Here's how I saved a bundle.
Surprise! You trot out to fetch your horse from the paddock
and find his sturdy turnout blanket has somehow been transformed into confetti.
Or the barn owner texts a photo, showing how your dear equine’s winter rug is
now ripped into ribbons. A comparable
new blanket costs $90 – or even a few hundred dollars, if
you popped for a fancy one.
You glance at the calendar. Spring has just sprung, even
though the nights (and some days) are still chilly enough to warrant blanketing
your horse.
Plus, he’s a senior. He’s in his late 20’s.
And you have a closet filled with horse blankets in various sizes
– just none that will fit this particular one. Uh-oh!
So what do you do?
Sure, you can patch the thing with duct tape, but that stuff
will come undone in a stiff wind, a pelting rain, or a hearty horse roll.
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| Barn-supplied photo. |
I fixed my horse’s
blanket myself and saved a bundle.
As you’ve guessed, this just happened to me. My cranky, old,
dear, saintly Thoroughbred tore the tar out of his medium-weight turnout
blanket. It was a wreck. But I didn’t really want to spring for a new one at
this point. Sure, I hope he will live a dozen more years. But he’s retired and
living out his last years on a quiet, out-of-the-way farm with endless acres of
rolling hills – not in a fancy show stable, where horses sport sparkling attire
every day.
The barn owner offered to have my horse’s rug laundered for
$35 and mended for $15/hour (although he said he had no idea how many hours
that might take).
That’s at least two
bags of senior grain, I thought.
I thanked him and indicated that I would give the blanket
repair a try on my own.
I trekked out to the farm and spread the tattered horse
garment over a fence. Then I beat it with a broom to knock off the biggest
clumps of dried mud.
I fastened the biggest rips closed with a couple dozen
oversized safety pins, folded the blanket, and tossed it in my car.
Toting the soiled and shredded rug into the one laundromat
in the tri-county area that still take horse items, I pleaded my case with the
lady at the counter.
Three days and $12 later, I picked up the much-cleaner
blanket and carted it to my sewing corner at home.
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| LAN/The Mane Point photo. All rights reserved. |
I arranged the torn horse garment on the floor and
hand-stitched the rips.
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| LAN/The Mane Point photo. All rights reserved. |
Hunting through my fabric and trim remnants, I found several
lengths of black grosgrain ribbon. I pinned these over the hand-sewing before
top-stitching them in place.
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| LAN/The Mane Point photo. All rights reserved. |
I also had to machine-stitch the torn area around one of the
belly straps, reinforcing the region with a sturdy patch on the inside.
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| LAN/The Mane Point photo. All rights reserved. |
Now my off-the-track Thoroughbred sports a few racing
stripes on one side of his blanket. We think that’s somehow appropriate, even though
his saddle-work days are long gone.
What’s more, the project’s a wrap, and I can still afford his grain.
What’s more, the project’s a wrap, and I can still afford his grain.
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