Instead, Cameon enjoyed a quiet, private celebration with his closest friend, Sandra Winkler.

"He looks great," Winkler said. "You would never guess he's 30."

Sure, his hair has turned a distinguished gray and white over the years, and he's had his share of ailments, but Cameon the pony, who boards at a private residence on Harry Road, is going strong for an animal that typically lives only 20 to 30 years.

"He's sort of like an old relic at this point," said Winkler, Cameon's lifelong owner. "He's like the only pony I only see around here now, but when he was born, there were horses everywhere—he's a testament of how this valley's changed."

Winkler, who now lives on Trinidad Drive, helped bring Cameon into the world on May 16, 1974.

Cameon's mother had been given to Winkler as a gift, when she was a teenager living in Mountain View, though she was not aware that her new pet was pregnant. She embraced her new little pony with open arms, though, and graced him with an original name.

"I realized that cameo is a type of rock that changes color," Winkler said. "He was born black, but only three of the hooves were black and one was white, so I knew he would change colors."

Indeed, age has taken its toll on Cameon's pelt.

"He went through rose gray, and now he's white," Winkler said. "But they never call a white horse 'white'—he's what is called a flea-bitten gray, which is not a very pretty-sounding color, but if you look closely, he has gray specks."

Not all of Cameon's signs of aging are as benign as a peppered mane of hair, though.

Like his mother before him and most other gray horses, Cameon suffers from skin cancer. Winkler said that horses of this color are so sensitive to the sun that they almost always have melanoma by the time they reach age 15 or 16. Though Cameon's mother passed away at 23 due to the cancer, most horses survive it. Fortunately, only the skin under Cameon's tail has been affected by the cancer, and "it doesn't seem to be giving him any problems," Winkler said. "He's in terrific health, though I do have to give him bran on a regular basis."

Winkler first boarded Cameon and his mother at a stable—located where Shoreline Park in Mountain View now sits—for a mere $10 a month. She babysat for 50 cents an hour to pay for their care herself, a task she said was well worth it.

"When he was a baby, I could lay my legs out in front of me and he'd lay down on me and I'd scratch his head," Winkler said of Cameon. "He'd make little purring noises and fall asleep in my lap in the sun. It was a lot of fun to be a teenage girl and to watch him grow and to be able to ride him—it was a very empowering feeling."

Throughout the years, Winkler, her children and plenty of neighborhood youth have gotten to ride Cameon. For Cameon's earlier birthdays, Winkler would have birthday parties for him with her son and his friends. They would make carrot and molasses cakes for him and play "pin the tail on the pony" with tape and ribbon.

Winkler let a few of Cameon's old friends know about this landmark birthday, but the celebration was much more low key this year.

"I did mail out letters to people who knew him when he was first born—I mailed the guy who gave me the mother," Winkler said, "but most people have left the area. This year it was just me and him."

Cameon now spends his days taking walks with Winkler and their other companion, a miniature horse named Noel. The Bay Area Ridge Trail, which starts right across from their home, provides the perfect route. With fewer and fewer boarding facilities available for horses in the Bay Area, Almaden Valley has become Cameon's safe haven.

"Almaden is probably one of the more horse-friendly parts," Winkler said. "I think it's important to make sure that it stays that way."