In The Tack Room

          Long gone are the days of rust breeches, unsafe helmets and uncomfortable, unflattering styles, watch any hunter jumper show in Ocala and you will see bright and light pinks, and bright yellows, and glitter, and jewels, anything goes. The horses are no different, bling brow bands, bright polo’s, neon saddle pads, even colored saddles, with all of these newly available colors and glitters comes new rules and regulations. So, how do judges feel about the glitters and colors, certaintly there is a wide variety of opinions, some of the younger ones are fine, and the ones who have been around longer have doubts about the tsunami of color hitting jumping rings across the nation.

          For dressage, a small jewel or color rubber browband that accentuates your horses head is fair game, same with a crystal or two on the stirrups or your spurs, but certaintly not enough to blind the judges! Too much of a good thing can hurt your performance, I know from personal experience: It was a beautiful day, the horse I was riding was groomed to a T, my new riding jacket fit perfectly and my boots finally broke in, I trotted into the ring, preformed my test and rode out. When they announced all of the places I was not among the ribbon winners, I was later informed that my browband was ”too much” and with a shake of her head the judge, who I’d previously praised for favoring me, walked off to congratulate the proud winner, which, had I not been wearing a “heinous” browband would have been me. 

          USEF took it one step further and banned blingy browbands, stirrups, helmets, spurs ect. ect. ect. One judge complained of being blinded by the amount of crystal that one, particularly flamboyant rider was wearing.

          Steer clear of bling and glitters in the hunter ring as well, though no rule have been passed (as of now) hunter judges can take away points as they see fit, and hunters are deeply rooted in tradition, so if you wouldn’t break a family tradition, don’t wear bling in the hunter ring.

          As mentioned above, go to any hunter jumper show in Ocala and you’ll see some mind blowing color combos, if theres any discipline to have crystals on your helmet, browband, stirrups, and spurs it’d be the jumper ring, so go for it!

          For eventing, the dressage and show jumping guidelines above should suffice, as for cross country, people already use ‘clincher’ browbands, so no biggie. 

         One of my favorite sights is a young pony rider with a bright helmet color, matching saddle pad, polo wraps, cooler, hair ribbons, buckets, brushes, hoof pick, boots, blankets, sheets, ect. ect. ect. in some obscene shade of pink. I think we all ought to take a page from their books and, when at home go crazy, pink, purple, blue, green, anything goes, just make sure that, what ever color you choose doesn’t blind people, unless your insurance covers that.