The price of a horse ain't in what you paid for her...

It's true that I didn't pay anything for Ginger, but as a quick example I paid $200 to buy Ketah about 16 years ago. I won't bother tallying up the monthly feed and board in that time, I'm thinking entirely about gear right now. Over the years I have amassed a good store of gear. For my one horse I have two saddles, three bridles, two blankets, two halters, side reins, whips, a good first aid kit for the barn, brushes, etc. Some of that is universally useful, such as the brushes, hoofpicks and first aid. Sadly however, I have discovered that none of the really expensive stuff is. As we all know now, Ketah is a Morgan-Quarter mix. This means that in general she wears "horse" size bridles. Ginger has a pretty little Arab head, she needs "cob" size instead. Ketah wears saddles that are considered "quarter bars". In english saddles that means she generally uses a "wide" tree. In western saddles most will fit her. Not so for Ginger. Arabians tend to be either really narrow, or really wide. I got the wide one. My favorite saddle appears unlikely to fit her even with the widest gullet I can put in it. I'm going to try, but I have little hope.

On the plus side, I have placed a saddle on Ginger twice now and asked her to walk around with it on. She quite literally doesn't care. Of course, since neither of my saddles fits her neither has been cinched down. Ketah's cinches are too long, even as skinny as she is right now...


The point of this post is that I know I'm crazy. And it's a damn good thing Shane knew that before he got involved 'cause it's just going to get worse. Saddles ain't cheap!