Tack sale. Blogger style.

I have some tack up for sale. I thought I would offer it here before posting to FB pages and consignment stores.

These prices INCLUDE shipping in the United States. If you live elsewhere, we can discuss shipping charges on a case by case basis.

PayPal preferred but I can also accept checks. Please feel free to make an offer. I'll do package deals, too. woo.
Email me at finalchapter.karen@gmail.com

Ok here goes:

Brown Courbette jumping saddle. (Could also be an all-purpose) It's somewhat older, but boy does this saddle clean up nice. Still in nice condition. Billets in good condition, too. Just some normal wear. I forget what the model name is, but I can check. Have additional photos if you are interested.

Tree is a medium or medium narrow

17" inch seat

$320

Stirrups and leathers: Add $25.

Black dressage girth. Size 28" (Hampton has grown out of a size 28). In good condition, needs a deep clean. It has Hampton hair stuck in some crevices that I cannot get out for the life of me. Elastic on both sides. Roller on the buckles. Nice lower end girth.

$40

Single joint bradoon. Size 5 1/2"

$12

 Pair of sidereins. These do not have any elastic or donuts on them. They are somewhat old, the leather is dry and there is some cracking but I don't believe the integrity of the leather is sacrificed. Still fully functional. Snaps make things quick and easy.

$20

2-ring modified gag/elevator bit. French Link. Size 5".

$35

Stirrup irons - "jointed" stirrups, maybe sometimes called "flex" irons.

These offer more flex in the ankle and are said to relieve knee problems (for the rider, duh).

These are obviously a little dirty still, but fully functional.

$40

Stirrup irons. The plain old kind. :) A little dirty.

$25

CS Bridle with Figure 8 noseband, laced reins. Lovely bridle with supple leather. A classic look, but just does not fit Hampton. Warmblood or horse-with-a-bigger head sized. Laced reins have classy buckles. The part of the reins that attach to the bit have been chewed on a little (AHEM, Hampton!) but fully functional and does not sacrifice the integrity of the reins. Just cosmetic.

$65

Saddle rack. You can hang these outside of your stall at home or at shows. Easy to move. Durable. My dad makes these for me and I have way too many than I know what to do with. :) Note: They will hold English saddles but probably not a western saddle.

$15

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The super-dooper double saddle rack. My dad also built this for me. It holds TWO saddles, great for events or those who show multiple horses. Made of OAK, stained. You can unhook the racks for easy moving and travel. Sturdy and durable. Hangs from stalls, hooks, whatever. You can customize how you'd like it to hang. OR nail it up in your tack room. $40.

One worthless, lazy cat who watched as a mouse crawled all over my pillow the other day. Did not chase it. Did not exterminate the mouse - WHICH IS HIS JOB AS A CAT. Yawned and walked off.

$1.

(last item was a joke.)

Almost forgot I owned a horse

You can finally (sort of) walk around the farm without fear of falling on your butt now. Our arena is still one big sheet of ice (even after today's 50+ degree temps), but it shouldn't take long now to melt.

The jump field is pretty decent footing though - so I took Hamp out there to lunge today. I thought I would start him back slow and gentle. Was thinking a 20-minute lunge, transitions, etc.

He started out looking great. Actually, phenomenal. He is moving better than I have ever seen him. He has lost some weight, so I'll have to play with his feed again. But not too bad.

Everything is going peachy. Then we switch directions. He trots a couple of circles and then ....

ZOOMIES!!!!!

Snorting. Tail flagging. Major case of the zooms. No photos because I had to keep both hands on the lunge line. This goes on for almost 5 minutes. He is now lathered between his back legs and working up a good sweat on his neck. I finally get him to stop and ask him to please trot on in a civilized manner this time.

ZOOMS.

I guess so much for starting back easy?

He is puffing and blowing now and so I do finally get several calm, normal, 7-year-old properly trained pony circles before calling it quits.

He continues to snort all the way back to the barn.

Glad I chose to lunge?

Moses is available

Well our resident feral pony has really started to come around.

He leads (sort of) now, and is getting better in his stall. It does take a confident, calm person to walk into his stall and catch him though. He will still turn his butt to you and stand in a corner. So far, he has not offered to kick or be nasty. Just scared it seems. A couple of people think he has been beat in the head because he is so head-shy.

He is available for adoption - obviously not ready for kids or anybody but an experienced horse person yet. He will need more time and more patience. But he seems to be a quick study. And I really like the fact that he has not offered to be mean thus far. I take that as a good sign.

Check out his ad.

awwwww.

