Ride 94 - Fantastic Ride!

This cute face greeted me when I walked out to the pasture.  He was napping.  So I was expecting him to be a spitfire, because that's been the theme lately.  Calm in pasture, crazy on road.  Crazy in pasture, calm on road.  Today he defied our new standard, because he was calm in the pasture and on the road.  :D  He was so calm I was able to have my camera out to take fun pictures of our ride.  Yay!  Hubby came on his bike and the new bit seemed to work out well.  Now here are the ride stats.

I used hubby's phone so the stats are more informative hehe.  The temperature was off though.  I think it was actually about five degrees warmer than that, although the breeze was pretty chilly so they canceled each other out lol.

I got off to walk when we got almost home because my knee and ankle were hurting.  I took a snapshot when I got off.

This is when we got home below.

So we went down my favorite road (the field where the heavy equipment is where we had our first off property canter) to the big hill and then turned around and came back.  The reason for this was because I wanted to avoid as many horses as possible.  That worked out okay except I forgot about the horses that were moved right next to the road right before my favorite field....

Galloping up to say hi.

At least they are cute.

Those pictures were actually taken on the way back home at the end of our ride because Chrome was calmer and I was able to get my camera out.  On the way out they galloped up and he was a little on edge.  He had his head up and was trying to puff up and trot, but with a little convincing he stayed at a walk.  When we got past them, the two younger horses started trying to kill each other (just kidding they were playing), then of course Chrome got super balky.  That is so annoying.  I smacked him and we kept going.  The rest of the ride (including passing these guys on the way home) was great!

 Walking down our driveway on the way out.

Following hubby.  I loved our shadows today!

 Cute shadow!!

 With hubby's help he conquered his fear of the charred tree.

He hasn't really spooked at it, but he always sidles to the other side of the road hehe.

 We had fun in the puddles!  There was pawing!  

No laying down though lol!

 One of the things on our list of things to do is to walk through all the puddles this winter so we did.  :D

 More shadows!

We saw the Canada geese on a pond, but they flew off before I could get a picture.  I managed to snag these through the branches though.  :)

 At the top of the hill where we turned back.

 Cute young steers.

 I LOVE this picture!!!!!  Look at my grin!!!
On another note... the boy needs to go on a diet!

I cantered him out in the field again.  I look really fashion challenged (cus I am) in my sweat pants and white socks, but I still love it!!!  We had so much fun.  Look at his expression!  He never tried to crow hop at all.

 We're awesome!

He even decided to lose his brakes and head for the road... but he quickly realized cantering on asphalt isn't exactly comfortable and he stopped.  I had my reins too long and was mildly terrified so I clung to the reins like a monkey instead of shortening them and asking him to slow down haha.  It all worked out though.  We had fun and no one died.  :D

 A hawk flying overhead.

 Our neighbor's across the street.

The chestnut gelding is Max.  He is in love with Chrome.  :)

There are also a couple of stories I forgot to tell about our last ride on the road.  We were riding by the bull that Chrome kissed (post showing the bull here and post talking about the ride where this happened here) and he was apparently lonely because he started chasing us, bucking, bellowing.  It was so cute and sad too.  I don't know what they did with his buddy, but he's not happy being alone.  He loves to come talk to us though.  I so wish I would have had a video camera when he was bucking and playing.  Chrome spooked once when the bull came up behind us, but he realized who it was and calmed down.  It was windy that day lol.  Also as we were headed home Chrome kept veering off the road... I thought he was going after the brush, but he was actually getting off the road to poop.  Aww so considerate hehe.

Oh also during today's ride someone was driving by and stopped to talk.  It's a guy that lives near us somewhere and had asked me if he could buy Chrome last year when I was out walking him (I told him not for a million bucks).  We chatted for a few minutes and Chrome started creeping toward the guy's window, then streeeeetched out his nose to sniff him, hoping for some attention.  Hubby made a comment about how Chrome doesn't like people and he's so totally spooky.  The guy laughed and said he did look like a spooky kind of horse LOL!!  Chrome was really mellow at this point in time hehe.