4th of July and Tack Improvements

First of all, happy 4th to all, hope everyone had a fun and safe day. 

Now I must tell you, a few days ago my dizzy diva of a yearling filly not only allowed me to throw an (extremely dorky) fly mask WITH EARS on her head while she was loose in her pasture..but after 2 days, she even allowed me to take it off. Fabulous stuff. The first night at feeding/fly mask removal time, she heard the Velcro start under her chin and took off for higher ground. So I figured Fine, leave it, come back tomorrow night when she's itchier than sin and wants that thing OFF. 

Mom is a great distraction, Sheza got so busy in her grooming fest that the fly mask placement was no biggie

Cannot stop laughing at the ridiculous ear coverings...good desensitization though! 

In other random news, this whole mound is *1* pumpkin plant. It's the sister plant to a 1500 lb pumpkin producer from last year (not ours). Last year was our first attempt growing pumpkins and we ended up carving an 80 lb jack-o-lantern in October. Pretty fun. This year we're hoping for much bigger with pumpkin genetics like these!

Also, I am so enjoying the planter bed my husband put in when I was away at Hat Creek Hustle a few weeks ago. It really made the front of the house neater and cheerier. He put some of our deer antlers, driftwood, and abalone shells in amongst the flowers too so it really speaks of our forest-to-ocean love of the outdoors.

Back to horsey stuff..N and I were discussing this, that, and the other thing on our ride the other day and somehow it came up that they really should have put clips on pommel bag fasteners by now, for quick on and off. If you're slightly deranged like me and when swapping tack to another horse insist on not only using the correct saddle pad color but swapping out your pommel bag to match too..well the quicker you can get everything on and off, the better. I also prefer to take my pommel bag off when I saddle up anyway, so that I can be sure the saddle is sitting just where it needs to. 

I have to digress slightly here and share my husband's reaction to this grand pommel-bag-strap-clip idea. I announced it proudly and he just stared at me.

"What, so um, threading the strap through the buckle takes too much time or something?" He asked skeptically.

"Well, I mean, on ride morning everything-that is, saving time, I mean---" I sputtered.

Sometimes it's not worth trying to explain these things to non-Endurance people.

SO. I was avoiding the general public on a national holiday as usual yesterday, and started playing with tack. I started with the wider based rein clips but they were too big and jangly so I harvested narrower-based rein clips (the base is slightly narrower than the pommel bag strap itself so you have to curl it a little to thread it through) from a set of reins I don't use and put them on Blaze's pommel bags. Quick on and off!

In the testing phase to be sure it's not too jangly or annoying, but I think it will work out AND it's a handy way to have a couple of spare rein clips on board. Remove them as necessary and then you just have the arduous task of re-threading the buckle like the old days. ;-)

 Later, I was digging through my grooming tote and opened one of the many zipper pockets only to discover blue rein stops! Not just any blue, clearly the exact same blue as Desire's tack. By the tag I had bought them in my hometown area of Fort Bragg back when I was a teenager. My tack was red then and I wasn't using a martingale so I haven't the foggiest why I bought blue rein stops. Well, clearly I bought them so they would match my mare's tack years in the future. They are narrower and actually fit my reins better than the ones I was using, too.

Here are my purple caged stirrups from Christensen's. Um yeah, the only pair of caged stirrups they had in the store was purple/wine like my saddle seat. Go figure! Matchy matchy wins again. 

 I hacked up a stirrup leather cover that belonged to a saddle I've now sold, and covered up a leather strap on J's saddle the other day. It was resting against her mare's side because her pad is a short round skirted one, so we thought fleece against skin was better than hard leather in the long term. I had a remainder piece of the woolly cover so I chopped it up some more and covered the buckle/stirrup leather that always slides out of it's keeper on my own saddle (on both sides). Me likey.

And now, a pile of dogs:

Clockwise from front left: Tady, Jay, Georgia