Saddle Fit

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

K S SWIGART   katswig@earthlink.net

Jolyn Maynard said:

> I went for a 18 mile training ride 
> this Sat. and he came back with his right wither scrubbed 
> and sore and his left loin tender.  Any suggestions?  

This tells me that something is crooked:  either your horse,
your saddle, or you (or maybe some combination of these). 
You need to figure out which of these is the case before you
can fix it.  If this is the first time you have done this
kind of ride in your new saddle, I would start there (and it
is not impossible, a client of mine had an OF Endurance Cut
Back on which the panels were very crooked.  She sent it
back to them...after much bitching and threatening to
Orthoflex from both her and from the rep who sold it to her
I might add...and they fixed it.  Make THEM pay for the
shipping).

If you are the crooked one, all the saddles in the world are
not going to fix it.  However, you cannot evaluate this in
the saddle (if it may be the saddle that is crooked, because
a crooked saddle will make the rider crooked).  Have
somebody (observant) watch you ride in a saddle that you
know is straight, on a horse that you know is straight (or
straightish--no horse is perfectly straight).  That means
you can't do this on one of your horses, because if you
don't ride straight, it is unlikely that any horse that you
have been riding or conditioning for very long is going to
be straight either.

You can check the horse by looking at his muscle development
and seeing if it is symmetrical (look everywhere, not just
the shoulders--where most people look) and observe the way
the horse stands.  Square him up (unmounted, unsaddled, on
FLAT ground) and then just wait and see if/how he changes
his stance--then wait and see if he changes it again.  If he
doesn't, square him up again and wait again...if he adjusts
his stance in the same way again, he's probably crooked.

And that brings me to my final point.  You need to figure
out which of the three things is not straight right away; or
pretty soon (especially if it is the saddle) all three will
be crooked. (It takes longer for a saddle to become crooked
from a crooked rider than it does for a rider to become
crooked from a crooked saddle, but it does happen).

kat
Orange County, Calif.

> I can't afford to 
> purchase new saddles all the time.

What _I_ do is buy used saddles.  The eight saddles that I
own (of varying sizes and fits) that can easily be changed as the
horse's shape changes cost me all of $2,115 (that's for all
EIGHT of them).  That includes 2 stubbens, 3 crosbys (the
old stuffable panel make, not the ones with foam panels), a
Kieffer, a Max Hofner, and a Heiser.  Each one of them would
have cost me between $1500 and $2500 new (except the Heiser
which was a top of the line saddle when it was new, but it
was new 70 years ago so I have no idea what it would have
cost--but is still in excellent condition).  I don't buy
cheap saddles, just inexpensive ones.  But it helps having 
horses with "old fashioned" backs (i.e. real withers) so that
70 year old saddles will fit them...and everybody else's used
saddles will too (and not their "modern backed" horses, which is 
why they are selling the saddles in the first place).