Cob Jockey

 

Just in case anyone has some Christmas money burning a hole in their pocket later this week, I thought I'd write up a proper review on the least adult thing I bought in 2020.

Hi yes I'm a 33 year old adult with a successful professional career, why do you ask?

Mary may have started something when she bought me that Punk Ponies pad. I've never been a wild colors or sparkles on horses person before, but when I saw these new Majyk Equipe Estrella pads, my brain was like "Look man, it's been a long, hard year of being an extra adulty adult and doing lots of things you don't want to. Life's too short to take yourself too seriously. Buyyyyy the paddddd."

So, YOLO. And teal sparkles look amazing on both ponies.

Bonus color and size reference, here's the pad on my barnmate's 16hh geriatric palomino QH Zippy, who has been filling in on pony ride duties for baby Annie while Connor is at school <3

 

But let's step away from the obvious fabulousness of the color and glitter. How is it as a pad? Honestly - it's my new favorite jump pad. It has great structure, doesn't slide down and bind the withers, and is nice and thick but still seems breathable. This doesn't feel like a cheap pad at all; they took the word 'luxury' seriously when they named it that.

I mean, please keep in mind we mostly keep one foot on the ground at all times now so I don't have an extensive collection of jump pads. But it's the nicest one I own for sure.

Like most saddle pads, it would be nice if it came in a slightly smaller size for my slightly smaller equine, but honestly, even with my postage-stamp sized 16.5" CWD 1C flap SE02 on it, it doesn't look massively out of proportion.

My biggest question with the glitter pads was how do they hold up? I'm happy to report that so far, they seem to hold up pretty well. I rode that jump lesson with my Back on Track nylon quarter sheet over the pad the entire time, and a fairly minimal amount of glitter transfer occurred.

I've also washed it once, and couldn't tell any difference in sparkliness before and after. There's obviously some top-dressed glitter on there that came off, but I think it also incorporates sparkly thread maybe? Either way, I think it'll stay glittery for a long long time (FWIW, same goes for my Punk Ponies pad as well). If you buy into the idea that glitter is the herpes of craft supplies, you're going to come away with only a very mild case if you own this pad 😂

It matches my...four? year old? turquoise Majyk Equipe Dressage Sport Boots

My only complaint is that there's one place where the braiding has started fraying, but I'm hesitant to call that out because it's such a clean cut, I'm not sure if I accidentally sliced it on something or what. Overall, the braiding and binding are very high quality and solidly attached. I'll update this review later if the fraying starts to occur in more places.

(My other complaint is that these don't come in Dressage cut - hello, Dressage queens and sparkles are like peanut butter and jelly! Do it, Majyk Equipe!)

Bottom Line: If you're in the market for a great quality pad that makes you giggle like a little kid every time you see it, this pad is for you. And I might have also ordered a purple one...

 

What: Majyk Equipe Estrella Sparkle Luxury Close Contact Saddle Pad

Sizes: Full

Colors: Turquoise, purple, black and silver

Price: $74.99

Disclaimer: I bought this pad with my own hard-earned money, and opinions are my own.

Mary wasn't supposed to be coming down til Wednesday of this week, but yesterday she texted me: "Your combo birthday/thank you for helping us with our house present arrived today and I CAN'T MAKE IT TIL WEDNESDAY can I come down just to give it to you?!" Of course I said yes. And it was soooo worth it 😂

 

What kind of adult gets a pink glitter Punk Ponies boots/bonnet/saddle pad set for her 33rd birthday? This one! 

Yes, Aeres is temporary, but we still want her to look good while she's here, and this set looks amazing against her coat. It'll look good on Connor too in every season except when he's clipped. Mary has a history of giving me sparkly ridiculous horse birthday presents anyway, like the star crop from my last Annie post, so this is just one more in a theme, lol.

Aeres is a bit head shy so it took several minutes of patience and lots of clicking to get the bonnet on her head. I was a little surprised that we succeeded, but I probably shouldn't have been given how well the clicker has worked for her.

That soft, non-anxious eye <3

We didn't ride her because she had just gotten adjusted by my vet, but you better believe we played dress up anyway.

Mary is immunocompromised and pretty much lives in a mask. WEAR YOUR MASKS FOR MARY, PEOPLE!

I mean, the gift is awesome, but it's an even better gift that Mary lives close enough to just pop down for fun and because she can't bear to sit on my birthday gift any longer, haha!

A few days ago, I was chatting with a few bloggers when someone asked what the best way to store saddle pads is.  Now, I love organization:

Old pic, but it's all I got.  This has...evolved...since this photo was taken haha

But I don't really have a good answer for saddle pads at the barn, and twice recently I've gone out to ride and realized all my pads were at home.

At home I keep them in the laundry room/former kitchen in this weirdly extended set of cabinets, which is the perfect size for saddle pads.

