It’s been a couple months since I’ve made a post, and I wanted to go ahead and start the new year off with a good one. Last Saturday I had the lucky opportunity to ride Capone overlooking this lovely view above, with my two best trail gals!! We had a couple scary things that happened on the trail mostly involving Capone spinning out because a little kid was chasing him at one point and a powder blue Lamborghini revved its engine as it went by. Other than that it was a really good ride, and I got a lot of time to clean out his tack room before hand. I took all my tack home and washed it, organized it, and put it back for safe keeping. There were a couple items that I rediscovered in my tack box and now I plan to do things with them. I have a four set of orange polo wraps that I want to try to turn into Hermès polo wraps for all of our Fall rides. I also discovered a two hook tack hook that has a little bit of rust on it and I’m gonna go ahead and spray paint it rose gold. I also discovered a faded navy blue velvet dressage saddle pad I have, and I really want to see if my grandmother and I can dye it dark dark black so that it looks really really nice and gives it a black velvet vibe. Other than that I have a bunch of my saddle pads that I need to go ahead and throw in the wash, but our washer is currently broken unfortunately. I would take them to a laundromat, but then I would have to run an extra load there to wash the hair and dirt out and usually laundromats are more expensive than my laundry at home.

While I wait for our laundry room to get fixed in the next couple of days I thought I would flush out a couple of ideas and thoughts that I’m having on things that I have or have not reviewed fully yet. I have two companies in terms of grooming aids that I would call my “go tos” as I am drawn to super natural ingredients. The first company that I found is Sport Horse Essentials, they offer a variety of different grooming aids from the Waterless Shampoo and Stain Remover, to a coat spray, to hoof oil, to literally the microfiber towels that you would use to use any of those products. The first product I tried from them was their Waterless Shampoo, and it quickly became my favorite thing on the planet. I was still a full time barn manager at the time, and wanted to use the Waterless Shampoo on Caz’s butt since he had a poo butt problem. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to really test it out on him because I left that job shortly after and my lease on Capone was a couple months in at that point so all my resources went to him over the lesson herd. I finished the first bottle pretty quick since it was winter, and I bought another with a coat spray & 2 Snaks 5th Avenchew as part of a kit. I found that their coat spray smelled heavily of vinegar unfortunately, and I pretty much stopped using it right then and there. After a few uses I thought my tack was molding because of the harsh smell, which lead me to make a switch company wise for coat spray.

Purvida is another company that I go to for their coat spray specifically. Their coat spray is a conditioning coat spray with a bit of natural fly repellant, sun bleach protection, coat cleaner and perfume for horses if you will. The founder of the company is always so helpful when I have any questions, like recently when I had an issue. To preface the concern I had, my bottle is a bit older so the problem I was having is because of that, but I learned a fun fact about the bottle in general. I cleaned everything I own horse wise including my spray bottles, while doing that I noticed some product build up around the top of my bottle just above the label. Fearing I was going to have to toss my whole bottle, I shot her a photo of the issue I was having and she got back to me within 45 minutes!! She said to shake it up as best as possible, sometimes with colder weather and time the concentrate will congeal back together; BUT she mentioned that the spray nozzle on the bottle itself is basically a super blaster. Meaning, if any of the build up works it’s way up into the nozzle, triggering the spray will atomize the build up for me. I thought that was the coolest thing, especially since my lease is only for 1-3 rides a month so I can’t always be shaking up my bottle. They released a rub on hoof oil which looks very easy to use, but I haven’t tried it out yet. The rub on part is the same concept of a rollerball so I’m worried it would get dirty with each application, but we’ll have to see. They also released a roll on liniment, for horse and rider. I’ve been thinking about getting one to help my back before bed or after a long work day, but I have to wait until I get paid for that splurge.

Overall 2020, has started off good for the most part. I can’t wait to complete some if not all my goals this year, including being able to W/T/C properly. For the non horse person that means walk/trot/canter, and currently I’m too weak to do all of that. Here’s to conquering my fear of being able to do that, and get all of my transitions, and welcoming the 20’s!!!