Chrome's First Ride!!!!!!! (with pictures and video!!!!!!)

 This is like my new favorite ever picture of Chrome.  He's so handsome in his bitless bridle!!

So here are the pictures/videos you've all been waiting for!!  Chrome's first ride!!  We had so much fun.  We invited all of our friends over to watch and then had grilled hot dogs and zucchini (along with chips, potato salad, etc.).  Everyone had such a good time.

    Sorry for blurring out all of the faces.  I don't feel right posting peoples' faces online!  

Chrome had a good turnout for his party!  :D

I love his expression as he checks out the little girl.

 Okay so first things first.  We had to get all "purdy" for our party.

 

I couldn't find my blue ribbons so we went with silver.  His SCA colors are going to be blue and silver so it works.

I got to use my homemade mounting block that my husband built (and I never painted oops)!  Here's a picture of my first time ever sitting on Chrome's back.

 

 I look weird because I was sliding forward.  He was so relaxed he was resting a hoof the whole time.  Silly boy.  You can tell he's wondering what's going on though because his head is up and his ears are back listening to me.

My farrier led us around in a few circles to see how he was doing.  He spent the whole time trying to chew on his brand new blue (notice the color theme?  It's our favorite color!) lead rope.  Brat!  I'm glad he was so calm about the whole thing.  He acted like it wasn't the most bizarre thing to have a human on his back.  It's almost like he knew that's what he was meant to do someday.  :D  Then we decided to try standing on the pedestal.  He did great!

He's so cute! 

 And then we decided to try it on our own!!!  My farrier unclipped the lead rope and let us go.

He had no steering at all!  And he was so easily unbalanced.  I could shift my weight and he would move over.  

 And then he stopped to scratch an itch!  When he reached around to scratch he lost his balance because he's not used to carrying my weight and had to step over with his right hind leg.  I had to grab his neck because I wasn't expecting his haunches to go sideways so suddenly lol!

Some of the two of us just riding around.

 

Okay here is the video of our first ride!  I hope you all can watch it because there is a surprise at the end of the ride.  If you can't watch it on YouTube and would like me to email it to you let me know.  :D  Oh and sorry about the quality.  My camera is dying (lens error) and I can't afford to get it fixed right now.  Sometimes it works right and sometimes it doesn't, unfortunately it chose my ride to mess up.  That's why the black edge is around the right top corner.  Annoying!






He did so great!  Chrome is such an awesome horse ever and that was the best first ride a girl could ask for.  :D  Here are some more pictures.

 After the ride Chrome was getting scratches from THREE different people all in his favorite itchy spot (the underside of his neck)!  He was so cute.  He stuck his head up as high as it would go and wiggled his lip.  He loved it!  He was totally loved on and spoiled all day.  I think he enjoyed his birthday.

 

 More spoiling.  He LOVED his birthday apples.  It took him forever to learn how to eat them.  I'll post a video of him eating one later.  It's totally adorable.

 

 His expression is so blissful!  :D

 I think Chrome enjoyed his party.  He was all smiles lol!

 After that I got comfortable (my pretty blue shirt was synthetic and very HOT!) and changed into my "happy first ride" present from one of my friends.  It's an awesome t-shirt.  Enlarge to read.  Oh and I was being a dork lol.

Now the observant of you will have noticed that my first ride was in his blue halter (and matching blue reins), but the first photo of the post he's wearing his homemade sidepull bitless bridle . . . . hmm . . . wonder why?  Because after everyone went home and I took a break (was up at 5am) I went out for a second ride.  Don't worry both rides were only around ten minutes a piece and I'll only be riding him once or twice a week.  I'm not going to get carried away and overdo it.  The fun part is that the second ride we did clicker training.  :D  Well tried.  We need work on our treat delivery.  I also made some mistakes (clicking too much, rewarding naughty behavior, clicking the wrong thing, etc.), but we had fun and nobody was hurt so I call it a success.  Here's the video of the second ride (at the time that I'm posting this it's still processing so if the quality is bad try again in a few minutes!).





I was a lot more relaxed without an audience.  I have stage fright which is why I never competed when I was young lol.  We had so much fun.  He had me laughing the whole time.  After watching the video back I also realized he was offering his shoulder yield at times.  So cute!  He kept throwing me off balance though because he's soooooo narrow!!!  It's like riding on a 2x4 lol.  I can't wait for him to broaden out.

Here we are after our second ride (only got video, no pictures because only my husband was there).

 And some of Mr. Faran, so he doesn't feel left out.  Zeppelin chose not to attend the party.  There were too many people lol.

 

I wish the last one wasn't blurry because he's so handsome checking out all of the stuff I was carrying lol.

I'm soooo happy how our first ride went!!!  It was funny because after I rode him I couldn't believe that I had.  It felt like it was all a dream that never happened (one reason for the second ride was to sort of confirm to myself that it did happen lol).  He's been my baby for so long it's hard to think of him as an adult riding horse.  It's going to take a while for that feeling to wear off I think.  :)  I'm so proud of him.  He's still such a baby, but he's so friendly, laid back, accepting, curious, etc.  I just can't say enough good things about my boy.  I hope you all enjoyed the pictures and videos.