I'm not typically a sap, and I am not a fan of Valentine's Day ... but ...

this is pretty good. The way he gives her horse treats ... and pats him on the neck when he's scared ... and just the overall effort that went into this .... it almost made me a little sappy. Almost.

Moses gets sat on

I wish I had been around to see this, but sadly I was not.

Moses has been sat on.

On Sunday I tried to pet him, but he wasn't having any of it. Anytime I moved AT ALL - he scatters to the back of his stall and snorts. I did manage to feed him several handfuls of grain - but it was "Black Stallion Style" with me holding my hand out and him stretching his neck to get the grain. I didn't even try to touch him as he was so skittery. Part of me wonders if he has actually been abused. He knows what grain is, and knows what mints are. A truly feral horse wouldn't know what a mint is, but he hoovered those up like it was going out of style.

Imagine my surprise when this photo arrived on my phone.

This guy breaks a lot of young horses for the track. So, I dunno, I think he may be a Jedi master. Moses is wearing a saddle, bridle and rider. I am floored. He is by NO MEANS halter broke. I maybe would have started with that first, but I am no Jedi master of ponehs.

Hoping Moses starts to come around soon. He will regret being so scared because all we want to do is pet him and feed him treats!

Oh you know, still annoyed with winter.

So we had a glorious 3 or 4 days of decent weather. The arena thawed out, the footing was nice. I didn't have to wear 50,000 layers.

Hamps seemed happy to be back in work.
For all of 3 days.

Hampton has not forgotten anything, but we have both lost some fitness. That's to be expected I suppose. We were just starting to get back into a groove when ... wham ... another 4 inches of snow. And ice. And shit weather. I'm tired of it and have lost my sense of humor, can you tell?

Although we are planning to take a few horses across the street and work in their indoor sometime this week. As long as their footing isn't also frozen.

Also did a bit of this to help out-of-shape poneh pick his feets up.

Meanwhile, I've picked up another job in the mornings and have been planning out the first part of my show season. We are aiming pretty big. That's sort of scary, I'm just a backyard wannabe dressage rider with an "Indiana warmblood," and on an extremely tight budget ... do I have any business going to such shows or clinics?

I'm planning a blog tack sale, too, as soon as I get my frozen butt in gear. I have my eyes on a new saddle and I'm trying to raise funds. As it will take me another 6-7  months to save up for the darn thing.

Also, for the love of pete, I am hoping it does not continue to snow into March/April. At this rate, who knows.

Moses escapes

Well Moses escaped from his stall today.

He took an opportunity while his stall was being cleaned and made a break for it. When I arrived, one of the other barn gals had managed to confine him to a small space between the jump field and arena. She is the hero of the day in my opinion. If he had escaped beyond that, I'm not sure we would have been able to capture him.

I rode Hampton (who is feeling fabulous by the way) and later when over to see if Moses would respond to another horse.

He didn't. Of course, Hampton sort of marches over all like "Hi! Oh hei!! Are you a buffalo I can herd? Hi ! hi! I'm Hampton!! Hey!! hi!!" and poor Moses walked away quickly.

Moses is all like "go away you giant creeper."

After I put Hampton away, some of the other barn gals decided they were going to try and catch him and "work with him." Me and the girl who first contained him wanted to just let him loose and "herd" him back into the barn and his stall. (We have the ability to totally lock in the portion of the farm he happened to be in. There would be no where for him to go).

But, as we all know, get a bunch of barn girls together and there are a couple of know it alls that emerge and want to do it their way.

I know that I do not have the skill to tame, capture, wrestle, etc. a WILD horse. Weanlings, yearlings, yes. Not-really-trained horses, yes. I'll give that a shot. But Moses is about as feral as I've ever seen. He flinches and bolts if you even think about coming close. I knew I didn't have the skills. And I did not feel like skiing behind him in a bunch of mud. So I just sort of stood and watched. One gal did manage to get a hold of his catch rope. And he would take off and pull it out of her hands. (So now he has learned he can do that) We offered him hay and grain and he did respond to that. But in my opinion, it was not the time or place - or people - to start this "conversation" with this horse. It was chaotic at the barn (everyone was out because of the warm weather). In fact I was sort of embarrassed to be part of this spectacle that was going on.

He will take grain from your hand - which I found to be a good sign!

Eventually someone else showed up and said - "If all the gates are closed let's just run him back into the barn"

DUH!!!!

And that's what we did. And it worked great! Imagine that.

Moses is now contained once again.

Poor guy.

(Someone more experienced will be working with him starting next week, thank goodness).