Ride 42 & a Haircut

I have been out of town for a few days.  I needed to get away so I went back to my old town where we moved from and stayed with my best friend.  It helped a lot to get away from the memories, but dang I missed my boys!  I think they missed me too.  :)

First up I gave Chrome a haircut.  His mohawk is gone!  The last time we had snow and ice he had icicles hanging from his mane and the poor thing never did stand back up, so I just cut it all back off to start over again.  Check out this picture below.

Handsome isn't he?

I have to get used to the naked look again lol!!  I can tell you after spending an hour helping my best friend groom her Friesian and untangle her mane and tail I'm kind of liking Chrome's low maintenance haircut.  Notice he's wearing his old rope halter again?  Yeah he broke his pretty blue halter.  He had his head over the fence and I put the halter on him, but the clip on the throatlatch caught on the fence.  I saw it happen and freaked out, so he freaked out and pulled back and it snapped.  Luckily the clip is easy to replace and nobody was hurt.  I'll just use his rope halter for now.  After his haircut we went for a short walk on the road.

Is there a car coming mom?

He was being so goofy and full of himself!  He even spooked once, but all he did was bounce forward a couple of strides, then stopped and looked back.  I don't think he even put pressure on the lead rope, but I don't remember for sure.  If he did, it wasn't enough for me to notice.  We walked a short distance and then met the mail lady at our mailbox.  Chrome wanted to play Pony Express.  Since I wasn't on him I let him carry it...

Carrying it in his mouth wasn't working because he was shredding it (it was a junk magazine so I didn't care) and when he'd drop it he would lose interest in it.  You can kind of see it in his mouth in the above picture.  If you enlarge the picture you can kind of see his dapples on his chest!!  They don't show up in pictures very well, but they are definitely there.  I'm so, so, so excited that he's going to dapple out.  :D

 So then I let him carry some other junk mail on his haunches.  He didn't even notice it.

And then I got really clever and let him carry it in his halter.... see it in his noseband against his forehead in the picture above?  Hehehe.  Once again he didn't care.  He's such an easy going guy.  :D  After we played with the mail we walked back up the driveway with my mom.  I was talking to her so I was walking kind of slower than I normally do and he wanted to go, so I tossed his rope over his back and let him go.  He marched off and after a second he realized I wasn't coming with him so he took off in his HUGE ground eating, floaty trot halfway down our driveway, then he took the split off that is my grandparent's driveway, trotted allllll the way down it, between the two houses and out to the backyard to graze.  It was hilarious.  I had my camera with me, but I couldn't get it turned on fast enough to get a picture before there were trees between us.... *pout*

After that, since he was feeling so sparky I decided to ride (okay, okay I had already planned on riding, but it was even more exciting when I saw how good he felt).  I rode bareback for twenty minutes in the yard.  At one point I saw my dad driving up the road, so we trotted up the driveway to meet him.  When Chrome saw his big white van he hesitated.  I let him stop and stand, staring at it, for a minute until he realized it wasn't a horse eating monster.  Then, without so much as a sound or cue from me, he eagerly trotted the rest of the way up the driveway to where his van was parked just inside the gate.  I said hi to dad, then moved him off the driveway so he could drive up to the house.  When dad drove by, Chrome started to take off after him!!!  He wanted to chase the van sooooo bad!  I don't want him to learn to do that without waiting for a cue from me (since I plan to ride him on roads), so I corrected him (with a verbal reprimand and holding him back with the reins... I didn't hit him or anything) and he calmly walked up the driveway.  He had his bouncy walk going because he was excited, but he was not jigging.  I LOVE that he does not jig.  That is one of the most annoying habits I've ever come across (not counting dangerous ones like bucking, rearing, spinning or bolting, those are obviously way more annoying) and I hope he never learns to do that.

Anyway, I'm sooooooo happy the weather is warming up and I'm soooooooooo happy that daylight savings time has finally arrived.  :D  I can't wait to start riding more!