Sometimes when I’m bored or looking for a project, I’ll browse Pinterest. Sometimes I find recipes and crafts for the house. Occasionally I’m inspired by a cool looking horse project. I also post my own DIY projects on Pinterest. But as with everything, you take the good with the bad. And Pinterest has a lot of BAD ideas.
This is actually a DIY for dog agility, so that blogger isn’t at fault, but the person pinning it thinks it’d be great for horse jumps. I think that would be an excellent way to kill yourself when your horse inevitably trips, sends a basket flying, spooks or gets a foot stuck in the basket and then loses their minds and takes off breaking things including themselves or you.
I think we’ve probably all seen this terrible idea going around the interwebs a few months ago:
Horse Nation did a good breakdown on the various ways this is a bad idea so I won’t spend too much time on this.
Here’s another terrible jump idea:
How has this been pinned 380 times? Do that many people want to inure themselves?
The next one isn’t terrible, I just don’t think it’ll work. And I have seen this one pinned so many times:
It’s always the exact same image being re-used on multiple different sites. Why? Because I bet this doesn’t work at all. If it worked, there’d be lots of different pictures. The second the horse moves, you know the sock is going to bunch up and down. I have heard of some people using diabetic/compression socks on their horses as an alternative to Equiflexsleeves, but they’re a) not using regular socks and b) not pretending the socks will stay down on the coronet like that.
What’s the worst DIY idea you’ve seen or heard? It doesn’t need to be from Pinterest. I’ve certainly seen people do plenty stupid horse things in real life.
….not a single one of these things would appeal to me lol. like, there are literally so many better ways to go about trying to make actual jumps!
I once tried to make my own fly spray out of like…Dawn dish soap, water, and vinegar, I think. It did NOTHING for the flies and made the horse smell like a salad bar. PINTEREST FAIL
LOL I don't even think a horse could jump those basket jumps… they'd just trot right over them? or walk, or balk and spin and you fall on them lol
Spook or trot over and clobber.
I didn't even get into the makable ointments and sprays and such. There are so many bad ideas out there.
But those would require tools and actual work.
These are awful!! Also our tack room still smells like salad from a boarder trying the DIY fly spray Stephanie mentioned. It spilled in her trunk. So gross. I think the best thing I've seen is someone using an actual bed comforter with a surcingle wrapped around the horse's belly as a blanket. Ridiculous. And very ineffective.
I once had to blanket camp horses while working in NH. It went from summer to below freezing overnight and I had a lot of older, skinny horses (because that's the sort of crap rental places send you) and no shelter. So I took a bunch of leftover sleeping bags and blankets from the donation room and tied them around the horses' necks much like superhero capes. I figured if they fell off, then fine, but at least I tried. I found about 1/2 of them still blanketed the next morning. Alas, this was in the days before cell phone/cheap digital cameras so I have no evidence of the fact, but it was amazing.
FACE PALM! I am so embarrassed to be a human being right now.
Thanks for sharing… I am laughing/crying about all of that hahaha XD
Re those pins – Isn't there a quote along the lines of "It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid, than open it and remove all doubt"
Also – please explain the ketchup in the tail!
I read the Horse Nation article because I was dumbstruck, and it's (most likely) the acid in the ketchhup that is cleaning stains out of the tail. But all testers ALSO used shampoo, so who even knows.
I read the HorseNation thing. I get that citric acid (in tomatoes) and the vinegar in the ketchup can create whitening. However, ketchup also has tons of sugar in it so it's going to make your horse's tail a gooey, smelly mess as well as attracting all the bugs. And tomatoes stain red. Like, use some lemons if you want whitening. Actually lemons are a completely legitimate whitening method. So grab some lemons, some vinegar and go to town, but skip the ketchup.