Thursday, April 16, 2009

Letting the bucks out...

Jennifer invited this - but I'll take the blame, LOL!

Pet peeve #1 (a.k.a tack room etiquette): How do you hang up your halters? Ladies -I think most of my readers are female....
(now there's a poll topic! But I digress... )
Anyway, dear readers, how do you hang your tack?
I really wish I had a picture, not to mention a tape recording of my mom reading us the riot act about this! Our tack "room" growing up, and I'll use "room" loosely, 'cause what it was was a pole in the barn with homemade saddle & bridle racks attached made neatly of cut wood, recycled metal coffee cans, & 2x4s, may not have been fancy or dust free, but it was organized. Bridles were to be hung up correctly by the headstall, not by cheekpieces, knotted reins or otherwise draped improperly.

Saddles were to be placed back on the racks where they belonged, not left laying about in corners with their edges curling up.

And halters & leads were located were you could grab them as needed.

They DID NOT get wadded into a knotted mess and hung willy-nilly on the closest protruding object. Not if we wanted to keep using them, that's for sure.

I've kept the habit. I won't say that the halter rack in the barn is the cleanest I've ever seen (have you seen the mud on those ponies lately!), but I do keep the halters buckled & hung with the leads attached so that I can easily grab the ones I need without having to unsnarl the whole mess.

And woe betide the one who leaves them otherwise! Grrr!!!!

Pet peeve #2: "But I don't feel like it tonight..." Ever met a dairy farmer who took much time off?
Milk cows require feeding & (yup) milking. Every a.m. Ever night. Just like horses require feeding and looking in on. Every day by someone. Okay, so maybe there are horses out there on 40 acre pastures that run pretty much wild & free as they choose. But they have access to food, water, & turnout, now don't they? If you own a horse and you're not providing opportunities for same, shame on you! The horse doesn't care that you don't feel like it. And when you chose to purchase said animal, you accepted the responisibility to feed it or have it fed, or find it another location with someone else to do so. End of story.

Okay, that does feel better!

Next? You're it, BECG & Mrs. Mom.
And anyone else to cares to play along,
feel free to jump right in.

4 comments:

BrownEyed Cowgirl said...

Oh, I so hear ya on the tack etiquette! I'm a PITA about that...I have chewed my brother's and his daughter's butts numberous times for not hanging halters and bridles up neatly. I hate it when someone hangs a bridle up and the reins are all twisted-Grrr!

I'll play.;)

Promise said...

As long as *my* stuff is hung up properly, I don't care what the others do with theirs. With one exception...

I'm boarding in a barn overrun with teenagers (last time I did this, I was actually still a teenager, lol). My biggest pet peeve for tack room etiquette is coming in and finding someone else's crap piled on my tack trunk.

Last weekend, it was a pair of jeans, a shirt, a cell phone, a handful of jewelry and someone else's polo wraps.

I've found halters and leads hanging out there. Lots of polos. A couple of crops. A lunge line. A saddle pad. And clothing.

Uhm, excuse me...but it's not a place for you to put things because it's convenient. If you need a place to store your crap while you ride, get your own stinkin' tack box.

This one belongs to someone...and that someone is a boarder, not one of your buddies.

SunnySD said...

Isn't it a pain to have to take the extra time to sort stuff out?

Promise, that would be really annoying! Who leaves jewelry & stuff out just laying around, for one thing? And then to pile it all on top of somebody else's box... definitely a "Grrr!" moment!

Promise said...

It's cheap-o "Claire's" type jewelry from the look of it. But even so...I don't want it, or anything else that doesn't belong to me or Promise stashed on my box! lol

I think a good "Grrr" is in order :)