Since it's windy as all hell right now and we'll be getting more all day tomorrow, decided to make this a tack-cleaning weekend.
Brought home all the strap goods and both western saddles to clean, oil, and condition.
Laid out some old rag towels, put on Fallout for a rewatch, and got it all done. Also hosed down my two primary saddle pads and both my daily use mohair girths. They're hanging out in the backyard to dry in the hot desert wind.
Lemme tell you, this stuff was SUPER dusty (as you can see above). I even got after the tooling with a toothbrush, because that fine-grained desert grit was just deeply embedded everywhere. I think I need to start closing the trailer's tack room door when I ride, because the dust just apparently gets in and swirls around on everything.
I'm having some mixed feelings, too. I DO like having my gear readily available out at the barn by keeping it in my trailer, but... I feel like it's a lot harder on the leather. There's some cracking on one of the latigo straps on Copper's saddle, where I guess the sweat dried it out some. And when I keep this stuff at home, it's easier to maintain since I can wipe it down in the evening after each ride (hard to do that at the barn when I'm rushing to get to work after a lesson).
I dunno, I'll have to think about how to better manage this. Maybe bring it all home more often like this.
At any rate, it's clean now and I'll take it all back after the wind dies down on Sunday.
