Truthfully, taking the time to talk about tack is tantamount to trailing after triumph. Or to skip the alliteration, it’s really important.
Aside from the purchase of our horses tack tends to be the next largest purchase. If you are anything like me you also take a ton of pride in your tack. I love love love both of my saddles and spent hours researching which to get. The same goes for the rest of my bridlework. I know which bride has sticky keepers, exactly which noseband needs padding, or more careful adjustment, and I know which bridle is Frankenstein’s creation. So it should come as no surprise that I am a big fan of clean tack, and tack that is well put away.
Cleaning Your Tack
I firmly believe tack should be cleaned after every day of use. No, I do not clean my saddle between rides each day, but I do make sure it is cleaned daily if used. Cleaning tack not only helps the leather and threads stay supple and strong, but it provides an opportunity for horsemen and women to check on the integrity of the tack. Stirrup leathers are notorious for wearing away at the buckles and snapping, as are reins after they have been chewed on one too many times. The leather on bridle buckles is surprisingly easy to break, so buckles should be undone and then rebuckled during cleaning. Here are some of my favorite cleaning methods:
For daily cleaning I use simple cleaners and like the liquid ones best, like Hydrophane’s Leather Cleaner, or Leather New. A bucket with water is needed, and I prefer large sponges over the tiny ones. They tend to pop out of my hands, especially when cleaning laced reins. On bridles I scrub hard and wrap the sponge all the way around the leather to scrub rather than just on top of one side. Especially keep an eye on the inside of nosebands and brow bands.
I condition my tack only when it needs it, and my favorite products to use are any Lederbalsam type conditioners. I never use on billet straps, as conditioners soften the leather and make it more pliable, but therefore more able to break. If my billets have become too dry then I will use plain old olive oil to moisturize (rather than neatsfoot oil which darkens it too much)
If my tack is super disgusting (or twice yearly for the lesson barn tack), I break out the ammonia. This is actually my absolute favorite way to clean tack, but it is time and labor intensive, so unfortunately doesn’t always work for my schedule. I dilute maybe a half cup ammonia into an 8-quart bucket of water then dip the sponge in. The concoction is strong enough if your eyes and nose burn a bit if you smell the sponge dipped in it. Then I scrub tack clean using this ammonia water. Once tack is clean I wipe (not clean or scrub) a thin layer of glycerine soap on top of the leather. This helps lock in the moisture from the ammonia water.
Storing Your Tack
Believe it or not there is an art to storage, just ask any horse mom with a halter for every day of the week, month, and year.
Everything has a home, and it needs to live there. Pick and choose where you keep your bits, keepers, pads, etc. Tack lockers and trunks can get real messy real quick.
Cover your saddle between uses. Dust is one of the biggest abrasives that destroy leather, so keep it off your saddle.
Wrap your bridle. Few tack rooms are large enough to easily allow tack lots of room, so wrapping bridles means that they take up less space, and you are less likely to pull down the halter, draw reins, lunge line, side reins, and extra bridle that are sharing that rack.
Make sure your cloth tack has designated storage. Sweaty saddle pads, wraps, and boots, can become breeding grounds for bacteria and fungus.
Make sure to treat your tack well. Almost every discipline of riding relies heavily on tack, so you want to make sure it is clean, functional, and then you can forget about it and focus on your ride. Good maintenance of tack takes daily cleaning and care. Showing up to lessons should always been done with clean and well-fitted tack as it shows that you respect your instructor enough to appear prepared.