What do you put on a nameplate?

[mvp]

My full name on saddle plates.

My last name (blessedly just 5 letters) on those blasphemous round tags HRH GHM told us we should hate (funny how the world changes) on all the tack-- bridles, martingales/breast collars, surcingles, girths. I found some silvery ones for the black tack, too! The idea here was to have my stuff labeled, but not in a way that would deface the tack if I ever wanted to sell it. I won’t buy a bridle or martingale that had someone else’s name plate in the leather.

Which leads me to a question: I have some nice leather halters with the registered names of the horses on them. Those horses are now gone and I’d still like to use the halters. Would you replace the name plates (even if you couldn’t insure a perfect match for the plate because its years and years later)? Would you put the next horse’s name on the right side of the halter? Kind of like a perpetual trophy… but confusing?

[enjoytheride]

I got itty bitty tags from Haltertags.com and put them on my bridles with my horse’s names. Annoyingly my two horses are one bridle hole’s difference so they each have their own jump and dressage bridles. Sometimes my fiance helps me tack up so I wanted to make things easy for him.

[Mulligan314]

To my understanding, from a friend that used Smartpak halters for years, the change in quality has been recent, like in the last couple of years. Her barn stopped buying halters from them and switched to a local amish maker.

If the smartpak halter/plate had been the only one I had ever seen or had experience with, I would probably be impressed with it, with the exception of wanting to use the crown piece. I prefer use the use the crown piece buckle over the throatlatch snap, and this one is so tight in the buckle right now. I’m sure it would loosen up with time, but it would come from the scrapping of the leather against the buckle, which is just destroying the leather. What’s the point in that?

Anyways…really, it’s probably me just being super super picky. haha.

[Mulligan314]

I’d replace, and if that was going to be a continuous thing, use name plates that connect with Chicago screws and can easily be swapped out (like the smartpak plate). I’m not one for confusing. haha.

If I took plates off of the old halters, I’d make a plaque or something that held the ‘retired’ plates.

I’m not one for reusing leather halters though. I’m in the boat of each horse deserves its own halter and the others get retired, but by ‘others’…these retired halters are 20+ years old(they don’t circulate here very often). haha. I can understand the buy/sell market of not wanting to do that, but also think that sending a nice, plated halter with a sale horse is a not shabby customer service. haha.

Leather halter reusing exception: My previous gelding had a really nice, black leather halter. He snapped the noseband of it one day and I was really sad. I took it to a saddlery guy who said he could fix it, so I was hopeful on getting the halter back in use again. When I went to pick it up, he handed over what used to be my beautiful, black halter…he had sewn the noseband with WHITE thread…and it wasn’t even a straight sewn line…woddly lines, all the way across the nose. Totally ruined. I couldn’t even say anything. I took the plate off the halter and moved on. Have had the halter hanging in a room for years(like over a decade)…I don’t even know why…but, recently, I needed to muzzle my guy and wanted something breakable to put the muzzle on…insert old, white stitched, holes from a plate, black leather halter…for the win.