Equine Affaire - Columbus, Ohio

Here is my ticket to the Equine Affaire that was this past weekend in Columbus, Ohio. I when with a couple of friends and we had a great time. I was mainly looking to see the Aussie Saddle guy there so I could check out his saddles; of course I was looking around at other stuff too.

I did find this neat tie snap by Josh Lyons. Saw a demo on it and decided this was a pretty neat item! So I bought it and that's the only thing I bought, spent $20 but my friends spent a little more. Below is a picture of them with their goodies.

Sheri, Martha and Martha's daughter Isabella. Look at Isabella she was making a face at me when I took the picture!!! Martha bought a really, really neat bareback saddle I wish I had gotten a picture of it, will have to get the name of it from her and post about it later. I looked like a dressage saddle but made out of fleece! Even had knee rolls.

This is what I came for to talk to Colin Dangaard the owner of The Australian Stock Saddle Company. I wanted to look at the saddles and talk to Colin to find more about them. The saddle he is standing by is the Muster Master with a lot of tooling on it....one beautiful saddle!

Here you can see a little more of it, lots of fancy leather work on it. I sat on one and oh, my! It was soooo comfortable but the one thing I don't like about it is that it weighs 26 pounds. That's the reason I sold the one I had, it was too heavy for me to lift up on Gilly's back. So I would have to say that it is definitely not on my list of a saddles that I might be considering.

The one below is called the "Squire" has a quilted seat, very nice looking, picture doesn't show any stirrups or girthing system so I will have to call about it. It weighs 16 pounds!The one a is one used by mounted police "Poley Patrol" and is light weight, of course I would get it without the horn. This one looks somewhat like the one I had before and since it only weighs 23 pounds this one is in the running but will have to call about it too for more info.
This one is the "Fox Poley" and I like the look of it too. This one has a higher back I like that. Like the stirrups too they are tipped back to keep your heels down wider than the dressage stirrups I have, I like it. Don't know what this one weighs.


This one is the "Jackaroo" I like it too nice deep seat, not sure of the weight.
This is the is the "Bronco Poley", weighs 20 pounds but says it's for medium withered horses, don't know if it would work for Gilly or not. Another one to call and talk to them about. I didn't have time to talk to Colin about all of them, they were busy.....

My friends were done with their shopping and we had to get back to the car. We need to get to the arena where the Lipizzaner horses were preforming.
But what do you think of the saddles, which do you like??

To be continued!!!