05/10/2025
The latest colour range of saddle pads, leg boots, pretty bonnets, or the latest trendy shirt or blingy boots rarely hold their $ value.
Better off to put the $s with decent teachers, a better farrier, better quality supplements, a good vet, a good dentist, proper saddlefit, a more suitable saddle, a good bodyworker, getting your float serviced.
Trendy, blingy things don't improve horsemanship or your horse's wellbeing.
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Not a Lemieux product in sight.
The early 2000s horse world was a very different planet. Ponies stood in yards on plain headcollars and knotted lead ropes, riders turned up in whatever jeans or tracksuit bottoms were clean, matching sets were unheard of unless you count mud stains. There were no “saddle pad drops,” no Instagram ready photoshoots, and zero pressure to coordinate your horse like a boutique catalogue. It was simpler, scruffier, and somehow far more fun.
Those days were filled with hacking for hours, jumping ditches, ba****ck races across fields, and coming home looking like a creature of mud and hair. Designer gear? Optional. Fun? Mandatory. And somehow, that’s exactly what mattered.
Looking back now, I think we’ve lost a bit of that. Somewhere between the saddle pad drops and the endless new “musthaves,” the horse world got a little distracted.
Don’t get me wrong, nice kit has its place, but the real magic is in those scruffy, unbranded, unforgettable days.
Sometimes, a picture like this reminds us, it was never about what we wore, or what the saddle pad looked like. It was about who stood beside us, muddy, scrappy, and utterly unbothered.
The farmer’s daughter aka myself and my cousin plus the queen of the farm, Storm, the Connie aged 4.
