than the others because Aaron and Ted had decided to further accent them by placing stretchy purple bindings at the base that flared out around them like a silk flower, just for show time. They were released every time she came out of the ring, because the competitions could get long.