Ohio Adventures Part 2 - Buy All The Things

I am always jealous of all the awesome horse stuff I see on blogs that isn't available (or is super expensive) in Canada. My trip to Ohio seemed to be a great opportunity to do some shopping.

On the first Friday I was in Columbus, I met Tracy for supper at an Italian restaurant near my hotel. We had a great couple hours of non-stop pony talk. Near the end of the evening, Tracy invited me to join her and a couple of her barnmates at a big tack store sale the following afternoon. The sale was at Equus Now, a store that I had found online and was planning to check out myself anyways, so a sale and some company just made it even better!

On Saturday, I first went for my saddle seat lesson. After that was over, I had a little time to kill so I wandered around the campus of Denison University in Granville Ohio. The campus is on a big hill near the center of town (I feel like walking up the hill to get to class every day must make all the students really fit!). I work in the STEM (Science/Technology/Engineering/Math) fields myself so I felt a little like a spy walking around a Liberal Arts College, but it made for a nice walk.

After that, I drove back into Columbus to meet Tracy and her friends at Equus Now. The store is massive, and it was fairly crowded because of the sale. I would be in serious trouble if I had a tack store that nice in close proximity to me! (Except they had a bunch of Ogilvy pads that were really overpriced IMO, it's way cheaper to buy straight from Ogilvy's website even with shipping, and then you also get to fully customize your colours!)

I spent ages looking at stuff, but ended up being fairly restrained in my purchases. I ended up spending only $101 for all of the following:

• Centaur Boot Bag with Embroidered Fox Heads - I've been meaning to get a boot bag for a while, and this one seemed well made and was adorable!
• Teal Dressage Saddle Pad - I have a saddle pad addiction, and this was only $20! Plus the colour looks awesome on Kachina. 
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• Noble Outfitter's Peddies Boot Socks - these have like a real sock foot part and then are skinny fabric for the calf part, I hadn't seen that combo before and it seemed useful.
• Roma Rubber Curry/Massage Grooming Mitt - Kachina isn't a huge fan of grooming so I figured it was worth trying to see if a massage would make her enjoy it more
• Green sun shirt - this is an off brand of sunshirt but it was really comfortable, a really good price, and I loved the colour/pattern. (this was in the warehouse/sale part of store and isn't on website)

I think I did pretty well! 

I probably should have stopped there when it came to shopping, but I didn't. I blame the bad influence of blogland. See I was reading through some blogs on Sunday, and saw Karen of Bakersfield Dressage's post about her new Ovation breeches. I went on the Riding Warehouse website and realized that I could get $5 two-day shipping and get a Riding Warehouse order sent to my hotel before I left (you Americans are so lucky with your shipping rates and speed!). Once I realized that, I kind of wanted to buy everything, but I did have to limit myself both for financial and luggage room reasons. 

Here's what I bought from Riding Warehouse:

• Ovation Euroweave Campania Boysenberry Breeches - these are the same ones Karen bought and wrote about. All my current breeches are super plain and I liked how pretty these were, plus I wanted to try sock bottoms. I haven't bought breeches in a long time, mostly because I am trying to lose weight (I am down one size already!). These breeches didn't come in my current size so I decided to kill a couple birds with one stone and order a pair that is one size smaller. This gives me some literal #goalbreeches and some great motivation to keep up the work to slim down. 
  
• Woofhoof TRETS Reward Treat Pouch - I like to give Kachina treats for good behaviour. In the winter my coat pockets are filled with treats, but I often don't have a place to put them when wearing summer clothes. I'm hoping this pouch with magnetic closure and belt clip will solve that issue. Word to the wise though, it's a lot smaller than I was expecting, it won't fit that many treats. 
  
• Tough 1 Hoof Pick with LED Light - OMG, this is genius! All winter I have been trying to pick out ice balls from Kachina's feet in her pen in the pitch dark. This hoof pick has a light built into it that shines on the hoof while you are picking it. I only grabbed one, but I'm kind of wishing I had bought like five of these, both to give out to friends and to keep spares for myself. I bought it to use outside at night, but it's also really useful to have some extra light while picking feet in a shadowy barn. 
  

I travelled down to Ohio with no carry-on luggage, so I ended up using my new boot bag as a carry on bag on the way home to fit my boots and a few other things that wouldn't fit in my checked suitcase. This ended up working out awesomely because I had a few hours to kill in Toronto airport between flights and I made a stop at the shoe shine guy. He cleaned and polished my riding boots way better than I could ever do myself and was also a friendly guy to chat with. I would highly recommend doing the same if you ever end up travelling through an airport with your riding boots! (though apparently the TSA guys think it looks a little suspicious on the X-ray if you have a bag with boots and a loaf of bread inside the boots haha (I found some really good gluten-free bread in Ohio and wanted to bring some home))

So shiny!