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  • Writer's pictureAlya

Mouldy to Marvellous

As show season is fast approaching, its time to make the journey down to the shed and retrieve your show tack. If you are like myself; you have winter off from showing to give yourself, your horse and your tack a ‘break’. Regardless of your efforts to keep your bridle bagged and away from the elements, you always seem to bring out something that resembles more of a furry Octopus than your beloved show Bridle.

I have a lovely brown leather hunter bridle with a set of beautiful plaited reins attached and when clean it is my pride and joy, however when it is mouldy I feel like throwing the damn thing away as it’s always a chore cleaning the bridle.





I’ve always struggled finding an easy and effective way of getting in-between all those plaits to catch all the dirt and mould and I’m sure I am not the only one who has this issue.


Trying and testing many of the tack cleaners on the market, I find they either stain the leather or leave a sticky residue which in turn leaves a very horrible mark on my very grey horse. I made another trip down to my local tack shop and picked up Hide Food by Gold Label. This comes in an easily recognisable gold tub and varies in sizes. I chose the 250g tub at £5.95 which contains pure Beeswax and natural Lanolin.





I then took the idea from a house cleaning programme I watched where they had a very intricate design on a mirror which they used a tooth brush to get in-between the gaps that were too big or too fiddly for anything else…. BINGO!! I took a toothbrush and put a smidgen of the Hide Food onto my leather plaited reins. It was working but wasn’t going too far with the amount I had on, so instead of lathering more polish on I decided to dilute it. I had a small tub of water which I placed a raisin sized amount of hide food on the toothbrush and then dabbed this into the water. I then scrubbed the toothbrush around 30cm up the plaited reins once I got to this length I then wiped away the excess with a sponge.





I carried on doing this to the whole of my bridle and suddenly it looked better than ever. It looked new, was lovely and supple and was not sticky or slimy. Very impressed that I hardly used any of the hide food at all. I would recommend this for any of your leather cleaning 10/10 on the product.




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