If you’re a riding instructor, lesson horses are worth their weight in gold. (Literally. See our story, “Worth Their Weight” in the December 2019 America’s Horse). It’s an important responsibility to give them the best care, and we, as instructors, have to make sure the tack used by our students is safe and well cared for, as well. Here are a couple of quick tips that work toward both of those goals.

Protect the Back

When you have a horse being saddled and unsaddled two or three times a day, four or five times a week, you want that experience to be pain-free for him.

Any time I take a saddle off a horse, I think it’s important to slide the saddle and pad back toward the tail first (as shown above), so that it doesn’t pull on the horse’s withers as it comes off. I want to do anything I can to protect the spine and back of this dependable boy, Top Bug Baber.

Moving the saddle back also makes it easier for me to get my left hand under the gullet, and then I can easily pull the saddle toward my body and put it away.

Stirrup Safety

Stirrup hobbles are ordinarily a leather strap that goes around the stirrup leathers. Sometimes, those straps can break or get lost, and if that happens, it’s important to replace them. On the left fender of the saddle shown above, I’m using a small nylon dog collar as a stirrup hobble, and it works quite well.

The hobbles keep the leathers together, so that a rider’s foot cannot go through them and get hung up. They also prevent the stirrup from turning upside down, which could potentially trap a rider’s foot if he or she fell off and hung a boot in a stirrup.

I always look at my tack as I put it on and take it off, and hobbles are an important thing to check, making sure both of them are there.