Tack Hos Gone Wild

Hellooooooo internet... It's been a while. I'd say I've missed you, but sort been mid-crisis on a lot of things lately, so not so much on the internetting, much less the missing thereof.

Let's just say it's been an expensive few weeks.

Here's why:

One of my awesome browband ladies (I have two. Because ho.) contacted me a while back and offered to ship me a second that she'd made and disliked but didn't want to disassemble. Obviously, I said "yes".

topline leather goodies!!

Or something less professional and with more hearts and sparkles.

The only catch was that it was on brown leather and Courage only sort of has a brown bridle (and the browband on that bridle was purchased from my other browband lady for very specific reasons and I don't fancy taking it apart). Thus, I pressured Lindsey into helping me on the brown bridle 2.0 search well before the browband arrived.

fancy!

Courage somewhat-compliantly modeled several different brown bridles for me, then we threw on Lindsey's cool new dressage bridle for giggles.

less compliant

By the time we were done, my phone looked like this:

only one of many screens

And we'd definitely established that none of the bridles were quite right.

the pretties!

Then the beautiful browband showed up (love.) and I tried it on the brown bridle I do have. It's supposed to be a Nunn Finer figure eight, but I frankened it out long ago. Sadly, as much as I love my blue noseband with my blue and orange browband, it was uh... less than stunning with pink. 

eww

That started a flurry of searching for the perfect brown bridle at the perfect price, which netted me these things:

ebay steal: smartpak cavesson for $20

ETT-special plaited reins to match otto (wasn't looking, but hey)

invictus half pad because reasons and a coupon

Of those options, the one on top MIGHT solve my problem but apparently it was shipped by mule train. And then the mules went lame. And died. Or cannibalized each other. Probably all those options. Regardless, it's not here yet. 

I tried riding with the figure eight but due to some genius decision making that I'm going to blame on stress, I forgot to bring my running martingale out with it and let's just say that bolty OTTBs in the fall do not go without martingales. Particularly not when they aren't being ridden regularly and a storm is blowing in. See, I sometimes make good decisions, just usually not until a string of bad ones already happened.

fanceh

Which is to say. I barely saw my horse last week. I have a metric ton (actual figure) of fancy shit for him to play with. I've barely touched any of it. And basically every day is Christmas at my house until all this stuff shows up! 

Because once I got all pumped about bridle searching, I ran across a decent looking knock off of the modern Otto Schumacher bridle I've been drooling on since forever and then I ordered that too!

never had patent before

It obviously won't match the new browband, but I have a bonus black browband at the moment plus it comes with it's own and yeah, really can't explain this one other than to say I deserved it after the week I had. It's also not here yet, but given I ordered through a British tack shop in the wee hours of Sunday morning, I don't expect it til next week anyways.

I guess y'all can just be glad that I didn't also purchase this amazing critter from the hospital gift shop.

so stylish! such personality!

Trust me, I considered it.