Halters, bridles, reins, pads, boots and everything else that touches your horse. What the materials actually are, who really makes them, and which pieces earn their price.
Every bargain saddle pad, spare bridle and “lot of tack for $50” needs somewhere to live. In a small tack room, the answer usually ends up being the floor, and then you spend ten minutes looking for one bit. You don’t need more square meters. You need to use the walls, the back of the…
Advertising disclosure: this article contains affiliate links, placed only on brands that passed. If you buy through them, this site may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. Hoof & Honest was not paid by any brand named here, and no brand was given advance sight of this article. Boot Barn sells a…
On September 19, 2026, jockey Martin Garcia went down in a six-horse spill at Churchill Downs. A horse stepped on his face, his back, and his helmet. He came away without a head injury, and told Thoroughbred Daily News, “That helmet definitely saved my life.” He also came away with six broken ribs, four cracked…
A saddle can go into a tack room in November and come out in spring with a stiff, cracking seat, a gray bloom of mold along the flaps, and a wool pad underneath it chewed down to felt at the corners. None of that takes neglect. It takes an unheated room between a manure pile…
Advertising disclosure: this article contains affiliate links, placed only on the six brands that passed. If you buy through them, this site may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. Hoof & Honest was not paid by any brand named here, and no brand was given advance sight of this article. A Shires…
Advertising disclosure: this article contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, this site may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. Hoof & Honest was not paid by any brand named here, and no brand was given advance sight of this article. In 2015, a research team led by Rachel Murray laid…
We sorted saddle pads into five levels, from plain cotton to therapeutic and correction systems, and checked each against the published pressure research and manufacturer specs. Material matters more than price, wool has the strongest evidence, and the top tier is mostly manufacturer claims.
There is a strip of leather on your bridle that carries roughly three times more pressure than the one you check. Nobody has ever asked you to check it. There is no gauge made for it, no rule written about it, and no product on the market sold to pad it. It is not the…
Equilibrium sends its cross-country boots to the same independent laboratory that tests riding hats and body protectors, and publishes the results. Almost nothing else on the rack has been tested by anyone. Five levels of leg protection, from decorative to matched to the actual risk, with every claim traced to a published study or a company’s own published test.
Eleven turnout blanket brands against five questions: is the denier published, is fill weight in grams, can you buy the parts, who owns the company now, and what the written warranty says in year two. Six pass. One “lifetime guarantee” turns out to be 30 days and a coupon.