champing at the bit

Super, vielen Dank!

'Raring to go' isn't actually bad at all. According to the NOAD it comes from a dialect variant of either 'roar' or 'rear,' and to my ears it's not far from rearing, which is clearly something horses do.

'Chomping at the bit' is a good suggestion. It may once have been dialect or regional, but it's the standard version of this phrase now in AE. 'Champing at the bit' is likely to be more common in BE; another option that's also not very common in my experience is 'chafing at the bit.'

Just for the record, 'hot to trot' usually has a sexual connotation.

And #4 is not very idiomatic English. We don't usually use 'the' with parts of the body; a horse paws with its hooves, or scrapes its hooves. More common might be 'pawing the ground.' But I'm not convinced that any of those work well in a figurative sense.

@ hm -- us, agree with you "chomping at the bit" is the figurative term. And since I know a thing or two about horses I can confirm that "pawing", cribbing, biting and kicking are undesirable vices.

Funny - "pawing at the ground" was the first thing that occured to me -- not as the best translation; I agree with the comments above that champing at the bit is good -- but do we really say Pawing? For horses? Even though they don't have paws? Or have I been away too long??

@ Maria, trust me on that one. I happen to own horses and those guys are well behaved. No pawing here!

@Helmi:
*goinglividgreenwithenvy* I'll take your word for it that they're well-behaved - but I sure do wish you could introduced me to them in person! :-)