Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Alice:

    Great!  You are very close to  a solution to your problems.  I applaud your wisdom in deciphering what is needed.

 

    Now to answer:

    With the pocket there are two elements to consider.  The pocket behind the the shoulder cartilage is created by too much pressure there.  Hard Western trees are particular culprits.  There is also a tendency to fit a saddle with the horse standing still, putting a narrow  tree in for balance and wither clearance.  Unfortunately, when the horse moves, the shoulder blade rotates back into the pocket, the longer the stride, the more the rotation.  The cartilage then hits into the front of the saddle, shortening the stride!  Oops!    As a general rule, the tree of the saddle should be outside the angled plane that marks the surface of the shoulder blade.  (Another general rule says, that most Arabs need a Medium-Wide or wider tree.)  The pocket is then filled with something that moves out of the way when the horse strides out.  The air in the CAIR panel does this, but it gives you only about 3/4 inch pocket depth.  Many pockets are deeper than that.  A solution to that problem is to use a Supracor pad under the Wintec.  (We have consistently gotten A back scores with that combination.)  The  Supracor collapses instantly with each stride, pumping cooling air onto the back.  I think it works a lot better than any of the foams.   (Did you say Texas?  White hairs can also be caused by heat.)  The good news is that many horses will fill in the pocket, when the saddle is softly supported.  If the Supracor + CAIR are still not enough, wool stuffing between the front CAIR panels and the tree are a much more horse friendly way to raise the front of the saddle than a narrower tree.  Horses that are fit with these concepts in mind have longer strides and hence cover more miles!

    Now the other element:  The Wintec tree has more rocker than many endurance horses, i.e.. it is designed for more swaybacked horses.  (It took me a while to figure this out.  If you are dismantling the front, you have access to the underside of the tree.  Examine the line down the underside of the middle and notice that it has a flat area in front, a sharpish curve and then a flat area in back.)    To make matters worse, as the tree gullet is widened, the rocker becomes more pronounced!   With the saddle on the horse, with no pad or girth but after the after the width is properly adjusted, put a hand on the front of the saddle and one on the back.  Alternately then push down each hand.  With my endurance horse, Tingle Ternish, I finally came to me that the Wintec was sitting only on the front flat area, creating the white hair pattern.  An Australian Wintec dealer, that I met in England, explained how to build a jig to change the shape of the Wintec tree longitudinally to remove the rocker.  We straightened the trees on both the Wintecs that we use for endurance.  This year the spring coat is growing with almost no white hairs.

    If these things are not available locally, contact us. More specific advice for your horse requires more specific information.  Pictures and longitudinal and cross section tracings are helpful.

 

Quentin

www.InvernessFarm.com

[eznet] 

 

 

 -----Original Message-----
From: ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Alice Yovich
Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2004 10:20 PM
To: ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [RC] another saddle fit question

many of you aided me in searching for a new saddle. For a quick recap: I've been through about 5 saddles in the last two years. I started out with a 32 cm general purpose Courbette Eventing saddle. First CTR, very sore loins. Chucked that saddle and got a bob marshall that was way too small for me and gave Deli, you guessed it, sore loins. And, it wouldn't stay in place when I mounted. So, I sold it and started using my western saddle with a cheap pad (the first one I ever bought) Saddle stayed in place, no sore loins, no white hairs, but obvious dry spots even when shimmed.  So, I bought a new dressage saddle, a wintec 500 dressage with CAIR. I LOVE it. She's a very narrow horse, so I have the green, med. narrow, gullet in it.  She moves great in it, she feels great, I love it. Friday, i see white hairs popping up.  I've been using this saddle only since the end of Feb/beginning of March (not more than 6 weeks or 50 miles total)  My vet said yesterday that any white hairs would have been caused from the saddle I used in the fall, not a saddle I just started using. Other people have said, no, white hairs can appear immediately.  From the pattern of the white hairs it looks more to me like this saddle than the old, western saddle, but I don't know for sure. I KNOW that the old saddle didn't really fit b/c I had to shim it for bridging. This saddle appears to fit when I put it on her back by itself, but then it is tight when I'm riding her.  She is shaped funny...very narrow, somewhat prominent withers that widen out. She has "pockets" on either side of her withers. So, one suggestions is to pad the "pockets" and go with a wider gullet. I don't know what to pad with. I wonder if anyone else has these problems and how they fix it.

I've tried so many different saddles. I don't know what to do anymore.

Alice Yovich,
NATRC Reg. 4, Texas
www.equi-threads.com