How to care for leather *tracking* leash? (Anyone even use leather?) - Page 1

I just dropped some serious coin on a Fabro leather, 33' foot tracking lead. I use ASAT for all of my tracking training - but when I trialed my dog for her SchH1, with her being a taunt line tracker, strong puller and on the quicker paced side, torched my hand running out all 33' from the scent pad. (while I tracked her at 33' before trial, never ran it all out at once from the scent pad...)

Anyhow, my hope is that the leather will be friendlier to the hands during trials as I don't really want to wear gloves. Took the new leash out today to "test it out" which just have her run free and run the whole thing through my hands and it ran much smoother and cooler then the ASAT. (The only bad thing I can say about ASAT - otherwise I LOVE THE STUFF!)

My question is, what should I do to preserve and protect the investment in this leather leash? The nature of tracking keeps the leashes very wet, a lot, which probably isn't the best for a leather product. Any advice on keeping the leash in good condition? Whereas my other leather products will infrequently get wet, the tracking lead will likely be soaked on every outing, excluding the times I track in the evening to change things up on her - which isn't often.

I'm hoping for something fairly easy, that won't rub off on me, soak into/stain where the leash is stored and hopefully isn't poisonous in case it does rub off on my hands as I usually reward all article on the track with food.

Thanks for any input.

-Calvin