Tack Sale Season

Spring means spring cleaning and tack sales aplenty!

With our first event right around the corner, I have been keeping my eyes peeled for things that I still need for rides. J was kind enough to share her packing list with me a couple weeks ago and there is…a lot of stuff. Granted she did warn me it was extensive and meant for packing a 4-horse slant LQ trailer camping overnight. Using her list as a starting point though, I’ve narrowed things down to the minimum of must-haves.

There was a tack sale advertised on the local NJ FB group for a few weeks and at fellow boarder M’s suggestion, we hit up the sale early before heading to the barn this past weekend. A good thing we did, because I pretty much did all my shopping in the first 10 minutes.

I started talking with the lady running the first table I stopped at and found out that her and her daughter did some LDs in the past but weren’t competing anymore. They priced things to sell so I had to oblige. I snagged a Stowaway cantle bag (which happened to be purple and was only $5!!!!), two purple buckets, and a sponge on a string. They gave me a stethoscope for free, which was super nice of them. I walked the rest of the tables at the sale looking for blankets, coolers, bits, and anything else that caught my eye.  The only other thing I ended up buying was a full-cheek snaffle bit with a leather headstall- I only wanted the bit but I haggled and managed to get the whole thing for $7.  J and B also went to the sale and bought a tack box of brushes from the LD lady. The box also included a random elyte syringe which J was kind enough to give me since I was looking for one of those!

After the tack sale, I headed to the barn to unload the trunk and organize my new things. After M, J, and B arrived we all got our horses out from the field and tacked up for a short trail ride. I wanted to test the full cheek snaffle and the pair of new Easyboot Gloves that I ordered. The new Gloves are definitely much harder to put on than the used ones were. Fortunately Quest got her feet done the day before so I was working with a fresh trim. It was still a struggle, and I had to take a quick break in between so I didn’t get too lightheaded but I got them both on.



We did an easy 5 miles and some leapfrogging. Quest motored right along in the lead and was quite sane. She actually felt comparatively sluggish when we first hit the trails which really surprised me. When I commented on that, J mentioned that she adjusted her feed which might attribute Quest behaving a bit less nutty.  Asides from getting quick at one point, mareface did well. New bit worked fine and the hoof boots fared with zero issues. Easyboot Gloves either work very well or they don’t…keeping fingers crossed, but so far we are still in the category of “working very well”. Goal next ride is fitting and testing boots for the hinds.

When we got back to the barn J had a heart rate monitor so we tried it on all the horses; Quest was the lowest at 40, yay :) T-minus less than one week until our first ride...See you on the other side!