Cob Jockey

Do you know what's better than Rolex Land Rover-style shopping?  Land Rover-style shopping where every time you buy something, it shows up on your credit card bill with a 24% discount over what the receipt says you paid, since right now the Canadian dollar is $0.76 USD.

I didn't go as crazy as you might expect, partially since I bought two expensive riding shirts recently, but even I am not cheap enough to pass up the one thing I did buy: a Back on Track mesh sheet in navy, plus the matching neck, plus a BoT jump pad for $174 USD with free shipping to the US.

If you're keeping score at home, that would normally be $347 USD.

The lady told me the price and I stood there silently for a second running the math in my head, and she said, "Come on, that's practically free in USD!" 😂 I'd been wanting a "nice sheet" and a BoT jump pad for a while now, so yeah, at nearly $200 off what I would pay in the US, even Black Friday won't be able to touch that deal.

Here's a photo montage of the more interesting things I saw:

I liked this scoop, especially for getting through frozen sweet feed in the winter

These padded halters were $30 USD

Weatherbeeta blankets

Apparently everyone but me knew these existed, I totally want to try one.  I love the warning label that basically says "You're F'ed the second shavings get on this thing, sorry".

LEMIEUX HAS A COMPLETE MATCHY MATCHY MINIATURE HORSE LINE AND IT'S SO CUTE!

This Schockemohle vest was gorgeous, and thankfully not in my size or else it might have come home with me.

The fabric on this Schockemohle pad was absolutely stunning, almost had a linen look to it.  Those circles were so padded, we thought they might have been memory foam at first.  I want to say it was around $130 USD.

HKM had these stunning pads, with matching breeches and halters

These boots sold out so fast.  That's a rubbery sparkle background behind the perforated shimmery gold outer layer (it didn't photograph well), so I don't think they'll loose their sparkle over time.

I would buy an Antares just to get this platinum gold padded detail on my brown saddle...just saying.

Interesting wool and mesh half pad from Antares, underneath side shown below

It kind of felt like one of those mesh dish scrubbers, and the mesh had quite a bit of structure to it.  I can imagine the airflow would be good, but it also seems like it might be scratchy.

It was so heavy!  So well-constructed!  So swively!

Just look at that noseband.  LOOK AT IT!  IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL!

No seriously, I'm going to make you look at it again

I am not an Ogilvy fan but I know there are a lot of you out there.  The Ogilvy booth was so cute, and really big.

This black and metallic gold saddle pad didn't photograph well, but in real life it was a gorgeous bright yellow gold metallic color that almost-not-quite looked sparkly from far away

I was tempted, but didn't end up pulling the trigger because every normal Dressage pad in the world looks massive on Connor, so I have to be really careful on sizing.

This BR Equestrian Equipment brand was very popular and very cheap.  TONS of matchy matchy sets in literally dozens of colors.  The matchy matchy pads were $30 USD.  They also were definitely doing some copyright infringement on some US brands though, so take that for what you will.  They had a knockoff of the SSG 10 Below gloves that were so visually accurate, you couldn't tell them apart if you hid the logo.

This navy Samshield shirt, which I'm pretty sure I've seen in the US, but not in person before.  It was ridiculously beautiful.

Tomorrow, saddles!

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!

Ah, sports bras.  A subject near and dear to my heart (I mean, literally, right?)  And hey, I already reviewed underwear on this blog, what's one more lingerie review?

Moving Comfort Fiona (new style)

Moving Comfort Juno

Moving Comfort Fiona (new style).  This is their most popular style, but there are tons of style to choose from.

Moving Comfort Fiona (old style - most of my bras are this style)

Moving Comfort Rebound Racer.  My #2 after the Fiona.

Me, front and center.  This was six years ago after we did Fight Gone Bad.  I'm wearing a CW-X Stabilyx by Wacoal here, which is a very supportive bra, but also a very ugly bra.

