Chrome Ride 116 - 100 Ride Challenge Ride 2 - New Boots

 It finally stopped raining!  First time in four days!!  So of course I had to ride hehe.  I also had to try out my new boots.  These are Mountain Horse paddock boots that were a gift.  I'm so excited to have boots that actually fit!!  My Ariat paddock boots that I've had for over ten years are two sizes too small because I had to have them when I started dressage lessons and it's all that was available locally.  Those boots HURT!!!  The new ones are really nice, but they rub right now because I haven't broken them in yet (and I have notoriously sensitive feet).  I will definitely tell you how I like them later on when I've worn them in and used them a lot more.  For now I just love that my toes aren't squished painfully!  They are a little narrow, but that's common for me.  It's hard to find shoes and boots that are big enough and wide enough for my huge feet.

Aren't they nice??  Nicest boots I've ever owned. :D

So as soon as I got off work I changed clothes and ran out to the pasture to get Chrome.  He was nasty!!  With four days of rain, what do you expect though?

It took me forever to get most of the dirt off of him (thank goodness he had dried while I was at work).  It wasn't perfect, but good enough.  Here is a video if you want to see how much dirt was coming off of him.  It's short and shows how rough he likes to be groomed.  Well he was watching the horses across the road the whole time, but he does enjoy it.

Direct link to video here.

 I think this was the only head  shot that didn't turn out blurry.

Hubby was using his cell phone and it was really overcast.

 Jackal always goes with me.  :D

I only rode 25 minutes.  I did a little bit of trotting, but his stifle gave out, so I stayed at a walk after that.  He is very out of shape so we're going to do walking only rides for a while.  I have a video of him doing a really, really slow trot that was actually quite comfortable bareback.  It also shows his stifle giving out at the very end as he's approaching the camera.  If you watch carefully you can see it.  He didn't break gait even when he slowed way down.  He's never done that before.  It was cool!

Direct link to video here.

We stayed on the property, mostly on the driveway because everything is so muddy and soft.  He doesn't need to be in deep footing with his stifles as weak and out of shape as they are right now.

Walking rides can be really boring when you're just going up and down the driveways, but we kept it a little interesting by walking through some of the running water and sniffing a bunch of different things like trash cans, hay tarps, foil pans turned upside down on tree stumps (no clue why someone did that??), etc.  There really isn't much else to say except that I'm so happy to be back to riding!!  I also need to start exercising because I haven't seen pictures of myself in a while and didn't realize I was gaining weight.  Ugh!  I always do in the winter so I shouldn't be surprised hehe.  Here are the rest of the pictures!

 Staring at the neighbor horses.  Look at all the dirt on him!

 Still staring at the neighbors.  He's so obsessed.

We had to work on standing still when we first started, but later on (in this picture) he was happy to stand as long as I wanted.  I think the reason he was trying to walk off at first is because he thought we were going out on the road and he was excited.  Poor guy gets bored wandering around on the property.

 Sniffing the hay tarps.  He didn't eyeball them this time like he did last time.

 Approaching the water.  I wish this wasn't blurry!

 It's only a couple of inches deep, but it is running.  

This is the one we walked through until it got too muddy.

I wish these weren't blurry.

This one isn't as blurry but the white balance is off.  That's the foil pan.  No clue why it's there hehe.  I'll have to solve that mystery later.

Well that's all.  It was a fun ride, even though it was just aimless wandering around.  These walking rides are important to get him safely back in shape though.  Let's hope the weather stays clear so I can keep riding!!  They are saying more rain.... yikes!  If it doesn't stop soon we are going to be in bad shape.  Have you guys heard about the flooding in the south??  Several places have declared a state of emergency.  Five people have been killed in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.  Two vehicles fell forty feet when a road caved in and twenty inches of rain fell in twenty four hours in Pensacola!  That's more than what falls during some hurricanes!  There was twenty four inches of rain near Monroe, Louisiana.  It's awful.  Luckily it didn't hit us quite as hard, but we did get a lot of rain, roads were flooded and schools were closed!  I can't remember the last time it rained so many days straight nonstop.  Please keep all of the people that were hit hard by this flooding in your thoughts and prayers.  I hope they don't get more heavy rain like some places were saying they might.