Our barn doesn't have a ton of storage, so I keep overflow tack in my trailer, meaning anything other than the saddle pad I'm currently using needs to go in there.  My trailer tack room is very small, so if they're going in there, they need to hang on the wall. So I thought, why not try a skirt hanger?

$3.88 at Walmart

It worked great!  It has six positions but this cheap Walmart version isn't really designed for the weight of a saddle pad, so I started with three:

Putting that new tie ring to work!

When I went to hang it, I just folded the top three positions and the hanger back and hung it by some gridwall hooks:






The hooks are stronger than the hanger, and they're deeper, so it has a better shot at staying on the gridwall and not bouncing off the wall when I hit a pothole.

We'll see how it works as I do my first hauls this year.  Anyone else have any good saddle pad storage ideas?

A few years ago, I was at JenJ's house and she was so generously giving me a saddle and loading me up with saddle pads for it.

Remember that time my checked luggage was a cardboard box containing a saddle, and it rained?  Good thing it was a Wintec.

One of the pads in that box was quite old and clearly well-loved, but JenJ said it was too small to fit any of her current horses.

Turns out it's actually hard to find photos of my schooling saddle pads that aren't blurry Pixio stills.  This was during our saddle fitting festival. PC: my mom

It was a black Classic Equine Dressage pad, Cob sized.  I absolutely fell in love with this pad.  First of all, it was the first pad I'd ever seen that actually fit Connor.  Most Dressage pads designed for Warmbloods, well...

Big fat nope

But the Classic Equine pad also had features I liked in addition to being the perfect size.  It fit the contours of Connor's back perfectly.  It has a square back corner - not a round corner, not a swallowtail, just square.


And it had a velcro girth strap, so I could just open it to put the billets through it rather than wrestling them through the strap under the flap.  Minor, I know, but I like to drive little annoyances out of my life any way I can.




But the problem?  THEY DON'T MAKE THEM ANYMORE.  In fact, they haven't made them for a while now from what I can tell.  That's started a lifelong obsession with finding them, used, anywhere I can, and paying whatever necessary to get them.  Especially since the black one has slowly started to wear in irreparable ways after I used it constantly for years.



I nabbed this beige one new with tags off of a Facebook group.  It's horse-sized so slightly bigger than the black one, but still fits him so much better than the horse-sized pads of today.



Then last week I found a used white one for sale on eBay as part of a 2 pad lot with a Baker baby pad I will never use.


The binding is coming off in places and someone wrote a bunch of stuff in sharpie on the spine, and they were asking a ridiculously high price for two used pads, but again, this is my life's quest at this point, so none of those details mattered to me, haha.


I probably wouldn't be nearly as obsessed with this if it wasn't nearly impossible to find pads that truly look good on him.  The modern warmblood pad is too big, and pony pads are too small, and no one makes hony-sized pads.  The way I see it, I found something that works, they don't make it anymore, and I am on a mission to buy as many as I can.

So that brings us to my ask:  If any of you come across a Classic Equine Dressage pad for sale, please either let me know or buy it for me and I'll pay you back.  I will pay you a finder's fee!  Any color, any size, any condition, any price.  Thanks in advance!

It's tough for me to find Dressage pads that don't completely swallow Connor.  A/P pads are easy, but there aren't many Dressage ponies out there, so Dressage pads tend to be sized for giant warmbloods.

Sorry for the potato phone quality picture, but yeah, this is a normal occurrence for us with Dressage pads.

So when I checked the measurements on the Centaur Quilted Dressage pad in the Riding Warehouse clearance section, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wouldn't swallow Connor.  For $17.88 plus 15% off during the Presidents Day sale, it was a no-brainer.

Yaaaaaay it's not gigantic!

They have magenta and purple left, and I just can't square the idea of magenta on a chestnut, so I went with purple.  Unfortunately the photos don't even come close to capturing the color, but it's definitely a bright purple.

This is the most accurate representation of the color I got.  Those billet straps did get cut off shortly after taking this photo.

Pros:
- Price.  Can't beat that price.
- Fun colors, which can be very tough to find in Dressage land!
- Sized right for smaller Dressage saddles
- Integrated billet strap hole seems to work better for my monoflap than the normal billet loops do.

Cons:
- Not really a fan of the shape - almost looks like an AP pad.
- Feels cheap, but the quality is what I'd expect for a $17 pad.  I wouldn't have paid the retail $29 for it though.
- Little cotton fuzzballs were all over Connor after I got done riding him in it

Bottom line: If you have a smaller Dressage horse and a smaller Dressage saddle, this is a great and affordable option for a schooling pad - a rare thing for us pony Dressage riders!  Not worth it at full price, but definitely worth it on sale.

Riding Warehouse - $17.88