Chrome's Fourth Birthday and Ride 30!! (Lots of Pictures!!)

First, you might have noticed in the title that this is a picture heavy post.... well I have to admit I did not take a single pictures today, so I'm actually going to share some of my favorite pictures of Chrome instead.  Today was his fourth birthday and sadly I didn't get to spend hardly any time with him at all.  It was a busy, stressful day.... officially a crappy weekend lol.  I did get to ride him though right at dusk so that totally made my day, because we had a lot of fun!

Did any of you notice that today was our thirtieth ride?  Yep it took me exactly a whole year to put thirty rides on my horse LOL!!!  :D  I bet when I said I was taking it slow so he could keep growing you didn't think I meant that slow huh?  I'm happy with where we are and what we've done though.  I gave him time to mature mentally too.  He's grown a lot mentally in the last year.

So anyway, on to today's ride.  I only rode for fifteen minutes because I was very tired and my allergies have been very bad today.  To make it interesting I decided to do some "obstacles" around the yard, some we've done before, some we haven't, and my husband playfully scored us hehe.  The obstacles included things like walking over logs, rocks, culverts, walking through water, hindquarter yields and trotting up and down the driveway without breaking into a walk at all.  We've done all of those before (well he hasn't stepped over the  rocks before, they are big ones sitting on edge making a border), but we added some new ones, such as walking under the Wisteria which is hanging on half of a trampoline frame standing up, so it's like a flower covered archway.  We also walked between our grapes and blackberries that are on trellises (it was very narrow, the plants were touching us from both sides).  Also we trotted over one of the fallen trees for the first time (we've always walked)!  It's only about ten inches high, but he sort of hopped.  Not really a jump, but it was still fun.  The second time he trotted over without even breaking stride.  :)

The last obstacle was totally the best one ever!  We have two plum trees growing near the pasture and our dumb chickens have decided they like roosting in it instead of going into their hen house at night, soooo..... I parked Chrome near the tree and my husband spooked the chickens so they flew right over us!!  Chrome's head popped up, but he never moved!  He's such a good boy!!!!!  I knew he would do awesome because he's used to ducks (we have close to twenty Muscovy ducks) flying around over his head every day.  :)  He didn't know the chickens were up there though so it surprised him, but he did great.  I love this horse!!  So it was a short but fun ride.  Oh and my husband gave us a score of 100 or better for all obstacles and we earned bonus points for doing things twice or goofing off lol.  I didn't tally our score but it was probably somewhere around one hundred kabillion points.  :D

Now I want to share some fun pictures showing how much Chrome has grown in the last four years....

First Chrome standing by my corral panels at six months old.....

And Chrome standing by those same panels now!

 Chrome standing next to donkey (and those same panels but they are raised up on a rock in this shot) when he was eight months old and Zep was almost three.

And Chrome next to Zep now!  Zep has grown too.  :)

 

 Chrome's star at ten months old.

 Chrome's star now.  :)

And now, for fun, here are pictures of most of his rides so far!  I don't have pictures from all of them.

Our First Ride

 

Ride Three

Yes I know I don't have a helmet.  I did it for the pictures, but as you can see I wore a helmet in all the other rides.  :)

Ride Four

Ride Nine

Ride Ten

Ride Eleven

On the road for the first time.

Ride Twelve

Ride Fourteen

Ride Fifteen

Ride Seventeen

Ride Twenty

Ride Twenty Two

Second ride on the road (first time at our new home).

Ride Twenty Four

Ride Twenty Five

Ride Twenty Nine

And just because I want to bog your computers/internet down even worse here are a few more of my favorite pictures of him.  :D

Anyway I could go on and on but I better stop before I crash your computer.  :)  Happy Birthday Chrome!!!!


P.S.  Look at how much his color has changed!!

May 2012

May 2013