Fall Favorites

There may be a theme here...

Horze Saddle Pads:

Honestly I don’t know why I look at saddle pads from any other brand anymore! I ADORE European style dressage saddle pads and while Horze doesn’t have many that are quite as cute as some of the European pads, HKM pads for example, they do have more European styling plus most of them come in pony sizes. While Katai isn’t an itty bitty pony she is on the smaller range of what most adults ride and because of that even some of the suggestions for smaller pads just don’t work for her. I have 2-3 pads for her that are as small as I can find in "normal" dressage saddle pads and they are still just too big. One of them (around 20 spine x 22 drop which is REALLY small for most horse pads) even caused L to comment that it was no wonder she wasn’t listening to my leg since my pad was too big!

I have eight saddle pads from Horze, all in pony size, and they are wonderful! Even the ones on the larger end of the scale are close to 20 x 20 and the smaller ones just perfectly fit under my saddle. I can go pretty small for my saddle since it has a 17" seat and a 15" flap so I try to keep them as close to the size needed for my saddle as possible so that she doesn’t look like she’s wearing her mommy’s saddle pad.

My favorite is this one.

It is a little blingy but not too bad for a schooling pad and the brown works really well with Katai’s colors since then you’re only seeing two colors rather than three. It has this cool flag detailing along the spine and it fits perfectly under my saddle. Plus, I bought it when it was on sale for $22!! Pretty tough to beat that!

My second favorite is the one.

The color on this actually said Navy on the site and since Katai looks great in Navy I ordered it in that color. It actually turned out to be closer to black which I normally wouldn’t have ordered since I wasn’t sure if it would look ok on her. I actually don’t think it looks bad and it was a great experiment since I will likely end up showing her in a black pad rather than white based on her color.

Again this pad has some subtle detail but just on one side. It doesn’t have the fun little flag detailing but it is the PERFECT size for my saddle and I think I got this one for $21 on sale at Horze (plus another 20% off with a coupon I had as a frequent customer haha) which again is really tough to beat.

Sheepskin Pad:

Seeing the theme now?

I actually purchased this saddle pad on Amazon. I’m the queen of bargain hunting especially for things that I need but don’t want to pay full price for. Frankly spending over $200 on a mattes pad without even the option to shim it seemed silly so I went looking for a different option and found this pad. For $124 I got a nice, plush, sheepskin pad that has four shimable pockets plus it came with three sets of shims in different thicknesses! I also have Amazon prime so I got it with free shipping as well.

I didn’t know that I would need a shimable pad but since I was using the front shims for awhile I’m really, really pleased that I went ahead and bought this option rather than the cheaper $99 option in the same pad that didn’t have pockets. I really like this pad! It has nice plush sheepskin and the quality seems to be really good. The sheepskin isn’t as plush and soft as a Fleeceworks but it does seem to have more loft which is nice and it fits my saddle well. I think for a saddle that’s bigger than a 17" seat it may be a little short though since it fits my saddle perfectly!

Nifty Hair Remover Brush:

I had seen someone at the barn with one of these things and was amazed at how it magically seemed to remove hair from saddle pads, blankets, clothing etc. They had bought it from a tack store but once again I bargain hunted on Amazon and found this great, cheaper, no name version. It is truly amazing at removing hair and works better than anything else I’ve tried for this task.