Event: Equine Affaire Horse Expo
Location: Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, Pomona, CA
Part 1: The Shopping
Rating: *** (3 of 5 stars)
I attended my first Equine Affaire five years ago, and I remember being nearly overwhelmed by the fantastic deals on essentials from wormers to trailers, as well as the plethora of new and innovative products. Since then, some years have been better than others, and this year I wasn't overly impressed by either prices or selection. The primary exception seemed to be the bridles. Good harness leather western headstalls and split reins were available all over the place, and I saw some very high quality dressage bridles I was afraid to look at the price tags on. The saddle selection was disappointing, however. I saw some nice Western show saddles, along with a limited number of Western trail and work saddles, but there were only two or three vendors at the entire show offering English saddles at all. Now, I did go on the final day of the event, but some asking around revealed that the selection hadn't been much better earlier in the week.
There weren't many booths offering horse wear (blankets, sheets, lycra hoods, etc), though Kensington had a large presence in one of the buildings and seemed to have plenty of sizes and options available (I very much like their products; look for an upcoming review on Kensington). Rider apparel was limited to a couple of vendors selling breeches and cute T-shirts, though Ariat had a huge boot sale going on, with last season's fashion boots going for 2 pairs for $100. And of course there were the usual peddlers of worthless "training gadgets" that made me cringe.
Nevertheless, I did find a couple of products that stood out to me, which I'm currently reviewing for later blog extries.
Coming Next, Equine Affaire Special Report Part 2: Expo clinics and demos
Monday, February 4, 2008
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