Bel-Eighted

TC turned eight last week! I was not on top of my game with his birthday celebration so I ended up doing it on Friday and then forgetting that I had the pictures until this week. Oops.

I've been able to celebrate the majority of his birthdays with him so far (four, five, six, seven, and now eight), though the tradition of dressing him up started with his sixth birthday.

He got an 8 made of carrots

When he was six, he was kind of horrified about it. When he was seven, he was still mildly horrified. This time it seemed like he was like "oh this, when she puts weird shit on me" and just let me do it! He's always been really skeptical of wearing things on his head (hates them touching his ears) but another year's worth of tormenting him with wearing everything as a hat has paid off.

I had to scour my pictures to get an unpleasant facial expression for instagram, but look how happy he is!

I ended up moving him out of the sun to get better lighting,
but look at his cute face! 

It's my birthday??

TC's seven year old year was great! We worked hard on the dressage to finish the year as champions at First level for his breed. We also earned reserve champion for First level for our chapter of our enormous GMO.

I'm so looking forward to branching out a bit for his eight year old year. On the docket this year we have lots of trail riding, doing another working equitation clinic, maybe competing in cowboy dressage (they have a ground work test!), riding at the beach, maybe horse camping, and of course, hopefully debuting in the rated ring at Second level.

Happy pony