treeless saddles

[guest@endurance.net]

Nancy Corbelletta corbelletta@corixa.com
My horse had problems with saddles and his back until I switched to the
Sport Saddle. In addition my horse is pretty tender skinned and gets
galled
easily from equipment. I replaced the western style girth with a biothane
quick cinch one because the girth buckles bothered me also.  Unfortunately
when I did this the horse would get galls under his arm pits from the
biothane and it was reduced by putting a sheep wool girth cover over it
but
that still didn't totally relieve it.  I solved the problem by putting a
equigel
cinch cover over the biothane quick cinch and rotating the gel cover so
that
it covered the leading edge of the biothane cinch. I secured the gel cover
in this position with duct tape at the ends of the gel cover then put a
sheep wool girth cover over the whole thing.  This has worked nicely for
both horse and rider. The stirrup position and motion allowed by the
saddles
design did take a while to get use to but I found that by setting the
stirrup length a little longer than with my previous saddle I found a
length
that did not cause knee or thigh pain. The stirrups that come with the
saddle were not the most comfortable for long rides and I replaced those
with stirrups that have more shock absorption and create less foot
fatigue. It may
be that Jan is experiencing knee and thigh pain because she is bracing
herself too much in the legs so not to move them in an attempt not to be
irritated as much by those nasty cinch buckles under her leg.

The stirrup leathers provided with the Sport Saddle are also bulky and can
cause rider discomfort.  I went to the biothane ones and found that the
edge
of the biothane galled my horses side and the buckle on them had to be in
just the right position or my shins would start to me irritated by the
buckle over time.  I covered the biothane leathers with a sheep wool cover
with a double layer over the buckle area and haven't had any problems
since.