Using Tack on Show Horses

So it occurred to me just now as I was saddling babies, is it potentially harmful to a horse's show career to use the splint boot and tail guard tack pieces since they add bonuses to all stats, not specifically to their discipline type?

Has anyone ever experimented or simply have any ideas/thoughts on this?

Nope! Shouldn't be harmful at all. The Tack is a bonus on top of your original stats and only counts the stats for whatever discipline your horse is in. 
The reason it's considered detrimental to have stats in other categories for showing your horse on its actual stats is that it detracts form the total specialty stats a horse could have had at its grade level. Since tack stacks on top of those stats and does not affect the actual stats of your horse there's not reason to leave off splint boots and Tail Guards, unless you're saving money by not using them on certain horses or do it for the aesthetics^TM. 

Thanks for the insight, Sabriel. However, when I put this tack on my horses, the splint boots and tail guard add stats to ALL of the horses attributes, not just intelligence and speed (my horses are western). As you said, "tack stacks on top of [inborn] stats," which to me, makes me think, 
for example,
if my horse has 20  non-specialty stats in stamina and I add the perks of splint boots and tail guard, wouldn't that raise the non-specialty stats for stamina, which is negative for showing western? Ergo, why would I use a piece of tack that will raise my horse's overall non-specialty stats?

I guess my brain must be working because I don't understand how it isn't a negative to raise non-specialty stats? It must have been a long day...  :(

I asked this the other day. Alamare gave a great response if you can find the post.

Thanks, I will check it out. I have had some coffee today so I should be a bit more functional. Thank you both!

found the link to the thread Sonoma was talking about...

http://equiverse.com/topic.php?id=113237

I hope you've figured it out! Almare used better words, natural stats instead of actual, and not stacks ontop of, I can see where that would have confused. I'm sorry for any confusion!
Base of the matter is still they won't hurt your horse's chances in shows though xD