Moving Comfort Jubralee

For the past two years, I've started buying my fly spray in bulk.  Before then, I used to run out to Rural King to grab a bottle anytime I ran out.  I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at the cost comparison for all the ways I can outfit Connor with the same fly spray for an entire season.


My fly spray of choice is the water-based Pyranha.  It's extremely effective, and it also helps repel ticks, which I love.  I've not found a tick on Connor since switching to it.

The spray bottle is 1 qt, while the big jug is 1 gallon or 4 qts.  I go through around 4 qts of Pyranha per fly season, with Connor getting sprayed every time he goes outside and before and after every ride.

(For the sake of comparison, I'm going to leave out shipping costs since there's a lot of ways to get free shipping these days.)

Using an old funnel to re-fill my bottle

Here's a list of the ways I can obtain a season's worth of fly spray for Connor from the stores I buy from most, in order from most expensive to least expensive (regular prices shown):

Smartpak: $18.95/spray bottle
Cost per quart: $18.95
Total cost per year: $75.80

Rural King (local store): $17.95/spray bottle
Cost per quart: $17.95
Total cost per year: $71.80

Riding Warehouse: $15.95/spray bottle
Cost per quart: $15.95
Total cost per year: $63.80

Smartpak: $54.95/1 gallon bottle (4 qts)
Cost per quart: $13.74
Total cost per year: $54.95

Riding Warehouse: $43.95/1 gallon bottle (4 qts)
Cost per quart: $10.99
Total cost per year: $43.95

Between what I used to do and what I do now, I'm saving almost $28/year on the exact same fly spray.  I'm saving $11/year just by buying the same thing in the same bottle from Riding Warehouse vs ordering it from Smartpak. 

(Uh, Smartpak, can we talk about that markup?  Wow!)

We're not talking about life-changing amounts of money here, but horses are expensive enough as it is, and I'm sure I'm not the only one always looking for ways to reduce my horse spend.  Be a smart shopper: shop around, do the math, and buy in bulk!

You may remember that I resolved to reduce my "Horse Supplies" category spending in 2018 while my husband and I make a final push to pay off our renovation-related debt and his student loans.

Specifically, the debt it took to turn this...

...into this. Worth every cent.

First, a reminder: I'm defining "unnecessary" as anything not essential to Connor's health, comfort or happiness.  So, things like my saddle getting reflocked are necessary, but things like buying new breeches for the clinic were unnecessary. 

But I bought them anyway and have no regrets!

To track this, I'm using custom categories and tags on Mint.com.  I have a "Horse Supplies" category, and then I have "Unnecessary" and "Necessary" tags that I apply to each transaction.  "Horse Supplies" is loosely defined as anything I could buy at a tack store and doesn't include things like vet, lessons, board, dentist, and shows, which I track separately.

So how am I doing a month past the halfway point of the year?  Here's a visual:

Green bar is 2018, yellow bar is 2017

This is not quite a fair comparison, because the yellow bar represents all of 2017, while the green bar represents the first seven months of 2018.  But clearly I'm very much on track to spend waaaaaaaaaay less this year.

Where has that "unnecessary" spending gone so far this year?  Welllll...


The answer is "going way overboard on buying things I really did not need for the clinic" (again, no regrets, #diditallforthephotos), re-buying my whip after I lost it somewhere in our outdoor, and a one month FeedXL subscription.

I'm not doing quite as well on "necessary spending" because getting my saddle looked at, reflocked, and widened ended up being pretty expensive.  In fact, that accounts for over three-fourths of my "necessary" horse supplies spending this year.  I'm not complaining, that money could not possibly have been better spent, but it does turn this graph upside down:

Once again, green is this year, yellow is last year.

Other "necessary" purchases this year include all the stuff I've bought to try to stop Connor's muzzle from rubbing his face, two new stall fans (they keep dying), and his maintenance gut supplement.

Current plan of attack: biothane halter in "Can't Possibly Lose THIS in the Pasture!" green

Anyone else using Mint.com to track horse expenses?