Am talkin’ the 1960’s, when probably most of the current crop of COTHERS started playing with horses, and earning their spurs. Off the top:
All saddles were either Argentines, or Stubbens, and all saddles came with standard, regular gullet widths. If the pommel sat too low on the wither, you padded up. Bad fitting saddles sported breast plates.
All bits were loose ring snaffles, egg butt or full cheek. No fulmers. Pelhams were mullet mouthed, and steel or rubber. Kimberwickes were used sometimes, but mostly all bridles were either snaffle or full, with a bradoon and curb.
Bridles were 5/8ths, or 3/4ths width, in the field. No such thing as padded anything.
Saddle pads were REAL sheepskin, and inexpensive! Even I could afford them back then!
Girths were all leather three-fold, with NO elastic on the ends, nor were there any roller buckles - you had to really muscle it up, and scrape the heck out of your billets.
Shin boots were “galloping boots”. Always leather, always had buckles. Bell boots were leather too, and secured with strips of leather through tiny metal keeper thingees.
We could all ride without helmets anywhere; at shows you had to wear that black velver hunt cap in the classes, but it had an elastic throat band that everyone always kept up over the bill.
Leg wraps on the horses. Had to use safety pins. Remember all the blistering and firing of the legs for any reason, not just for buckd shins on race horses? ACK!
Jump on in everybody! What do you remember about those grand old days?
