I am a very colorful person.  Some days I love bright yellow or day glow orange.  Some days I am all about Kelly green or deep red.  But on just about all days, I love blue best of all. 

Recently when packing for a weekend visit with some friends, Irealized that just about everything I own is blue.  I almost always wear blue (except today.  Today I am wearing green and grey).  It does make it easier to get dressed, I just have to be careful my shades of blue don’t clash!  And growing up, blue was the primary color of all the groups I belonged to. 

And not just blue, but blue and yellow specifically.   

• My K-12 grade school colors were blue and yellow.
• My pony club, which dominated my childhood, colors were blue and yellow. 
• And even now, in my adult life, my riding team, Old School, rides in blue and yellow. 

Which is good because most of the horse stuff I have is blue! 

For the holidays I got a gift certificate to Distance Depot http://www.thedistancedepot.com/ which sells endurance and trail tack.  I have quite a few things from their company already, and have been really impressed with their service and the speed at which a custom ordered item is received.  They are really fast.  I placed my order last Friday for a custom made bridle and I picked it up from my post office on Tuesday.   

I also love biothane.  It is a leather like substitute, but unlike leather it doesn’t mildew or rot, it can get wet and it can go in the dishwasher (if you have one, which I do not) and it comes in so many colors.  It also comes in different textures.  Depending on what color you want, you can select a more ridged biothane or a softer, leather feeling biothane, which is what I prefer. 

After I got my first piece of biothane, which was my breast collar, I was really hooked.  Maybe part of that is that I just love being colorful, and being color coordinated, but I loved the way it felt to the touch and it holds up great.  Way better than cheap leather, which is becoming harder and harder to separate from good leather, which is really expensive.  And when you think about the leather industry, gross.  Not only is it animal skin, and it is very hard to determine the humanity, or lack of, that was enlisted in the process of securing it, but the tanning and dying process is soooo bad for the environment.  In the old days, tanneries were always set up outside of town, down wind and downstream for a reason.  Gross.  So yeah, go biothane! 

My trail tack for Simon is supplemented by a lot of “light navy” colored gear with touches of pink.  I have a light navy biothane crupper and a breast collar, a martingale attachment and reins, and I also have a matching bridle with bright pink on the brow and nose bands.  You can see this get up in several of the photos on here.  It all matches my saddle bags excellently.  If they only had a Toklat dark blue endurance cool back pad… sigh.

When I ride on my games team I use my trail bridle, which since purchasing, is the only bridle I use anyway, but we dress in navy and yellow, so I wrap the pink nose and brow in yellow electric tape, so I can keep with the proper colors.  Seriously, I am really bent up about color coordination. 

So with my gift card I ordered a navy and yellow bridle.  I also tried a differently designed bridle and I love it. 

On my other bridle, the bit attaches to clips on the cheek pieces of the halter.  But since I have a pony and a high cheeked bit, it sort of gets bunchy sometimes.  But I still wanted a removable bit and a halter style bridle.  So I picked out the “Full halter bridle with add on headstall” https://www.thedistancedepot.com/Biothane_Tack_p/bbt-fhaoh.htm. 

I had to add about a dozen holes per side of the headstall so it would fit Simon’s short pony face, but in the end it works great.  The headstall is technically suppose to go on the outside of the halter part, but I think it is ok to strap the throat latch over it.  I did on one side but not the other to see what I thought.  Either way, it works.

The headstall attaches onto a pin at the pole, and is super easy to pop on and off, but is tight enough to stay in place.  Very cool.  And Simon looks spiffy in it too. 

Now I just need to decide if I want to use my blue or my yellow cotton reins with it.  Decisions decisions.